How Safe Must Autonomous Vehicles Be?

Whether you call them autonomous vehicles, self-driving or driverless cars, they are the future – and could be a frightening prospect. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety survey reveals that while most U.S. drivers are looking for autonomous technologies when they buy a new car, they are afraid of fully autonomous vehicles.  According to the report, 85% of baby boomers and 73% of millennials confess to being afraid to ride in self-driving cars. In fact, the report reveals that only about ten percent responded that they would feel safer sharing the road with driverless vehicles. In their study, the AAA Foundation urges the gradual, safe introduction of autonomous technologies to help Americans prepare for this major shift in mobility that is already upon us.

How safe is safe enough for driverless cars?

A Washington Post story asks, "how safe is safe enough" when it comes to autonomous vehicles? Given that about 94% of motor vehicle crashes are a result of driver error, the general assumption is that driverless cars will prove to be a safer alternative.

Driverless vehicles will still crash. They’ll have software glitches, or be controlled by inexperienced operators who don’t know what to do in unexpected moments – or collide with drivers in non-autonomous cars. Their parts could be defective, too.

Bryan Reimer, associate director of the transportation center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the Post “Unless we have defined how safe is safe enough — and we are in agreement — the nature of politics is that fingers will point at each other.” Driverless cars are such a volatile issue that there is not a lot of agreement about how to determine the roadworthiness of autonomous vehicles.

As Science News puts it: "It’s especially difficult to tell whether self-driving cars have earned their licenses when scientists are still writing the driver’s test."

How will self-driving cars be safer than driver-operated cars?

Still, the data leads one to believe that autonomous vehicles are a smarter move. The Post story quoted National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) traffic fatality data:

• 10,497 annual deaths attributed to drunk driving.
• 10,111 deaths from speeding.
• 3,450 deaths from distracted driving.
• 803 deaths from dozing behind the wheel.

Given that driverless cars cannot get drunk, drowsy or distracted, they can at least reduce crashes from those causes.

Amid all the enthusiasm for how safe autonomous vehicles will be, how they will be cleaner and provide more efficient mobility, a world of completely autonomous vehicles is still decades away, and in the run-up to the time when cars drive on their own, there is a lot of speculation about how safe they will be, and how many lives they will save. For now, we will be living in a world that will gradually become a mix of human-operated and driverless vehicles. At some point, drivers will have to learn about how to interact with and share the road with autonomous vehicles.

Plaxen Adler Muncy, P.A. is a premier personal injury firm which has fought for justice on behalf of Maryland car accident victims for more than 35 years. If you have been injured in a crash, or if you sustained damage to your car, we may be able to help. Please call 410.998.4449, or fill out this contact form to schedule a free consultation with an experienced Maryland car accident attorney today.