But until then, according to the studies we have available so far, driverless cars are far less safe than regular cars. One out of every 12 in California got in accidents over the course of just six months. And a longer study of all accidents involving autonomous cars between 2012 and 2015, compared to those involving just regular ones in 2013, found that the former were five times more likely to get into crashes. Even when they controlled for the fact that people don't usually report minor dings or fender benders, the self-driving cars were still two times as dangerous.
And even though there are only a handful of them on the roads, they have already been responsible for one death. In May, a Tesla driver in Florida put his car in self-driving mode and popped a Harry Potter film in his portable DVD player. Then his car decided to make a simple lane change. Unfortunately, it couldn't detect the difference between a clear blue sky and the large white side of an 18-wheel truck, and bam, J.K. Rowling could add another innocent person to her kill list.
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Never forget.
If they are going to be perfect one day, why so dangerous now? Well ...