Study Backs Getting Driverless Cars On The Road, As Waymo Ditches Backup Drivers

The company says they're deploying cars without backup drivers. The company says they're deploying cars without backup drivers. A new study is bolstering the case for putting more autonomous vehicles on the road sooner rather than later -- at the same time that self-driving cars are hitting a milestone in parts of the Phoenix metropolitan area. A research report released this week argues that deploying driverless cars commercially as soon as they become at least a little safer than human drivers, could end up saving hundreds of thousands of lives -- as compared to waiting for the technology to be close to perfect. Meanwhile, on the roads in Arizona, the first public tests of self-driving cars without backup drivers have begun.