I'm roughly the same age and that's just simply not true. Before 2005 self driving was pure science fiction. The most optimistic estimates from anyone in the industry put self driving cars at least 40 years away, in the 2040 to 2050 time frame. There was no path forward. Even if hardware continued to advance to the point it was possible nobody had any idea how to do the software side or what it would look like.

The 2005 Grand Challenge changed everything. There had been major breakthroughs in both image recognition and LIDAR and now there was a path forward. Self driving cars were suddenly not just possible, but it looked like they were only 10 to 20 years away.