Jersey Shore Personal Injury and Employment Specialists

One big obstacle to self-driving cars is consumer mistrust

On Behalf of | Jun 22, 2017 | Car Accidents |

Anyone who has been in an accident in Monmouth County knows how scary and stressful it can be. Even those who escape serious injury or death may still face a long road to recovery. The statistics surrounding the prevalence of deadly accidents are harrowing. According to Bloomberg, motor vehicle crashes were responsible for 40,200 deaths in 2016. Human error is reportedly a factor in 94 percent of accidents involving fatalities.

That is why many are looking to self-driving cars to greatly reduce the number of deadly accidents. While car manufacturers continue to work on improving autonomous driving technology, one thing that may be holding self-driving cars back is the fact that many people simply do not trust them. In fact, apprehension about being a passenger in an autonomous people was reported by 75 percent of people. This is true across age groups, including among those people who grew up using technology like broadband internet and smartphones.

One suggested reason for this fear is that most people know from experience that electronics and networks can be unreliable. There is a lot more at stake when in a car moving at 65 miles per hour compared to an email server going down or a call being dropped.

Mistrust may have also increased after a highly publicized crash of a self-driving Tesla vehicle in May 2016. According to Slate, the vehicle crashed into the side of a tractor-trailer at 74 miles per hour. After an investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that Tesla was not at fault for the accident and that the man who was killed ignored seven visual warnings. He also reportedly only had his hands on the steering wheel for 25 seconds of his 37-minute trip. This shows that while self-driving cars will likely become commonplace in the near future, they may not completely take human error out of the equation.