I can see a future where self-driving cars network and drive in accord with each other. Barring hardware or software failure, that could reduce accidents dramatically. but in the for-profit world, the reality is a dozen such comm systems will be competing with each other. will they agree to a common network protocol or will they constantly be trying to be the dominant proprietary model to maximize profit? And I could see a significant chunk of the failures actually being credit card declines cancelling important update in, say, 5% of the cars on the road at any time. Perhaps significant enough to cause traffic chaos.