Former Google driverless car pioneer says his prediction about self-driving cars has finally come true

"Urmson always did his best to answer, without committing Google to unrealistic timelines. After a while, he lost his patience or grew bored. One day in 2015, he made a joke, or rather, a combination of a joke and a fun prediction. Urmson said his son might never need a driver's license because autonomous cars would be widely available by the time the kid got to driving age."

"Now though, a decade after that joke-prediction, Urmson is finally ready to declare victory: autonomous vehicles are here and they're working. "It's exciting. I've been at this for a while, and it's one of these things where you're like, 'Will it? Won't it" for a while and then you get to 'this is going to happen, but exactly when,'" he said. "It's kind of neat to be in the place where it's happened.""

Chris Urmson has been a pioneer in autonomous vehicles for almost two decades. A 2015 quip predicted widespread autonomous cars by 2020, though that timeline did not materialize. Both of Urmson's children later obtained driver's licenses despite the earlier prediction. Aurora has now accrued 100,000 driverless miles with its trucks and intends further expansion. The autonomous vehicle sector experienced setbacks and slower progress after initial optimism. The recent mileage milestone is presented as evidence that autonomous trucking technology is progressing toward practical, real-world deployment.

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