I’ve been following the stories of self-driving cars. As a personal injury lawyer who sees the devastation of car wrecks, I’m interested in technology that can help my clients be more safe. On the other hand, knowing all the calculations that go into safe driving — watching for other cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, and other risks — I’ve wondered how technology would be able to handle all of those risks.
Well, it looks like we might still have a ways to go. Google and other companies have been testing nearly 50 self-driving cars around California. Reports earlier this week confirmed that, since September, the self-driving cars had been involved in four accidents. While that might not sound like a lot, if four out of every 50 cars on the roads were involved in wrecks during that same period, it would be catastrophic.
The companies aren’t releasing many details of the wrecks, but reports indicate that two of the wrecks occurred while the cars were in self-driving mode and two occurred while the drivers controlled the cars.
We’ll see how this technology develops going forward.
