Self-Driving Cars: What to Know. 36,350 people were killed by automotive…
By: Tej Patel
Tags: Autonomous Vehicles

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Humans Are Bad Drivers

Approximately 37,000 people are killed by automotive accidents each year in the US alone, and that number is growing. Since that number might be hard to fathom, that’s about 100 deaths per day or 4 deaths per hour. Think about that.

Even worse, according to a study done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, approximately 94% of accidents are caused by human-related errors such as distraction, fatigue, and emotional driving. That’s over 2 million accidents per year, responsible for more than 2.5 million injuries. If you’re still not convinced that human error is the reason why driving is dangerous, consider that the next two leading causes of accidents, vehicle malfunctions and environment-related issues like bad weather or glare, are only responsible for 2% of accidents each.

Alright, clearly human drivers make mistakes far too often — how do we fix that? The answer is simple, take the human out of the equation and let the car drive itself.

Tesla Model 3 self-driving demonstration

Why Driverless Cars?

I can already hear some of you saying “here we go again” as you roll your eyes. Trust me, I get it. For one, it’s scary to think that a computer can or should control a vehicle with human passengers. Secondly, I’m sure you’ve heard excited entrepreneurs, journalists, and executives talk about driverless cars like they’re some miracle technology and that they are right around the corner. Any sensible person would meet that claim with a healthy amount of skepticism. After all, it sounds too good to be true, and let me be very clear — it is. However, even after we cut through all the hype and marketing jargon, I think you’ll find that the actual potential of driverless cars is pretty amazing!

Safety

Before we break down what driverless cars really mean for the future of transportation, let's back up and establish why we want them in the first place. The first and most important reason is safety. Remember, tens of thousands of people are killed each year in car accidents, and the vast majority of those crashes are due to human error. A self-driving car can’t drive drunk or get distracted by their phone. It can also react far more quickly than a human and doesn’t have blind spots because of its numerous sensors. This means that a driverless car should be able to avoid the vast majority of crashes caused by human mistakes. Of course, self-driving cars aren’t perfect, and we will talk about that too. However, I think that the number of lives that could be saved by eliminating the human error element to driving is reason enough to pursue this technology.

Example of the various sensors on a self-driving car

Future Capability

The second reason why driverless cars are the best solution is because of the future applications they enable. Perhaps the most common use for a car is to get someone to work and back home each day. Consider that outside of this commute time, the car sits idle in a parking lot or garage for about 22 out of the 24 hours in a day. As a resource, we use cars inefficiently, which is why everyone feels the need to own one. As a result, there are too many cars on the road which leads to more traffic and a huge negative impact on the environment.

Uber, Lyft, and other ridesharing services have provided a relatively cheap means of transportation to those without cars. However, imagine the day in the life of someone that owns a driverless car in the future. The car drops them off at work in the morning, then instead of simply sitting in a parking lot for 9 hours, begins to operate as an automated ride-sharing vehicle for others in the area. The car would return back to the office in time to go home while having made some extra money for the owner. Self-driving cars would increase the availability of ridesharing vehicles, meaning fewer people would need to own a car in the first place. This would lead to a decrease in carbon emissions which is better for the environment!

Google’s driverless Waymo vehicles being used as a taxi

The list of benefits for self-driving cars doesn’t end there. Things like car-to-car communication mean self-driving cars can prevent traffic slowdowns by accelerating simultaneously. If you’re interested in learning about how that would work, I’d highly recommend this video.

The Catch

As you can see, the potential benefits of self-driving cars are pretty awesome. However, as I alluded to earlier, it’s not all perfect. For starters, self-driving cars are not ready yet. There are still technical challenges such as operating in poor weather conditions and coming up with comprehensive safety standards that need to be overcome before they should be allowed for public use. Many companies have generated publicity by claiming that their self-driving cars are “coming soon” but take that with a grain of salt. It's much more important to have the technology right than to be first.

What is Safe Enough?

One of the most challenging aspects of this technology is deciding how safe the car needs to be before it should be allowed on the road. Some say that getting driverless cars to make mistakes 10x less often than a human driver demonstrates that it is safe enough to allow on the road. However, others argue that even 10x better than humans is not enough of an improvement to be considered safe. People of this opinion believe that settling for such a metric is equivalent to deciding what number of crash deaths we are okay with allowing. Finding an answer between these two extremes is something that governments and companies developing this technology will need to come to a consensus on.

Ethical and Legal Concerns

Of course, there are also many ethical questions about driverless cars that remain unanswered. How is blame assigned if a crash does happen? Does the driver always have to be able to take back control of the vehicle if it begins to malfunction? How much should the car prioritize its own passengers’ safety compared to other drivers or pedestrians in the event that a crash becomes likely? The truth is that current legislation is not equipped to handle the types of situations that can arise with self-driving cars. As great as this technology can be, keep in mind that this is something that must be fleshed out before they are allowed to be used by the public.

The Transition

Finally, many of these futuristic benefits only work if most/all cars on the road are driverless. Of course, the transition period will not be instant, and there will likely be pushback as these vehicles leave the experimental stage and move towards production. Will there be challenges when human and computerized drivers share the road? If driverless cars get to the point where they make mistakes thousands, or even millions of times less often than humans, should humans then be banned from operating cars themselves?

These are tough questions, and while I hope you found the potential benefits as amazing as I did, it would be disingenuous to claim that there are not still big question marks that come with this technology. Even though we don’t have good answers to these questions yet, I think it’s important to understand both the pros and cons in order to have a more informed opinion.

The Takeaway

Okay, so what does this all mean? I hope you can see that human drivers clearly pose a massive safety problem. Also, how we use our vehicles has caused major environmental damage as well as overcrowding of roads. Self-driving cars appear to enable solutions to all of these issues, while also providing some incredible future benefits as well.

As I’m sure you can tell by now, I am personally a techno-optimist. If you’re like me, remember to have patience and temper your expectations for self-driving cars. This technology is aiming to solve a really hard problem and it will take time to get right. That being said, don’t be blind to the ethical and legal questions that still remain. They are an equally important part of this puzzle, and we need to ensure that we aren’t introducing a new set of problems while trying to solve another.

On the other hand, if you’re still not sold on self-driving cars, I would advise you to not be so quick to judge. Remember that this technology is still in its infancy. The self-driving cars of today are like old flip phones compared to today’s best smartphones — the technology will get better! Consider how many lives are impacted or lost due to human driving errors and the future capabilities that self-driving can open. We would be remiss to not at least try such a promising solution.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2019)

Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (2018) DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2018.02.012.