vtsnowedin wrote: I am more optimistic on that then you are. Over the fifty plus years of my driving life the technology for automobiles has made great advances and it appears to be accelerating. At one point they were considering pavement markers and deliniator posts that transmitted information to a receiver in a autonomous driven car.
I've been driving for 40, and sure the cars are better, but they are still just steel boxes on rubber wheels, burning oil in a steel engine as they roll down the road. Not much to show for 120 years of progress? Not when you compare it the progress made of say ships and planes over that period. As for highways studded with high-tech, well first they have to figure out how to build the highways without Oil! They are literally made of oil and the trend in many rural places is to covert that back to roadbase with regular grading because they simply can't afford to build them like in the 50's and 60's with the cheap oil we had then.
The depletion of oil colors everything. I have been reading about "Amazing" technology for decades but all I see is roads and bridges collapsing of old age from one end of the nation to another. I suppose if you live within the confines of a major city that has a good tax base you may see that technology roll out, but it won't be nation-wide I assure you.