Motor vehicle deaths are rising sharply; are self driving cars the answer? 

Your chances of dying or being seriously injured in a car crash have risen 14 percent in the last two years. That is a shocking increase—higher than in any year since 2005. It is also a major reversal of a long downward trend in death rates that began fifty years ago.

About 40,000 people, (up from 33,000 people the year before) died on the highways in 2016. They were drivers, passengers, pedestrians or bicyclists; often our friends or relatives. Serious injuries also rose (as estimated by the National Safety Council) at about the same rate in 2016, to a stunning 4.6 million people in emergency rooms or doctor’s offices. These are dangerous numbers for all of us who are ever on or near the roads. If you prefer to think in economic terms, the total cost to the economy in 2016 was about $432 billion, in medical bills, lost work time, employer expenses and property damage. 

{mosads}What is happening in our country? 

The answer is not that there are more cars on the roads, although that is true as well. We know this because the rate of deaths first declined from 5 people per 100 million miles traveled in 1966 to 1 person per 100 million miles, at its lowest point in 2014. That is an 80 percent drop. The death rate declined sharply for a number of reasons. Chief among them was the action Congress took in 1966 in passing the National Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Under the new law, the Department of Transportation issued literally dozens of federal motor vehicle safety standards. They helped push the death and injury rates down for almost 50 years. Safety standards were issued for car lights, brakes, tires, roofs, air bags and seat belts, the latter were then voluntary and barely usable.

Rarely did the car industry move forward with safety standards without the government first developing the risk data and proposing the standard. The manufacturers sold horsepower and style mostly. It is hard for one company to move forward on safety alone if its competitors don’t add the same standard and incur the same costs.

For decades the U.S. led the world in low death and injury rates on our roads. We are now behind many Western nations like the England, Sweden, Germany, Canada and France.

The causes of the deadly increase in death and injury rates are not fully clear but among the primary causes are surely drunk driving, increased numbers of younger often more aggressive drivers and distracted driving. A major study of distracted driving by the University of Utah, for the American Automobile Association found that dashboards and steering wheels are often crammed with new technology such as social media, entertainment and texting and email access, causing drivers to take their eyes of the road for dangerously long periods of time. Some vehicles were found to have as many as 50 buttons and applications on steering wheels and dashboards. Drivers who do look away, for as few as four seconds greatly increase their chances of causing a crash.

The government is now largely inactive on the dangers of such distracting equipment. Once (in 2012) it suggested voluntary, but unenforceable guidelines to reduce distraction. Many companies chose not to comply. Cell phone use or texting while driving could also be blocked by law, or the number of distractions limited, but neither the current or previous administrations, nor Congress has taken any action. In addition, graduated licensing for young drivers and ignition interlocks to prevent inebriated driving could be mandated by the states and federal government. 

Many producers and others suggest that automated or driverless cars could be a means of reversing the threatening upward death and injury trends. History tells us this would be a risky gamble now. Automated cars, controlled by computers, are in their development stage. There are no federal or state standards for the testing, materials or performance of such robot cars. The thought that without safety regulation by federal and state governments, these revolutionary motor vehicles can be built, tested and driven safely on our roads appears, at this time, farfetched and risky.

Almost every major safety standard now on vehicles was the result of a federal mandate and based on uniform, reasonable performance and test standards. Leaving the development of driverless cars to unregulated competition, the direction the current administration and Congress appear to be headed, could make us all human guinea pigs.

Automated cars might help some day, if they are built and tested to reasonable safety rules set with public and private input and independently evaluated. As of now we have no public standards or test methods for automated cars. They can be tested on your street and you might never know it. When it comes to our dangerous rising death and injury rates on the roads and highways, we need a better national answer than government inaction, or unregulated robot cars.

Our lives and our children’s lives are at stake.

Michael R. Lemov is the author of “Car Safety Wars: 100 Years of Technology, Politics and Death” published by Roman and Littlefield and Fairleigh Dickenson Press in 2015 and former counsel to the House Commerce Committee.