IEEE Spectrum February, 2016 - 50

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to improve safety. in fact, the manufacturer would have greater incentives than
with a human-driven vehicle, because
of publicity concerns. Correction of sys- Estimated number of lives autotemic problems could be implemented nomous driving technology can save
via a predictable mechanism, such as a each year in the United States alone
mandatory crash-review program with
government oversight, without excessive today's autonomous vehicles recognize
objects with a combination of object
risk to the manufacturer.
as the safety of autonomous vehicles tracking using distance and velocity (it
improves and as legal costs become doesn't really matter if an object cruising
more predictable, stricter safety stan- down the road is a car, a rolling boulder,
dards could be imposed to encourage or a flying saucer; a computer driver can
further progress. this scheme would avoid hitting it without knowing what
help encourage development of the tech- it is), and object recognition (it makes
nology without undermining marginal sense to slow down if a small child or a
incentives for safety. insurers have a cen- deer is near the curb, but zipping past a
tury of experience in predicting acci- fire hydrant is fine). this technology still
dent costs for human-driven cars. Courts has years of development ahead.
a more costly but potentially simpler
have a century's worth of benchmarks
on which to draw to ensure that a fair approach would be to make the infracomparison is made. Making it just as structure friendlier to autonomous vehieasy for the courts to judge cases involv- cles. these changes wouldn't eliminate
ing self-driving cars would shield man- all the challenges-a car would still have
ufacturers from excessive financial risk to "see" the child approaching that interwhile compensating accident victims section-but it would simplify much of the
no less than they are today. With such burden. radio frequency transmitters
predictability, it is likely that self-driving in traffic lights, for example, could tell a
car manufacturers would pay about the computer driver if a light is green or red
same for insurance per vehicle as an aver- more quickly and with greater accuracy
age human driver does. insurance costs than a machine vision system struggling
could even be lower because the self- with shadows and glare. these kinds of
driving car would qualify for all the "good changes will have to happen on national
levels, with international coordination if
driver" discounts.
implementation of any of these poli- possible, through both regulation and
cies in places like the United states and standardization of technology.
Canada will have to happen on a stateby-state or province-by-province basis, there's a reasoN to speed the rollout
as the rules of the road in these coun- of autonomous vehicles. By replacing
tries aren't set nationally; in europe and error-prone human drivers, autonomous
many other areas, however, it will evolve driving technology can potentially save
30,000 lives each year in the United states
country by country.
alone. it can annually prevent 5 million
accidents and 2 million injuries, conserve
UBLiC PoLiCy is holding back 7 billion liters of fuel, and save so many
self-driving cars in another way-it hundreds of billions of dollars in lost proinfluences the design of the roads ductivity and accident-related costs that
and the way they are governed the figures are beyond comprehension.
that's because computer drivers are
based on the needs of drivers that
"see." the rules require that we stop on in principle fundamentally safer drivred, yield when we see a triangle-shaped ers. they never text, do their makeup,
sign, and obey metering lights at free- or fall asleep at the wheel. (human error,
way entrances. that's easy and intuitive in contrast, causes roughly 93 percent
for humans, not so easy for machines. of crashes.) robo-drivers can have

FEB 2016

north amErican

SPEctrUm.iEEE.orG

http://www.dot.ca.gov/newtech/researchreports/reports/2009/prr-2009-28_liability_reg_&_auto_vehicle_final_report_2009.pdf http://www.dot.ca.gov/newtech/researchreports/reports/2009/prr-2009-28_liability_reg_&_auto_vehicle_final_report_2009.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-0815.pdf http://www.ieee.org/proceedings-subscribe http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/ http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/human-error-cause-vehicle-crashes http://www.ieee.org/ http://SPEctrUm.iEEE.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2016