The case for driverless cars

If we truly valued human life, we’d let the machines take the wheel.

Artificial Intelligence will one day annihilate the human race, and so we might as well enjoy the perks while we can. Since moving to Arizona, I generally take driverless cars – here run by a company called Waymo – in preference to taxis. This of course opens me up to the accusation of misanthropy, and it’s true that I prefer to avoid small talk wherever possible. Robots make no such demands. Yet.

The initial experience is bewildering. For those of a superstitious nature, the sense of a ghost in the front seat is disquieting. Where one might anticipate the rattling of chains, there is instead the murmuring of bland pop music (which is mercifully simple to deactivate on the passenger screen). The ghost manoeuvres with the confidence and ease of a seasoned driver, but without the need for breaks or musings on the weather or the trouble with immigration.

I must confess that I held a prejudice against these machines. My expectations have largely been formed by that scene in Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger takes a ‘Johnny Cab’, helmed by an automaton with a creepily weary expression. When our hero refuses to pay the fare, the driverless car attempts to run him over, careening into a stone wall and bursting into flames.

Such drama is unlikely in a Waymo. The fleet comprises of repurposed Jaguars – which seems like a good idea since very few are buying them anymore – and has Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) technology that enables it to see over 300 metres away with a 360 degree field of vision, even in darkness and poor weather conditions. On the road, our ghost is omniscient.

And let’s face it, this is an advantage. In a review of the 45 most serious crashes involving a Waymo in recent months, almost all were determined to be the result of human error. In 24 crashes, the Waymo was stationary. If the company is to be believed, its cars are involved in crashes 80% less often than in cars driven by human creatures. As for the most severe collisions – those that result in serious injury or death – driverless cars are 91% less likely than humans to be responsible.

For the sake of balance, I should acknowledge that this week a Waymo killed a cat in San Francisco, stirring outrage in the national press. But cats are frisky beasts, and this one had apparently ‘darted under the vehicle as it was pulling away’. I mourn for the cat, but it will take more than a handful of felinophiles in the Bay area to stop the driverless revolution.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), approximately 90% to 94% of car accidents in the US are attributable to human error. Once humans are removed from the equation, road accidents will inevitably tumble. I am not one to be alarmed by statistics, but one has been clattering about in my brain ever since I read it. Apparently, each American citizen has a 1 in 95 chance of dying in a car accident during his or her lifetime. Compare this to a 1 in 44,499 chance of dying in a dog attack, or a 1 in 129,451 of dying in an earthquake. And although many people have a dread of flying, passenger deaths on planes are too rare to calculate. (The same goes for fatal maulings by cats.)

Of course, we all accept a degree of risk for the sake of convenience. Around 40,000 people die every year in car accidents in the US alone. Although many of us will be reluctant to admit it, we collectively accept this fatality rate to preserve our ability to reach our destinations faster. As early as 1946, George Orwell was pointing out that the best way to improve safety on the roads would be to reduce the speed limit to twelve miles an hour. He was right. Personally, I would be happy with this glacial existence if it meant that thousands of lives would be spared. To conclude otherwise would be to prove Orwell right, that ‘we value speed more highly than we value human life’.

But now we have a better solution than to emulate the snail’s lifestyle. If all cars were driverless, those 40,000 fatalities per year could be reduced to a few hundred. Of course, we would wish to factor in the human cost of unemployment: the depression, displacement, and potential rise in crime that might occur if all taxi drivers, haulers and chauffeurs were suddenly out of work. I would not wish this fate on anyone, but I’m not so sure that mass deaths on the road are a reasonable price to pay. There are other means of employment, after all. But there are no second chances at life.

As to the obvious truth that once it becomes sentient AI will destroy us, I can only say that driverless cars are unlikely to hasten this ineluctable fate. So let’s at least enjoy trouble-free roads until Armageddon comes.

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