A driverless car recently made the journey from the Golden Gate Bridge in California and drove cross-country to New York City. The voyage was the longest autonomous drive attempt in the U.S., and has put driverless vehicles in the news again.

The successful journey brought to mind a recent prediction from Elon Musk, the founder of electric car manufacturer Tesla:

“[Legislators] may outlaw driving cars because it’s too dangerous… You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine”.

While at first this might seem radical, I feel it’s a potentially realistic image of the future.

With Tesla, Google, Apple, and most major automakers working on self-driving cars, it’s a safe bet they will be commonplace in the next decade.

For his part, Musk drew a relationship with elevators: When elevators first came about, each had an elevator operator.  But as people became more used to the technology, and elevators became more safe and efficient, the operators went away.

Certainly, there is a lot to consider with the day of the self-driving cars coming. At the Nvidia conference, which debuted the firm’s computer platform for driverless cars, security issues with autonomous cars were also highlighted.

As Musk noted, there are some basic security concerns to deal with to make sure that people won’t be able to hack into vehicles.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into that, and we’ve had third parties try to hack it,” Musk said. He also said the threat of hackers taking over cars becomes more significant if the steering wheel and brake pedal disappear. Until then, he says drivers can override any potential problems.

As we’ve reported previously, car hacking is already happening today with automated, smart devices including car locks. Imagine when the entire car is vulnerable?

According to a recent congressional inquiry by Senator Ed Markey, there is a widespread absence of security and privacy protection being taken into consideration as automakers race to embrace the technology without considering the implications.

Clearly, the automotive and cybersecurity industries need to monitor autonomous technology very carefully, and adapt where needed.

Put simply, cars are another piece…a big piece… of the entire landscape of the Internet of Things, and if we are going to leave the driving to technology, we must make sure that it’s safe and secure.