We’re Missing the Real Value of Self-Driving Cars
They don’t need to prevent a single crash to improve our safety
Two car accident victims stumble into a bar. The first tells the bartender, “it came out of nowhere.” The second has, before arriving, already sent pre-crash video footage and telemetry data to the bartender.
Autonomous cars transform accidents into errors, which is why they stand to be the greatest safety innovation in automotive history.
Rhetorical arguments are bubbling up around what it means for a self-driving vehicle to be safe enough for commercialization, yet statistical projections overlook the core value propositions of driverless technology: observation and communication. Autonomous cars transform accidents into errors, which is why they stand to be the greatest safety innovation in automotive history — even if they don’t prevent a single crash.
The U.S. saw seven million traffic collisions in 2016. This is a key performance indicator for benchmarking safety, but our inability to observe human drivers means the figure only reflects crashes reported to authorities. An extensive survey from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that drivers admitted failure…
