Reuters has a fun story about autonomous cars failing because they can’t handle crappy roads.

Shoddy infrastructure has become a roadblock to the development of self-driving cars, vexing engineers and adding time and cost. Poor markings and uneven signage on the 3 million miles of paved roads in the United States are forcing automakers to develop more sophisticated sensors and maps to compensate, industry executives say.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently called the mundane issue of faded lane markings “crazy,” complaining they confused his semi-autonomous cars.

Ha! Those robotic geniuses might be able to beat us at chess and Go and will scarf up half the jobs that come open in the next decade, but we’re safe from them as long as we keep our roads lousy. And we’re really good at keeping our roads lousy.

Want to learn more? Autonomous cars are the subject of next week’s Science Cafe Concord – we’ll make sure the road striping is in good shape.