OPINION: Yes, the technology in AVs can make them much safer. But the faster the vehicle travels, the less safe it becomes.
Elon Musk recently told a Financial Times conference: “I think we are actually quite close to achieving self driving at a safety level that is better than human.” By “self-driving,” he meant “autonomy,” and his “best guess” is that “we’ll get there this year.”
But we have far more than a decade of experience to learn from, and this experience reveals persistent biases that inflate expectations. Musk is promising to achieve the dramatic gains through incalculably more sophisticated technology – tech that takes over entirely from the human driver. This obvious fact, however, obscures the same elementary error in both forecasts, and in many others over the interceding decades. To arrive at their conclusions, the promise makers subtract all the hazards that make the status quo dangerous – without adding in all the major new hazards that the innovation introduces.
The comparison with “foolproof highways” has more to offer. People who drive on limited-access highways have to drive on ordinary roads and streets to get to and from them. The roads’ safety benefit cannot extend everywhere, and safer highways can increase the casualties on the roads around them just by attracting more driving.
Finally, AVs will continue to disappoint because they are misnamed in a way that inflates what we expect of them. “Autonomous” predisposes people to think of AVs as unbiased hyperrational beings with a “self” that can drive, and enough discretion to exercise autonomy. The misperception is apparent in Musk’s choice of words: “self-driving … that is better than human.
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