Will driverless cars be safer than current vehicles?

Journey Makers: Navigating the Future of Mobility

There were 1,770 reported road deaths in the UK from 2017-18, with more than 26-and-a-half thousand people killed or seriously injured. Debates about how the introduction of driverless vehicles might impact these statistics can be tensely fought affairs. For many people, safety is the most important consideration to be made about a driverless future. According to Deloitte’s 2018 UK Automotive Consumer Study, 49 per cent of UK consumers are concerned about the safety of self-driving vehicles. Interestingly, however, that percentage is falling: in 2017, the same study found that 73% of people had concerns about the safety of self-driving vehicles. Any conversation about connected and autonomous vehicles will contain some mention of safety. Indeed, it’s already come up countless times on this podcast series. But are traditional death and injury reports the only way to measure the safety of our vehicles? Isn’t safety also about how pedestrians and drivers feel too? We’ve all taken journeys that didn’t feel safe, even if they didn’t end in an accident. How much of this issue is related to CAV technology itself, and will it ever be possible to eliminate human error? Fail-safes are one thing, but can we ensure that they are used only in the most extreme circumstances? How can we test to ensure our roads – and passengers – are ready? There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a huge and complex issue… So let’s dive in, shall we? https://smartmobility.london