Kevin Kiley: “What the data shows, very clearly, is that even at the current state of the art that is going to continue to improve…”

“What the data shows, very clearly, is that even at the current state of the art that is going to continue to improve, autonomous vehicles are overwhelmingly safer than human-operated vehicles by a factor of about 10 when it comes to the risk of injury or death. When you think about that, that means that being in an autonomous vehicle, in a self-driving car, is a much more effective safety intervention than wearing a seat belt, which, of course, you should continue to wear a seat belt as well. There was an article in The New York Times a couple of days ago from a doctor who actually likened this to a clinical trial, where you actually have to stop the trial because the drug performed so well and it becomes unethical to continue to give people the placebo and not give them access to the drug. We have 40,000 people who die in this country every year on our roads.”