Explaining Our Extreme Safety Demands for Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars promise to brighten our lives in multiple ways. Americans spend almost an hour daily, on average, commuting to and from work. While self-driving cars will not cut down on our time commuting, they will allow us to use that time in more productive or fun ways. Self-driving cars can also ease the lives of people unable to drive on their own due to old age or disability. Finally, research has shown that introducing self-driving cars, once they are at least 10 percent safer than the average driver, would spare hundreds of thousands of 1.25 million lives lost in traffic accidents each year. Despite the advantage of allowing self-driving cars on the road as soon as they are somewhat safer than the average human, there is significant public resistance toward introducing self-driving cars, unless they are extremely safe compared to the average human driver (e.g., 90 percent safer than the average human driver).