In Australia alone we see more than one thousand people killed in road traffic accidents each year, and over thirty-five thousand incidences of serious injury requiring hospitalisation (***). This means that for every hundred-thousand people, about six will die in a traffic accident, with approximately half of all these being Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs); that is, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists (***). To put this into perspective, if we take the student population of Macquarie University, we could expect around three Macquarie students to die in traffic accidents each year. Strikingly, it is widely held that approximately ninety percent of all traffic accidents are the result of human error. Whether that be via the operation of a …show more content…
Here in Australia, many states are already beginning to trial autonomous vehicle technology. In Western Australian and New South Wales, for instance, early phase trials of self-driving buses are currently being conducted. So, regardless of whether or not Google's aim is a little optimistic, it is just a matter of time before self-driving cars are ready to be unleashed on the public at large. The most notable impact that self-driving cars are set to have is their ability to eliminate or greatly reduce traffic accidents. Unlike human drivers, who are the cause of the majority of traffic accidents, self-driving cars will not get drunk, drive tired, suffer an emotional outburst and drive aggressively, or get distracted responding to a text message. Instead, self-driving cars will follow the rules of the road to the letter, and are likely to outperform humans in many of the tasks involved in operating a vehicle, and as such, promise to significantly improve road safety, traffic mortality, and reduce pressure on a number of public resources, amongst other