In building and testing autonomous vehicles, Stanford mechanical engineer Chris Gerdes discusses a truism that holds on the racetrack, in the lab and in life: Problems that seem difficult turn out to be easy, and the ones we think are no-brainers aren’t. He describes how the task of making a self-driving DeLorean “drift” on a racetrack is relatively easy compared to programming it to do the “right thing” in some everyday situations.