Gadgetory

33,000 people died in 2014 in us road accidents another 26,000 in the EU vast numbers unequaled in rate by any other means of transportation so the main selling point for self-driving cars early on has been dramatic reduction in accidents however in their first million or so miles of real-world testing on public roads they've yet to stake a claim to that hope a new study by Michael C vac and Brandon shuffling at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute looked at the data from the early self drivers fielded by Google out and Delphi the inconvenient truth these early self drivers have a higher accident rate than their human driven counterparts here are three more nuanced takeaways however for the smarter driver first of all the accidents that self-driving cars are involved in tend to be minor and let's face it we've got to get over this sci-fi ideal that self-driving cars will never crash and embrace the reality that they will crash less often and with less severity secondly the self-driving car accidents so far have not been the self-driving cars fault it's been the other guy the human oh my god now that will change of course that these cars propagate into the real world markets and the hands of non trained professionals who aren't official company testers and certainly the miles driven so far by self-driving cars aren't under optimal conditions the current state of cars that rely on sensors around the vehicle to see and read every situation really can't pack and can heavy snow or hail or even a wicked thunderstorm see that it's ugly at University of Michigan also point out there probably some awkward teenage years ahead when the earliest commercial self-driving cars will be basically surrounded and outnumbered by human driven cars they with their part logic we with our fuzzy logic it's gonna make for some unpredictable results bottom line as we get these early indications of the efficacy of self-driving cars toward reducing accidents it pays to double check the reality of what the goal is complete accident reduction or merely a dramatic improvement in fatalities at least in some situations more realities of modern private revealed now at C net on cars comm click on smarter driving