The Pod concept seems a bit too far fetched. I just don't think with how much government regulation is involved that something like that will be easily approved unless the technology is failsafe.
You may be right. Unfortunately public fear will be the biggest hurdle, which is ridiculous in many ways. The system we have now (people driving cars and trucks etc) is by no means "failsafe" and we have thousands of fatalities and serious injuries (not to mention property damage) every year as a result.
eg.
https://youtu.be/C1aSvoIpVssHowever, with Google and Apple both trying to produce autonomous vehicles, plus military interest, there will be a hell of a lot of lobbying power stacked up on it's side. In terms of the docking between the trolley and the "pod" that is unlikely to be a problem. We already have a huge amount of heavy freight moved in containers in a very similar way, so it should be easy to argue that this would just be an alternative design.
G.