Self Driving Vehicles 2017 Safety Statistics Proposition Betting Odds
–Despite plenty of Luddite media scare stories autonomous cars are safer than traditional vehicles.
–The status quo serving analog era media is leading the ‘crusade’ against autonomous cars just as they’ve done with most new technologies.
–21 million autonomous cars will be sold within the next 15 years.
Autonomous cars–better known to the mainstream as ‘self driving cars’–may seem the stuff of science fiction but they’re close to becoming reality. In fact, they’d likely already be available for consumer use were it not for governments at various levels running regulatory interference for the legacy internal combustion vehicle industries and the ancillary ones that benefit from the status quo. Not to mention the fact that useless fear mongering bureaucracies like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would quickly be out of work once autonomous vehicles cause the accident and fatality rate to plummet on the nation’s streets and freeways.
The onslaught by non-profit groups, lobbyists and bureaucrats against the e-cig industry is instructive. For years, the narrative sold by the opportunistic anti-tobacco scolds was that nothing was worse than cigarette smoking and that nothing more important than getting people to stop. Unfortunately for these parasites they were *too* successful with their efforts–to the point that smoking rates have dropped dramatically meaning they’d all need to get real jobs and that the anti-tobacco gravy train would be drying up. Fortunately, they found a new target to demonize–e-cigarettes and ‘vaping’. Never mind the fact that their hysteria against e-cigs is downright hypocritical since at its essence they’re opposing a device that has been found to be extremely effective in helping people quit smoking cigarettes. Lest we forget, it wasn’t that long ago that cigarette smoking was the worst thing ever and it was a veritable health emergency that people stop. Now? Not so much when there’s money to be made and regulatory power to be gained. Never mind the fact that there’s no actual smoking–there’s a resemblance to smoking and that’s enough for these flim flam artists posing as ‘health advocates’.
A NEW TARGET FOR NON-PROFIT AND REGULATORY PARASITES
It’s going to be the same deal with autonomous cars. The ‘usual suspects’ that have been trying to find new enemies as accident rates decline will grab hold to this ‘opportunity’ like fleas on a mangy dog. They’ve had some success in vilifying texting and driving–a double dip for them since they can simultaneously indict young people *and* technology. The problem is that as cellphones, texting and other electronic communications becomes ubiquitous among generations coming up they’re going to have a tough time selling their hokum. For the record, there’s never been any serious data to indicate a strong causal relationship between texting and fatal accidents. There’s just a bunch of anecdotal scare tactics masquerading as ‘research’. What there is is plenty of evidence that any type of *distracted driving* is a bad thing and this makes complete sense. As far as texting, it takes us back to ‘square one’. The research that has been done on ‘distracted driving’ reveals that cellphones–texting and otherwise–make up just 1.5% of all distracted driving accidents. You’ll figure out what is going on here when you take a look at what *is* responsible for ‘distracted driving’:
So what else causes distracted driving? The CAA research concludes that the majority of distractions are *outside* the car (29.9%). The biggest in-car distractions are the radio/CD player (11.4%) and ‘other vehicle occupants’ (10.9%). Other distractions include ‘something moving in the car’, ‘using another object or device’, ‘eating/drinking’, ‘adjusting climate control’. They also conclude that children are ‘four times more distracting than adults’ as passengers with infants being ‘eight times as distracting’ but otherwise doesn’t address the distraction caused by dealing with children while driving. Other studies came up with more distractions that the CAA missed including singing, applying make up, shaving, smoking, and sexual activity.
If you’re not connecting the dots we’ll turn to some legit experts on tech based disruption to do it for you:
If distracted driving is so bad why single out cellphones, texting and GPS? Why not pass laws that criminalize ‘distracted driving’ and cover everything? Why no media hysteria about singing in the car, eating fast food or driving with children? An immediate answer is that there are huge political downsides of attacking driving with kids (‘anti-family’), fast food (‘elitist’) or applying makeup (‘sexist’). Technology doesn’t present these problems, at least in the eyes of status quo institutions like politicians, regulators and mainstream media. In their world cellphones are only used by evil upper class white males and text messages only used by evil irresponsible teenagers. The roads were safe for decent people until greedy capitalists starting using cellphones and juvenile delinquents started text messaging and that’s when the body count started to mount (never mind that overall traffic deaths have declined while cellphone use has exploded).
A SOLUTION ON THE HORIZON HAS THE SAFETY GRAVY TRAIN RUNNING SCARED
Lo and behold technology has dropped the perfect solution into the lap of these ersatz ‘safety advocates’ and self proclaimed ‘traffic experts’–the autonomous car. The passenger can do whatever he wants during the trip because the car doesn’t get ‘distracted’. If the anti-technology ‘safety advocates were really in the business of solving a problem they’d be overjoyed. Guess what–they’re not. They haven’t quite figured out their course of attack but they’re clearly planning one. They’re already laying the foundation of ‘questioning the veracity of accident data‘ and getting their supplicants in big government hellholes like San Francisco to play along. So far more technologically progressive states have welcomed autonomous vehicles on their roads. It may end up like the commercial drone industry which has largely been ‘gifted’ to Europe due to the Federal Aviation Administration’s power grab. Nothing like letting a bureaucracy send a multi-billion high tech industry overseas.
Fortunately, more companies are focused on autonomous vehicles both in the United States and internationally. With a greater emphasis on the nascent technology we thought it a perfect opportunity to give autonomous vehicles the SPORTS BETTING EXPERTS treatment and set some odds for how safety statistics will shake out in 2017:
SELF DRIVING CARS 2017 SAFETY STATISTICS BETTING ODDS
Number of US fatal accidents involving self driving cars through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Over 2.5: +150
Under 2.5: -170
Number of US fatal accidents involving self driving cars through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Zero: -150
1-2: +350
3-4: +450
5+: +250
Will any Uber branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +300
No: -450
Will any Waymo/Google/Alphabet branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +300
No: -450
Will any Lyft/General Motors branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +275
No: -400
Will any Tesla branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +500
No: -650
Will any BMW branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +600
No: -750
Will any Daimler Benz/Mercedes branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +600
No: -750
Will any Baidu branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +600
No: -750
Will any Honda branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +700
No: -900
Will any Nvidia/Audi branded self driving vehicle be involved in a US fatal accident through 12/31/2017 at 11:59 PM Eastern?
Yes: +1200
No: -1500
RULES: Number refers to the number of separate accident incidents and not the number of fatalities or number of vehicles involved. An accident must involve at least one self driving car to qualify.