How Safe Are Self-Driving Cars?

A near-term solution is for autonomous vehicles to prove themselves in demonstrations and pilots not unlike the way teenagers drive first with parents and instructors. To this end, RMI is developing autonomous vehicle pilots and programs on the ground in Austin, as a means to promote their commercial deployment and legality, and drive adoption by consumers. Determining the bar for driverless vehicle legality is critical. It must be fair when compared to our bar for human drivers. Once an autonomous vehicle and software meet this bar, it should graduate to a full license and be allowed full access to the roads.