According to the World Health Organization approx 1 person dies from a car accident every 25 seconds around the world. Another way to say it, about 1.35 million people die from car accidents globally per year. It’s the eighth leading cause of death just behind diabetes and cancer. Even more startling, it’s the only non disease cause of death in the leading top 10 global causes of death. Multiple millions of people have died from automobile accidents since the creation of the first car in the 1800’s. Another interesting World Health Organization statistic is that 73 -74% of current automobile fatalities are men and boys. Between 20 – 50 million suffer non-fatal injuries from car accidents per year depending on the year.

With statistics like these, it’s not surprising that the auto industry is rapidly working towards a world where we have autonomous vehicles (AI) driving instead of humans. So many people say they are scared of a machine driving, but based on the statistics, we should all be scared of humans continuing to drive. According to the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles (where Silicon Valley is based) there are 62 companies that hold Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permits as of January 2019. If you take a look at the list, it’s not who has a permit but more like what company does not have a permit. The list includes international companies as well, companies like Baidu and Pony.AI. Most of the cars are still using safety drivers while testing the vehicles, but not all of them.

With so many companies working towards an autonomous future, where are we at now and who is leading the way? Well, that goes to who has the most data. Since autonomous vehicles are based on AI and AI learns based on data, then it stands to reason that the cars that have driven the most autonomous miles are in the lead. According to a recent article from The Verge the honors would go to Tesla and Waymo. As of Nov 2018, Electrak reported that Tesla has driven 1 billion miles with Autopilot activated. Tesla released a Q4 vehicle safety report that clearly outlines that accidents are significantly reduced when Autopilot is engaged. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet’s Google has already deployed self driving autonomous taxis, Waymo One, in two US cities, Phoenix and Chandler Arizona. Waymo reports here that they’ve driven over 10 million miles on public roads and over 7 billion miles in simulations.

By the looks of it, self driving cars are here, and by the end of 2019 beginning of 2020 fully autonomous AV’s very well may be a reality in every city and not just test cities. So what are the down falls? Privacy is a major downfall. Autonomous vehicles operate on data and would be collecting all of your data every single time you ride in an autonomous car. But then again your phone is already doing that and so is your car if you have a service like On-Star. Taxi drivers and truck drivers will be displaced and have to find new career paths. This happens with any type of innovation, but we’re talking about millions of jobs with this one. How about weather? Can an autonomous vehicle handle itself in heavy rain or in snow storms since it relies on sensors that may get wet or blocked? How about black ice that can’t even be detected by sensors? Can auto makers offer the ability to turn off auto pilot for people who want to go off roading on the weekends? Maybe now yes, but what about 20 years from now? Time will tell…