Self-driving cars: New book looks at how we're racing toward the future, not always safely

In theory, someone behind the wheel of a self-driving car could kick back and read a book, and leave road worries to the vehicle. The drama, ambition and genius characterizing the race to develop self-driving cars zoom into sharper focus in "Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car," a new book by Lawrence D. Burns. Burns (writing with Christopher Shulgan) is uniquely suited to reveal insight into the self-driving car bonanza because of his past role as a tech executive at General Motors and his later role as a consultant with the Google driverless car company, now called Waymo. In "Autonomy" (Ecco, 368 pp., out of four), Burns says he grasped the seismic potential of self-driving cars years before traditional "car guys and bean counters" figured it out. "Nearly all of my fellow GM executives considered autonomous cars to be a half century away, at least – if they even considered the possibility at all," writes Burns, who left the company in 2009.