In any case - to the general topic - I was actually just having a beer with a friend of mine last night. He's in the property development field, and the subject turned to self driving cars.
He's seeing a major switch happening in 10 years. Maybe a little longer. Apparently propertly developers are already turning some preliminary thoughts to what community design might look like in a world where most of the vehicles on the road drive themselves (some initial conclusions trend towards car ownership becoming less important, public transit being less required, electric vehicles vehicles becoming more prevalent). He also pointed to Uber as being the first step in the journey - one company that owns thousands of these self driving cars. You order one up. It shows up at your door step minutes later, you program your destination, and you're off. You essentially rent it for a day, a week, a month... for whatever price. And apparently that's already starting to happen in Pittsburgh (of all places) ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomo ... 2d6b7b6472 )
I came away pretty pessimistic about how much longer it'll be feasible to have driven cars on the road. I was thinking 20 years. At least. From what I'm hearing from him - and he pays a lot of attention to this kind of stuff, for work and personal interest reasons - I think it'll be quite a bit quicker than that.