Why London's streets are a total nightmare for self-driving cars

Self-driving cars, meet your nemesis: the London roundabout. This strange piece of geometry, with tentacles shooting off at odd angles and cars nudging into impossible spaces, is one of the many headaches that will plague computer brains as the city's autonomous vehicle (AV) trials accelerate. In the US, Waymo and others boast fleets of self-driving cars that have racked up millions of miles of public road trials, across more than 25 cities. Billions of dollars of investment is flowing into AV units run by Uber and General Motors. Tesla is making bold promises about "robo taxis", and Ford plans to start building AVs in 2021. If you believe the latest McKinsey report, China will see mass deployment of fully autonomous vehicles within a decade.