"Despite Tesla's claim of a self-driving car out this year, several companies are aiming for 2020 and beyond for a production model. University of South Carolina Assistant Professor of Law Bryant Walker Smith says there are a lot of miles before companies can claim their automated cars are as safe as conventional ones.
Waymo, owned by Google, has been testing in several cities, including Austin. They recently announced they had completed 3 million miles of driving.CREDIT COURTESY OF WAYMO
His back-of-the-envelope estimate, "You would have to drive 300 hundred million miles of representative driving without any fatalities. That's a lot of driving"
Regardless of the miles and the obstacles, Walker Smith believes autonomous cars are a good way to address the nearly 100 deaths per day on U.S. roadways from human error
"We should be concerned about automated driving. We should be terrified about conventional driving," he stressed."
- Date Published:05/26/2017
- Original Publication:KSTX San Antonio