Concern over high accident rates is growing like foam and more alerts are triggered every day in the United States. “It’s a national crisis,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, referring to this “catastrophe” in which deaths from traffic accidents reached a peak in the last 16 years.
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An American is now similarly two to five times more likely to be killed in a crash than citizens of nations, says David Zipper, a visiting professor at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, an expert on issues of urban mobility and technology.
Zipper cites that deaths from traffic accidents have been falling across the developed world., with Japan and Norway among the countries that recently hit postwar lows. “The notable outlier is the United States,” she says.
But the professor in his article draws attention to the ‘supposed concern’ of the promoters of AVs (Autonomous Vehicles), whom they point out for not telling the truth. “The AV (Autonomous Vehicle) industry is only partially correct.”
And he’s referring to Cruise, the self-driving vehicle company in which General Motors is the largest shareholder, which ran a full-page ad in several newspapers last week, including The New York Times, which read: “Humans are terrible drivers.” “People cause millions of accidents each year in the United States. Driverless cruising vehicles are designed to save lives.”
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Other AV companies and investors, Zipper says, have also pitched their technology as a solution to America’s highway safety problems. Two days before Cruise runs his ads, Waymo, owned by Google, published a blog about the dangers of speeding, concluding that “by sticking to the speed limit, Waymo Driver will contribute to safer streets where we operate.”
The website for Safer Roads for All, an AV-funded lobby group, bluntly states that “autonomous vehicles will take human error off the road, reduce accidents and save lives.”
But for David Zipper, the rising number of deaths on America’s highways is a national emergency that demands action, “but their companies and are possibly dead wrong when they suggest that self-driving cars offer a clear solution, let alone the best one.”
“Claims that autonomous vehicles present a deus ex machina that would free Americans from deadly collisions, claims the industry has made for years, should be treated for the self-serving hoaxes they are.”
Cruise’s ad accurately stated that its robotic taxis “never drive distracted, drowsy or drunk.”, and that they won’t make certain mistakes that human drivers do. But, Zipper says, “that’s only part of the safety story of autonomous vehicles.” They make other mistakes in situations that a person sitting behind the wheel could easily handle. And he cites instances of incidents that have occurred and been documented in San Francisco, the epicenter of ‘robot’ taxi use.
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The author admits that VA technology will improve as companies learn and adapt and that eventually, perhaps, an autonomous vehicle will be objectively safer than one driven by a human.
But, he adds, for now and at this point, one million VAs will have little impact in a country with 278 million vehicles that are an average of 12 years old. “The United States is decades away from autonomous driving technology being advanced and widespread enough to meet the visions of driveers for a crash-free nation.”
Professor Zipper’s central point is that, in the meantime, “hundreds of thousands of Americans will die while we wait…”. But, he wonders, why wait?
“There are many surefire strategies to reduce crash deaths that are ripe for adoption right now. The most obvious, redesign the roads and reduce speed limits. Cities and states could also install more automatic law enforcement cameras, which have been shown to reduce dangerous traffic violations,” he responds.
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