Why it’s time for a self-driving car reality check

It’s easy to develop a sense that fully autonomous cars are about to enter every major highway in the U.S. Hardly a day goes by without an announcement from Ford, Uber or Google detailing their plans for technology-powered cars. And a few weeks ago, John Zimmer, the founder of Lyft, unveiled his company’s 10-year roadmap predicting a majority of Lyft rides would be driverless in 5 years. The plan went further to boldly state that private car ownership will “all but end” in major American cities by 2025.

Sure, the technology exists, that is why you see autonomous cars driving around the Google campus or newly-minted driverless Uber’s hanging a Pittsburgh left. However, most of the companies that have announced their driverless car plans don’t actually have the hardware needed to produce the product. On top of that, engineers readily admit that they still need to study human driving patterns and map changes in road infrastructure.

For far too long, there were no federal guidelines for autonomous vehicles and local governments were left to address the issue on their own. The problem? They were coming up with very different proposals and solutions. What Chicago proposed was different from New York which was different than Minneapolis. Seeing this was about to be one big regulatory mess, the Obama administration finally released their long awaited federal guidelines on autonomous vehicles.

While there is no doubt that self-driving cars will be safer and if all cars suddenly became autonomous, this would  save tens of thousands of lives a year. That said, there are some important moral questions to consider. For example, what if a car has to choose between hitting a person or another vehicle? Or, if you have to choose between hitting a child and an elderly person, which one do you choose? Are we comfortable with a machine making choices about life and death? Should the car value of safety of its passengers over pedestrians? And who decides these questions?

The future of transportation in exciting. In just a few short years, we have seen more changes than over the last century. Lyft is a big part of that story. And though I admire Lyft enormously and think they have gotten a lot right, John’s predictions on self-driving cars are simply wrong and his timeline is unrealistic. I believe we are decades – not years – away from fully automated, self-driving cars being the status quo. That said, I am very excited for that day to come.

George Arison is the Founder and CEO of Shift, a peer-to-peer marketplace revolutionizing the $750 billion used car industry.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.