Coronavirus shows there's still no such thing as a totally human-free self-driving car

Autonomous vehicles were supposed to make human drivers obsolete. But the coronavirus pandemic is exposing how a technology designed to be human-free still relies on a large workforce of contract laborers at almost every level. The Verge reached out to 10 autonomous vehicle developers to find out what they were doing in response to the coronavirus outbreak. Almost all of them said they would be grounding their fleets for at least several weeks as they monitor the spread of the virus. But the fate of human backup drivers who ride around in the vehicles is less certain.