Everyone’s talking about autonomous cars, wondering if they’ll soon be whizzing along our roads. This hype surprises me, because many vehicles in other transport systems have been moving about driverless for years, or even decades. In industrial environments and harbours, automated transport systems have been in place for over 60 years. And most of the metros are highly automated. These systems just haven’t received much media attention, maybe because they pose fewer ethical and regulatory challenges than autonomous cars.