The main thing is the continued testing of self-driving cars in controlled environments (private roads). Then just continue to improve them, until they are safer than human drivers.
Actually, they have been focusing more on how 18 wheelers will be the safest at first because the highways have less traffic. I wouldn't think it would be safer if someone got hit by one! I am very interested in this topic!
Well, a lady pedestrian in Arizona was killed today by a driverless car owned by Uber. Uber has shut down all of its driverless fleet as a result. There will be ups and downs, of course, but it is inevitable that they take over in the decades ahead.
As sad as it is for that woman and her family, I still reckon they'll be safer in the long run. You see too many accidents that were preventable. On Friday I was heading out of town and joined a couple of other bikers hanging off the back of an ambulance making it's way through very slow motorway traffic. The amount of rapid acceleration followed by a sudden braking as drivers moved over or blocked it's path was incredible and eventually I dropped off and did regular lane splitting. Will emergency services be faster because self-driving vehicles make way more consistently? How many lives saved?
I'm ready for it! I think used under the right circumstances auto-pilot could at least help with approximately 1 out of 4 accidents being a distracted driver. Granted, the technology still has some work to be perfected, but hopefully it won't take another 30-50 years until it happens!
The concept is promising. I see that it could help to decrease the amount of accidents but technologies also can malfunction. Just like people, actually. Even my phone can't work perfectly all the time to say nothing of driverless cars. And yes, I can compare those 2 things, because both phone and cars are functioning due to programming. My idea is that maybe there will be less accidents caused by people. But who knows how many crashes will happen due to mechanism failures?