Actually they already ARE happening. Strip mining is now done almost entirely by automated vehicles. And we have cars that park themselves, and cars that avoid collisions for you. The only thing delaying self driving cars in mass production now is us, we still aren’t willing to admit the world we already live in.
The automated vehicles doing strip mining, or moving goods around in a warehouse, or paving roads....are NOT using LIDAR, or anything close to what Google is using in their automated cars.
Most likely the vehicle in the strip mine uses radio signals to fixed points...those fixed points having a known location. It is very simple, and probably was technically achievable in the 1940’s.
It is virtually impossible to implement such a system of known fixed points on our highways. As a side note, the federal government has mandated a very rudimentary type of fixed point system on our railroads. The railroads already possess a system of radio towers that offer line of sight communication from sea to shining sea, but it is still costing them hundreds of millions of dollars to accomplish even this most basic system.
And accident avoidance systems and automated parking systems are relatively crude. As an example, automated parking presumes that everything else in the world is static - very different than ‘on the road’ conditions. Therefore is uses equipment that is exponentially less expensive than the LIDAR used in Google’s cars.
Do not mistake a fork lift following a wire embedded in the floor, or a paver controlled by GPS, or an automated vehicle in a mine, or a GPS guided tractor on a farm as having anything to do with automated cars and trucks on the wide open road.