Ignore the headlines, autonomous cars are still safer than humans

Oct30

by Sindy Cator on October 30, 2015 at 12:56 am

A preliminary study on the safety of self-driving vehicles conducted by The Univeristy of Michigan Transportation Research Institute revealed autonomous cars are responsible for more accidents than their human-driven coutnerparts. But, the numbers might not be telling the whole story. Lost in the whirlwind of big headlines about killer robot cars was this seemingly important bit of information found right in the beginning of the study: “Two important caveats should be considered when interpreting the findings. First, the distance accumulated by self-driving vehicles is still relatively low (about 1.2 million miles, compared with about 3 trillion annual miles in the U.S.…