I am not a prophet but sometimes I can foretell the future. It doesn’t take a special ability from above, just a little observation and reasoning.

My prediction was a simple one. Self-driving cars will not be successful for decades, if not longer. My reasoning was and is very simple. I have no doubt that they will soon have Self-driving cars safer than those driven by humans.

Compared to humans, computers react, effectively instantly. Perhaps, more important, they are not distracted. The nice thing is that the computer controlled car would be able to follow much closer and still be safe.

The hitch has not one thing to do with the cars or computers. It’s the law and the legal system. I saw today that Tesla was sued by a Tesla owner. The driver tried to claim that Tesla was at fault for an accident, but Tesla was found not at fault.

Let’s look at the possibilities. As it turned out, Tesla was out the cost of providing a defense, even though they were not at fault. For one case, that’s not much. When the number of cars increases, then so will the costs of lawyers.

At some point Tesla, and others, will need to buy insurance to pay for settling the thousands of suits. It will have to happen. Every day, I see these Morgan and Morgan commercials. I suspect they are already exploring the possibility of settling the first million dollar law suit.

My guess is, after a few of those, guilty or not, those Self-driving vehicles will become to fade from view.

There are but two things that will allow their return. Either perfect computers and/or a revision of the laws. Regardless, I really believe the revision of our law is in order.

No one group of people has beneted from the tort laws than the lawyers. Considering that it is mostly lawyers that write the laws, I don’t expect any change in the next decade or two.

So, Self-driving cars will have to wait for perfect computers. When that happens, there will be many disappointed lawyers.

Still, there will be accidents. Then, lawyers will converge to get their share of contingency money.