[Zigurd]

Even more than that, if cars don't crash, they don't have to be crashworthy. BMW's concept motorcycle concept makes that point: If autonomous vehicles mean that road crashes become very rare, as other rare as, say, accidental strangulation in bed, you won't need a helmet to ride. A vehicle could be an minimal as a motorcycle and still be much safer than an S-class Mercedes.

[massysett]

I doubt safety will ever get to the point where crash worthiness is not an issue. The Washington DC Metrorail system is an excellent example. It was built to be fully automated, with the operator being there only to close the doors at stations.

The systems have suffered many failures and crashes over the years, due mostly to poor maintenance and gross mismanagement.

Now the agency is under pressure from government regulators to retire old cars because they are not crash worthy. I find it alarming that we would talk about rail cars being crash worthy. Why not improve the system so cars don't crash? Nonetheless, new cars are much stronger and more crash worthy.

Since there are many more possible points of failure with autonomous cars (bad roads, non-autonomous cars being out there too, objects in the road, bad programming like that involved in the Tesla crash, etc) autonomous cars are going to have to be at least as crash worthy as Metro cars for the foreseeable future.

[aetherson]

Maybe. I'm not aware of much precedent for the idea that statistically safer X leads to fewer safety regs for X. Maybe you could draw a parallel with the over-the-counterization of various pharmaceuticals, but I'm not sure that's an analogy that would fill me with hope.

[Zigurd]

High speed rail relies on active safety. The carriages do not meet the crashworthiness standards of conventional rail.

[aetherson]

Interesting! I didn't know that.