400 autonomous car accidents in the US in the last year
As far as I know, the North American Administration is the only one that consolidates the data of the accidents produced between the autonomous cars that circulate in the country. Which is good, important and necessary. If other countries did the same, the data could be consolidated and more detailed information could be obtained.
The information that I am going to comment on has been released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ), and indicates that in the last year in the USA there were 400 accidents involving cars that worked with the autonomous driving system, and 5 people died.
Of those, 273 were Tesla using Autopilot. But keep in mind that there are more than 800,000 Tesla cars on the road in the US.
The next group was Honda, with 90 car accidents using driver assistance systems. But according to Honda there are more than 6 million cars with these systems in the US.
Photo of Xataka
All types of more or less autonomous cars have had some kind of accident. Waymo (part of Alphabet) which has a fleet of more than 700 self-driving taxis in various cities, reported 32 accidents. Although they assured that they occurred at low speeds, and only in two cases were the car’s airbags activated.
Similar figures, but smaller, contributed other companies such as Cruise, etc ….
If we take into account that in the USA around 10,000 people die each year due to car accidents, the consequences of accidents involving autonomous cars are much less. They are on another level.
This seems to clearly indicate that autonomous driving aid systems increase the safety of cars and the people who travel in them.
Which is not an obstacle to recognize that with de exception of Waymo and Cruise that offer autonomous taxis with a level 4 of autonomous driving, the others are at levels 2 and 3. Tesla has level 2. And levels below 4 require the driver’s attention to take the wheel if necessary.
It will be many years before autonomous driving on the road is reached, but in the meantime new driving aids will continue to appear, making driving safer and more comfortable every day.
