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96 people die every day in the US alone driving cars. That’s 35,000 a year.

2.3 million people every year are injured every year in the US alone driving cars.

To not do everything possible to stop us from driving our own vehicles if a safer way is possible does not make sense st all.

I think it’s easy to say at least 100,000 people die each year driving cars worldwide.

 

I want to start by saying again that I agree that we should continually strive to make automobile travel safer.
And I hope to get to enjoy riding in my own self-driving car before I die if possible. I get no enjoyment from driving. I'd be happy to get into the car and tell it to take me to work or take me home from the bar or take me to the beach.

But driving today is relatively safe when one considered the magnitude of automobile travel. The total number of vehicle minutes logged daily as driver or passenger in this country and around the world is astronomical.
I don't want 35k people to die in car crashes. I'm not saying its acceptable. I'm just saying that when put in context it is a relatively safe activity.

It remains, also, relatively new technology. You're talking about five or six generations, fewer since the majority of American households have had a car.

It is an inherently dangerous activity, and we'll never get to zero crashes.
And there will be deaths and injuries along the way for self-driving tech.
But I won't mind not driving.

And some day, as an old man, I will kneel in obeiscance to our robot overlords.

 

It’s the number 1 killer of people under 30.

It will be looked upon as crazy in 100 years.

 

Perhaps it will be looked at as crazy in 100 years. I'm not sure.
People now have a hard time considering it rationally; I don't know if people 100 years from now will have that capacity.

How many people younger than 30 should die per year and what is you're preferred cause of death?

 

100 years!?! Hell, most everything we do now will be seen as crazy a century from now. Provided an apocalyptic event doesn't make our heirs look back at 2018 as the good ole' days.

That said, if the autonomous car breakthrough happened today and self-driving cars became the norm in the 2020 models, I'd still be driving myself. I'm sure the self-drivers will be fine for getting from point A to point B. I'd love one for our annual drive to Gulf Shores, for example. But how will they handle "Hey, let's go for a drive with the windows down and stereo up to enjoy this spring weather?" How will they work when I want to go driving around my family's property in the mountains? Will I need to get Google Maps up to plot all the Jeep trails we've cut?

 

This is speculative on my part but I feel that the decline in traffic deaths in urban areas is due to smart traffic signals, specifically the prevalence of left turn arrow cycles.

 

Two other of many contributing factors: Improvements in tires (I remember hearing about tires blowing out on the highway a lot in the 1970s and never do now) and a reduction in drunk driving due in large part to MADD and its efforts in the early 1980s to to strengthen penalties for drunk driving and the federal government's 1984 law that forced the states to increase minimum drinking ages.

Wikipedia's "Motor Vehicle Fatality Rate in U.S. by Year" article has a table that shows deaths per mile driven decreasing steadily and rapidly from the start of the data series in 1921 until about 2011 and ticking up in 2015 & 2016. There were 38,000+ deaths in 1941 and 37,000+ in 2016 even though we drove almost 10 times as many miles in the latter year. The absolute peak in deaths was 51,000+ in 1979 and 1980.

 

Brakes, airbags, increased seatbelt use, better engineering of cars to be less dangerous in crashes I bet are all more important than traffic signals. Besides, they probably aren't relatively a lot of deaths in urban environments because of reduced speed.

 

Correct. The vehicles themselves are FAR safer than they have ever been.