Driver error is the number one cause of automobile crashes so what would happen if you removed humans from the equation? According to independent research by the Eno Center for Transportation, vehicle-related injuries would drop by 90 percent and save the US economy roughly $450 billion each year.
The group discovered that 40 percent of fatal crashes in the US involved alcohol, drugs, fatigue or distraction – all metrics that wouldn’t affect an autonomous vehicle. Even in cases where a vehicle is primarily responsible for an accident, human elements like not paying attention and speeding often contributed to the occurrence of crashes and / or the severity of injuries.
The adoption rate of self-driving vehicles among consumers will of course play a big role in how many accidents can be avoided and how much money the economy could save. For example, if one in every 10 car was replaced with an autonomous vehicle, it would reduce crashes and subsequent injuries by roughly half and save around $25 billion each year.
Daily Archives: October 25, 2013
In Almost Every European Country, Bikes Are Outselling New Cars
We know that Europeans love their bicycles — think Amsterdam or Paris. Denmark even has highways specifically for cyclists.
Indeed, earlier this month, NPR’s Lauren Frayer reported that Spain, which has long had a love affair with cars, is embracing the bicycle: For the first time on record, Lauren noted, bicycles outsold cars in the country.
But it’s becoming a Continent-wide phenomenon. More bikes were sold in Italy than cars — for the first time since World War II.
This prompted us to look at the figures across the 27 member states of the European Union for both cars and bicycles. New-car registrations for Cyprus and Malta weren’t available, so we took them out of the comparison.
Empire of digital chip meets nemesis: the law of diminishing political returns
Every year I return from a visit to California dazed at cyberia’s next expansion in reach. After machines that can track and record our every move will come sensors that can identify our faces and gather, catalogue and distribute such data worldwide.
After tools that can read messages come ones that can hear our talk and predict our needs, converse with us and deliver us products, services, cures, contentments. There is no escape from this. Everyone has a footprint, including those who think they do not.
Updating Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the digital age, Dave Eggers, in his novel The Circle, satirises Silicon Valley’s “completion of the singularity”.
Each person becomes a global avatar, bugged and followed 24 hours a day. All transactions, all experiences are public. A virtual realm mirrors the physical one.