More than 40,000 people were killed on American roads in 2023 alone — a toll equivalent to a regional passenger-filled airplane crashing nearly every day for a year. Since the automobile was invented, more than four million people have died in traffic crashes in this country. These tragedies are not inevitable; they are the result of a transportation system that engineers have designed, and politicians have regulated, to encourage lethal speeds.
That history makes the emergence of autonomous vehicles a historical crossroads. The decisions made today about regulating AVs will determine whether this new technology helps end this crisis, or simply repeats it.
Early data suggests large safety gains are possible. Based on millions of AV miles driven, Waymo claims performance roughly eight to 12 times safer than human drivers. These datasets are still limited and require additional independent verification, but they point to something important: AVs have real safety potential.
But the central question for policy makers is not whether AVs can be dramatically safer than those driven by flawed humans. The questions we must ask are: what is sufficiently safe, and who decides?
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