Not So Fast On August 7, if all went as planned, eight high-tech Buicks drove themselves and their idle passengers down a short stretch of San Diego freeway.
Sensors can read magnets, nailed into the pavement, that indicate the direction of the road.
Digital radios can converse with surrounding vehicles and the road itself to avoid surprises. And computers, digesting all this information, can calculate where to go and how fast. But in the real world, automated highways are still just a vision and a muddled one at that. Self-steering cars may be able to slalom orange cones with ease. Negotiating legal, economic and political hazards will be far harder, for two reasons.