The expectation of zero fatalities with self-driving vehicles is not realistic. It is not a foregone conclusion that a self-driving vehicle would ever perform more safely than an experienced, middle-aged driver.
— from a white paper from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, which looked at the safety of autonomous cars. Safety is often touted as a big advantage of self-driving vehicles.
The researchers also said the transition period — during which driverless cars will be sharing the road with manned vehicles — safety might actually worsen, at least for the conventional vehicles.
Why? In many current situations, interacting drivers of conventional vehicles make eye contact and proceed according to the feedback received from other drivers. Such feedback would be absent in interactions with self-driving vehicles, the paper said.
That transitional period may not be too far off. As Matt O Brien wrote this week, Google — one of the highest-profile companies working on autonomous vehicles — said it hopes such cars will be in consumers hands (so to speak) around the year 2020.
In the meantime, there s testing galore going on. For example, the University of Michigan is developing M City, a 32-acre mini city designed to test driverless cars, according to the Telegraph. It will have junctions, roundabouts, bus stops, simulated pedestrians and more.
Photo: An artist rendering of Google s self-driving car (Google via Associated Press)
