It wouldn't be the first time. But the reason I harp on what I consider to be the ridiculousness of self-driving cars is that I think the only way they'll "work" (and even then, not well enough) in my lifetime is if an absurd amount of money is spent on building public infrastructure to make them work, instead of building more sensible things like mass transit. I also don't buy the various pro-urbanism arguments for them, which amount to "we won't need urban parking lots or to own cars" because you still have the commute problem. In a car-centric world, you have to have enough cars so people can go to work by car if you don't have that lovely mass transit system.
If they really do work as promised without upgrading the technology of our entire road network, maybe that would be a good thing. I just don't believe they'll work well enough. Of course in the future we might all upload our brains into robot bodies and finally get our jetpacks. When I say it won't work, I mean it won't work in anything resembling the timeline that boosters say it will. I don't think it'll work in my lifetime, and I plan to live at least a few more years.
