Self-Driving Cars - Life in the Fast Lane

Recently, articles have come out hypothesizing that self-driving cars will completely revolutionize the way that we travel. Predictions state that in the next ten years, most people won’t actually own one, opting to hop into public cars similar to Uber or Lyft, without the driver. This would reduce the amount of time cars spend taking up space in parking lots, and would likely reduce individual repair and insurance costs.

Even with these added benefits, though, only 25% of surveyed Americans trust autonomous vehicles, according to the Huffington Post article, “How Safe Are Self-Driving Cars?”

The lack of faith in self-driving cars is generally unfounded, though. Waymo, previously known as Google’s Self Driving Car program, is a prime example of how safe autonomous vehicles really are.

“Waymo has logged over two million miles on U.S. streets and has only had fault in one accident, making its cars by far the lowest at-fault rate of any driver class on the road – about 10 times lower than our safest demographic of human drivers (60-69 year-olds) and 40 times lower than new drivers,” The Huffington Post article explains. “Not to mention the obvious benefits gained from eliminating drunk drivers.”

The overall safety of these vehicles could also impact our highway speeds. With cars that drive autonomously and can communicate to other vehicles around them, highway speeds can practically double, since accidents aren’t likely to occur. Additionally, traffic congestion could be improved by designating a fast lane to self-driving cars, with speeds around 120 mph, according to this ReadWrite article.

So, whether you trust self-driving cars or not, they’re inevitably going to become a huge part of the way we travel, with the first autonomous cars slated to be available for purchase as soon as 2020.