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Highways Chief Says Driverless Cars Will Cause Deaths At First

A Former Highways Chief Has Said That Driverless Cars Will Cause Deaths At First

Practically every major car manufacturer now is looking at some form of an automatic or driverless car. Tesla, Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo to name but a few. With the technology being tested in somewhat limited areas, so far it has been largely successful. There has, however, already been a small number of fatalities involving the cars.

While these have been isolated, it clearly shows that the technology isn’t quite perfected yet.

In a report via the Telegraph, however, a former highways chief says that such accidents and deaths are going to be an unfortunate but unavoidable part of the technologies early days. Dr. Mark Rosekind, former US Highways Chief has said: “Unfortunately there will be crashes. People are going to get hurt and there will be some lives lost.”

It will get better!

Despite the rather negative overtures though, he does have hope for the future. With the technology being so new, accidents, unfortunately, are going to be inevitable. As such, his comments, while rather morbid, do actually make perfect sense.

It has taken us the best part of 50 years for us to get air flight on automation as safe as it now is. While it hopefully will not take as long with cars, cars do have a problem that most aircraft don’t. There is, after all, a lot more to hit on the ground that there is in the air.

He, therefore, feels as the technology grows, it will get safer. Potentially even to a level that will make the roads and driving safer than ever before. This report does, however, come on the same day that a driverless Tesla car struck a police car in America.

What do you think? Can driverless cars ever be truly safe? Would you trust one to drive you or would you be too nervous? – Let us know in the comments!

Autonomous driverless cars