But the race is on for fully autonomous vehicles and major automakers and tech companies are expanding their testing programmes in the United States. But safety concerns still hang over the industry as regulators and the public weigh in on how self-driving cars on public roads will affect safety.

Owned by Alphabet, the autonomous driving technology company Waymo announced this week it is extending the robotaxi service into Los Angeles, bringing the service to its third major market after Phoenix and San Francisco. First, the company’s vehicles will run without human drivers at the wheel, in limited areas of the city before expanding coverage.

And General Motors’ Cruise division isn’t about to be outdone; it plans to launch its own driverless taxi service in Houston by the end of the year. On the heels of successful deployments in San Francisco and Austin where Cruise vehicles have been operating commercially for several months, this is an expansion.

While the addition of autonomous vehicles on the public roadways has caused excitement and concern in city officials and residents. The supporters of self driving cars claim they could drastically decrease traffic accidents, relieve traffic, and offer mobility to the people, who can’t drive. But critics say that recent episodes of autonomous vehicles proves that the technology is not yet ready for rollout.

In San Francisco, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck in March, causing injury to a passenger, according to government documents. An already murky debate about the safety of autonomous vehicles and the adequacy of current regulations has been reignited by the incident and is ongoing.

In the wake of recent incidents, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is reviewing standards for autonomous vehicles. New rules proposed by the agency would require companies to submit more detailed safety data and show effectiveness of their autonomous systems, before they can operate on public roads.

While new technologies like autonomous vehicle tech come with a host of challenges, it continues to pour in. Toyota pushed $1 billion towards its autonomous driving business, and Ford and Volkswagen expanded their partnership to jointly develop self driving tech.

After all, the push for autonomous vehicles doesn’t stop at passenger cars. Now, several companies are racing to build self-driving trucks for long-haul freight transportation. A leader in this space, TuSimple first drove a fully autonomous truck on public roads last year, and does routine work between Phoenix and Tucson now.

Across cities, however, as testing spreads, they are struggling with how to incorporate autonomous vehicles into their transportation systems. But Pittsburgh is one of the hubs for autonomous vehicle development, embracing the technology and positioning itself as such. Some have gone for such an extreme approach, requiring strict regulations and reduced testing to specific areas.

Additionally, autonomous vehicles present the potential for far more than a change in transportation. Self driving cars are already in the mind of urban planners who are wondering if the vehicles may slash the amount of necessary parking space and possibly be more pedestrian friendly on the streets. Insurance companies, too, are bracing for a world in which liability for accidents could flip from pedestrian or drivers to vehicle manufacturers or software firms.

Finally, privacy concerns about the autonomous vehicle have come to the fore. To build self driving car, we collect metropolis level detail maps and the passenger movement information, raising to question with how this data will be used and protected.

And as the technology gets better, so too are ethical considerations taking centre stage. How autonomous vehicles should make split second decisions in potentially fatal situations and where to place the responsibly in responding has caught the attention of programmers and policymakers.

While some have raised questions about the benefits of autonomous vehicles and others have questioned their reality due to safety concerns, countless experts agree that the ultimate adoption of autonomous vehicles is virtually inevitable. They are simply too great in terms of the potential safety, efficiency and accessibility benefits to ignore. But the road will be complex and often rocky to getting there.

But as testing programmes grow and more self-driving cars roll onto the roads, the months and years ahead will set the tone of public perception and policy concerning this disruptive technology. These early deployments could help or harm the future of transportation and urban life.