Part 4/9:
Missy Cummings, a former federal traffic safety adviser, emphasizes that despite the lack of a human in the driver's seat, support staff are integral to the cars' operations. The industry tends to keep the scale of human assistance under wraps to avoid revealing the challenges in developing fully autonomous systems. Observations from Craig Irwin, a senior research analyst, and others corroborate that multiple people monitor each vehicle remotely, validating concerns about the limited autonomy of these modes of transport.