While Google’s self-driving cars are being tested this month on public roadways,1 advocates of these vehicles—equipped with rooftop periscopes that look nothing like Herbie, the lovable VW beetle2—contend the cars will make highways safer and lower the nation’s energy costs. The benefits, they argue, include closer vehicle spacing, higher average speeds, efficient use of highways, fuel and fewer accidents, of course absent on board computer glitches.
Nevertheless, until these 21st-century Herbies blanket the highways, the nation will undoubtedly continue to face the annual toll of human consequences: an estimated 38,000 vehicle deaths, millions of other accident related injuries and property damage, and the inevitable courtroom contests concerning the admissibility of the automobile’s event data recorder (EDR), otherwise known as the “black box.”
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