The department under the Obama administration also set a goal to eliminate all traffic fatalities within 30 years, aided by the deployment of self-driving cars. Cities including Chicago and Boston have made similar pledges, vowing to eliminate traffic fatalities and severe injuries within certain time frames. As auto makers introduce crash-avoidance technologies such as automatic braking and blind-spot detection into new cars, traffic fatalities and injuries in theory should be decreasing. “There will never be zero fatalities,” Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on a conference call in September. So even after self-driving technology is fully developed, mass adoption of autonomous vehicles still could be a long way off.

Source: Wall Street Journal June 23, 2017 17:26 UTC