Self-Driving Cars Are Coming, but Are We Ready?
September 26, 2020
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk just announced to much fanfare that his company will start testing fully self-driving cars “in a month or so” and that low-cost models will become available “about three years from now,” claiming their primary benefit will be greater safety over conventional cars. But analysts writing in Issues have concerns, noting that there is no general agreement on what “safe” means or how it should be measured, and that “selling” self-driving cars using a safety argument steers discussions of traffic safety away from useful alternative approaches.