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The fatalities with AVs would most likely not be distributed in the same way as the fatalities with human drivers: Most fatalities, when humans are driving, happen because of speeding (ex: 45 mph in a 25mph zone), drunk driving, fatigue/distraction, etc. Most fatalities, with AV, will come configurations where you cannot beat the physics and stop, even with superhuman reflexes. For me, this means situations with higher speeds. The system will have less time to compute everything, and if there is an impact, the risk for fatalities is far higher: https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_... At slower speeds, you can build a system with a defensive driving style that mostly eliminates by design the configuration where you could be the cause for a fatality. As a manufacturer of AV, you would probably want to start deploying your system where it is the least likely to fail / cause deaths. Also, as you said (and it is probably true), most fatalities happen off highways despite the disproportionate number of miles, which means human driver are actually pretty good with highway safety, making it harder for an AV to be better than a human. |