Articles Advantages and Disadvantages of Driverless Cars

61% of people say they wouldn't ride in a self-driving car... and only 21% said 
they'd be willing to ride in one. 
— According to a survey by the Brookings Institution 
According to data from the 
University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute's 
report
, which compared all the available data on all collisions of self-driving cars with 
statistics involving human-driven ones, driverless vehicles get into more crashes, but 
those crashes are less serious than those caused by conventional vehicles. Below are 
some key findings. 

Driverless vehicles had more crashes
: 9.1 crashes per million miles driven 
(compared with 4.1 crashes per million miles for human-driven ones). 

Driverless cars had a higher rate of injury, but those injuries were not as dire as 
those incurred in conventional vehicles
: Driverless cars had 0.36 injuries per crash 
(compared with 0.25 for conventional vehicles). However, these injuries were minor 
compared with those sustained in conventional vehicle crashes. 

However, the 
driverless vehicles were NOT responsible for any of the crashes
. 

In the incidents they looked at, 
driverless cars also never hit bicyclists or 
pedestrians, 
something that human-driven vehicles often did. 
Over 80% of car crashes in the US are caused by driver error. 
Are Driverless Cars Better for the Environment?
 
Today, transportation is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse-gas emissions 
and pollution. There's a chance that driverless cars could help. 

Many autonomous vehicles are being designed to be entirely electric, so they'd save on 
fossil fuels and reduce emissions and pollution. 

If we all used taxis, then we would be sharing those vehicles and we'd need fewer cars, 
collectively. We'd need fewer cars and we'd prevent the environmental cost of 
manufacturing more cars. 

Many of these vehicles are built for more efficient fuel usage, and they can be 
programmed to take the most fuel-efficient routes and can be programmed to operate at 
maximum efficiency all the time. 

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