People's inattentiveness on the roads is bad enough without robots in charge........

No it won't. Driverless trains are on rails, and any junctions are computer controlled. Nor do trains have to contend with erratic pedestrian movements. Then you have the violations in the highway code that are essential for smooth running of the road network (merging and letting on-coming traffic turn right for instance). There are too many judgement cals for driverless to be practical.

Take automatic gearboxes for eaxample. Their biggest weakness is that they cannot predict driver intent because the electronics cannot see the road ahead. Autos either require an oversized engine so that gear selection is not critical or start hunting for gears every time the driver modulates the throttle pressure. Whereas a manual can be in the right gear almost every time with far fewer redundant changes. Not all automation is desirable.

It would make sense on motorways because vehicles could (theoretically) be closely bunched and take advantage of the slipstream effect which is the dominant factor in high speed fuel consumption. However, there are big problems with liability (the OEMs won't be interested in being liable for accidents over the lifetime of the car). Then there's the difficulty of driverless cars predicting the movements of human operated cars.

But the biggest hurdle is that drivers do not want to give up control of the car. Couples argue endlessly over whose turn it is to drive and the only time anyone wants to be a passenger is on the way back from a party.

Remember when digital gauges were 'the next big thing'? Consumers preferred analogue HVAC and tachometer/speedometer gauges.

Just because a technology becomes technically feasible doesn't make its acceptanvce inevitable.