This week, nearly every major company developing autonomous vehicles in the U.S. halted testing in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19, which has sickened more than 250,000 people and killed over 10,000 around the world. Still some experts argue pandemics like COVID-19 should hasten the adoption of driverless vehicles for passenger pickup, transportation of goods, and more. Autonomous vehicles still require disinfection -- which companies like Alphabet's Waymo and KiwiBot are conducting manually with sanitation teams -- but in some cases, self-driving cars and delivery robots might minimize the risk of spreading disease. In a climate of social distancing, when on-demand services from Instacart to GrubHub have taken steps to minimize human contact, one factor in driverless cars' favor is that they don't require a potentially sick person behind the wheel. Tellingly, on Monday, when Waymo grounded its commercial robotaxis with human safety drivers, it initially said it would continue to operate the driverless autonomous cars in its fleet.

After a couple of years spent testing its autonomous-drive system in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, Yandex -- the Russian equivalent of Google -- showcased its self-driving product at CES in January. The results were encouraging, based on my 20-minute drive in downtown Las Vegas traffic in a Toyota Prius fitted with the Yandex equipment. The ride was smooth -- actually, smoother than other test cars I have tried in the past months. I would say the vehicle's behavior had a much more "human" feeling than I had expected, with smooth turns, less hesitation when merging into traffic, good acceleration and no sudden braking. The route included unprotected left-hand turns, pedestrian crossings and busy traffic with speeds exceeding 70 kph.

I buckle my seatbelt, and then double check it, after I climb into the back of a white, black, and orange Toyota Prius V wagon. I'm tense, but the two engineers, one in back with me, the other riding shotgun, seem reassuringly relaxed. We roll forward, turning right out of the parking lot at the Hard Rock Hotel, and head into the streets of Las Vegas--with nobody in the driver's seat. Soon, the car is merging into traffic at 40 mph, the steering wheel spinning and the turn signals flicking on and off on their own. I've witnessed plenty of self-driving demonstrations, some of them here in Vegas, but never one without a human holding their hands over the controls, poised to brake, or swerve, if the computer struggles.

Video: Yandex's autonomous car hits Moscow's streets. Transportation is about to get a technology-driven reboot. The details are still taking shape, but future transport systems will certainly be connected, data-driven and highly automated. With harsh winters, drivers who constantly switch lanes, traffic jams and occasional crashes, the Russian capital of Moscow provides a challenging setting for testing autonomous cars. "In Moscow, the guys behind you honk the horn even before the traffic lights turn green," says Dmitry Polishchuk, head of Yandex's driverless car project.