Companies like Tesla, Ford, General Motors, Google, and Toyota took this year’s Consumer Electronic Show by storm as they brought their plan to facilitate safe and driver-less transportation to light.

Out of these companies, Google has done the most on-road testing with its spinoff company Waymo, but none of them have reached a stage anywhere near public deployment. In fact, it might be several years before this technology can be used.

Collaboration between companies could accelerate progress. Nvidia, which was, until just recently, a company familiar to just gamers and teenagers, has made its computer chips, which have also been incorporated into BitCoin mining, available to Volkswagen.

Another example of the immature self-driving industry is a crash that happened on a self-driving shuttle’s first day on the road in Las Vegas back in November. The accident happened to be the human-controlled truck’s fault, as the shuttle followed procedures and came to a complete stop, while the truck continued driving. 

This illustrates another problem: misinterpretations between the machine and the human. As exemplified by this disturbance, crashes like this are bound to keep happening if people don’t switch to autonomous cars. 

In addition, problems for people like the truck drivers arise because their jobs start to disappear. These are a few problems that lie in a sea of obstacles.

There is sure to be substantial progress made in the near future, but for now, we’ll be the ones steering our way towards autonomy.