Self-Driving Cars: Future or Fad

I'm old enough to have lived through a number of fads that had promised to be waves of the future, an inevitable future where the fad-subject would be in total domination.

Of course, sometimes this proves to be the case.  More often, the item does continue into the future but in modified and not dominant form.

So it might well be regarding the current flurry for self-driving cars.

My bias is that I would almost never want to own one.  Further, I find it hard to believe that any kind of sensor-based systems can substitute for human perception coupled with experience.  Possibly in a hundred years, if "artificial intelligence" proves to be as good as its proponents claim.  But that too is an intellectual fad, though a long lasting one that might come to pass.

In, say, ten years the government (alias Big Brother) mandates that all new cars be self-driving, I hope the lawmakers and regulators are wise enough to allow the self-driving mode to be switched on or off at the driver's discretion.  Self-driving on sensor-rich highways and arterials and human-driving on country roads or off-road trails.