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Self-Driving Cars May Ultimately be Safer than Human Drivers. But After a Pedestrian’s Death, Will the Public Buy It?
As long as robot cars roam public streets and highways, they will occasionally kill people. That’s the ugly truth that no on in the driver-less vehicle industry can deny.
Will those robot cars kill people at significantly lower rates than drunk, stoned, tired, or distracted human drivers do now? Automakers, technology companies, politicians, and regulators are betting they will, as driver-less vehicles are rolling out faster than almost anyone expected as recently as a year ago.