Self-Driving Cars Could Prevent 580,000 Deaths a Year
Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
New data from Waymo, IIHS, and NHTSA shows autonomous vehicles are significantly safer than human drivers, with Waymo robotaxis logging 92% fewer serious crashes. But the industry still lacks national safety standards, and incomplete crash reporting may skew comparisons. As NHTSA grants Zoox an exemption and pushes for new AV performance standards, experts argue self-driving tech is a public-health breakthrough that could save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
Cutting that by even 50 percent—let alone the 90 percent reductions suggested by some studies—would save 580,000 lives a year.
- giantg2
Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in.
Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive because rideshare drivers are involved in fewer serious accidents than the average person.
Waymo says it has 170 million miles and I found 2 fatal accidents it was involved in (fault doesn't matter as fault is not included in the other stat either). Looks like the average is about 1.3 fatalities per 100 million miles, and about 1 per 100 million miles for CDLs. This doesn't seem that impressive.
If we want adoption, we would need it be placed in individual vehicles and it should look at removing driver liability. People will use it when they are drunk if it means not going to jail and it's readily available.
- mostly_harmless
Fatality data is extremely skewed. 44% of drivers aren't using a seatbelt, 29% are speeding related, I recall alcohol involvement being about 30%, though it's not listed in the link I checked. About 20% of automobile fatalities aren't in cars but are pedestrians or bicyclists struck by cars (add another 16% if you want to include motorcyclists, though only half of which involve another vehicle). I recall the percentage of vulnerable road user deaths is much higher in urban areas.
(https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...)
The majority of drivers are good, but some drivers are really bad.
Life in USA is extremely car-centric and taking away a license is often infeasible and the offender usually drives without their license anyways. If anything, I'd like autonomous cars to give a legal out to remove bad drivers. You get a DUI, or commonly speeding? You may only take an autocar.
- cbondurant
I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. Cars are so hopelessly space and energy inefficient, and I hate driving them. If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great.
I think it would be meaningful to also compare the fatality rates of the time tested and proven forms of public transit to these self driving cars too.
- ericmay
The safest car is the one that is parked. I’m not anti-car but in terms of safety we should focus more on getting people using bus/rail/bike/walk especially for daily needs. It’s more cost effective too. Autonomous cars are cool and will be great for reducing crashes, but it’s an additive solution, not a subtractive one.
- alexpotato
The most likely scenario at this point it:
- autonomous cars cause fewer accidents
- so either insurance will be cheaper for them
- AND/OR human driving car insurance goes up
- even if only one happens, the relative cost of insurance will change in favor of autonomous
- driving your own car becomes a kind of "prestige" thing where only really wealthy people do it (similar to owning your own plane etc)
- iambateman
From a policy standpoint…I wonder about creating a rule that anyone who got a DUI could get an amended license where they could legally operate only autonomous vehicles. First DUI is a permanent AV-only license.
Since 7 million people have DUI’s, that one policy change would completely reshape the industry.
- dlisboa
ADAS + human driver seems enough to solve most of the shortcomings of both human and robot drivers.
Full self-driving doesn't strike me as necessary to prevent deaths.
- Junk_Collector
It could, but maybe not if your motto is, "Move Fast and Break Things."
Article is short on data instead referencing a bunch of aggregated IIHS studies.
- YeGoblynQueenne
>> In March, Waymo’s independent study showed 92 percent fewer fatal or serious-injury crashes, a 13-fold reduction versus human drivers in comparable city environments.
I can't progress beyond this point in the article. How is Waymo's study "independent"? I don't understand.
- a3w
Doesn't
``less cars, more X, where X is bikes and trains''
save more lives than autonomous cars?
Also: We have 580k direct deaths a year due to a top pollutant society cross-funds for those who buy them? This is insane.
After ten-thousand years, nearly six billion humans died in car-related accidents, i.e. one population of earth when I was young? How is a personal level risk of one in ten thousand each year acceptable? Ban at least human-driven cars, not (only) AI/AGSI!
As for driving in full automation: seems impossible outside clear-weathered rectangular cities, for now. But perhaps that does not stay this way for years, and in some places, we can could either adopt this tech, pragmatically, or build liveable, walkable/bikable cities instead in the more long term.