Georgia Injury Law Blog
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is reporting on close to 400 auto accidents involving cars equipped with driver assistance technologies.
Driver assistance technology is often touted as the way forward for motorist safety, and collecting data on any crashes involving these self-driving cars can be a means to help identify and prevent the kind of car accidents that result in serious injuries and wrongful deaths. As we move towards a world in which most vehicles on the road will be driverless or autonomous cars, it is important to track and identify data about auto accidents involving these cars.
In the first large -scale report of its kind released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the agency has confirmed that it has received data on close to 400 auto accidents involving driver assistance. A total of 392 car accidents involving self-driving cars have been reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Out of these, 273 involved Tesla’s Autopilot feature. Tesla was by far the most featured car in the accident data, but these car crashes also included vehicles with driver assistance technology from other automakers, including Honda, Toyota, BMW and General Motors. Honda cars were involved in 90 of the accidents, while Subaru vehicles were involved in approximately ten of the accidents that were reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that it will continue to collect data on these accidents and analyze it. It does seem, however, that the data will raise more questions. For example, while the data shows that Tesla cars are involved in the most number of auto accidents involving self-driving cars, the data needs to be seen in the context of the total number of Tesla vehicles on the road today.
As self-driving cars become more popular and the conversation about their safety becomes more mainstream, some experts are calling for self-driving cars to be equipped with black box recorders or data recorders just like the devices that are found on airplanes. Every commercial plane comes with a black box recorder that contains all important information on the airplane as well as conversations between pilots. This device is often the first thing to be searched for after a plane crash, and can provide extremely valuable data about the minutes before the accident, paving the way for a better understanding of the cause of the crash. A similar such recorder in a self-driving car could provide valuable information about the minutes leading up to the car accident, leading to a better understanding of the kind of decisions that the system made causing the accident. Unlike a human driven car, a self -driving car makes decisions based on a pre-programmed set of instructions that take a number of variables into account before executing an action. A black box recorder would provide more details about the pre-programmed actions leading to the car accident, in order to help understand the reasons for the crash.
The Atlanta car crash attorneys at Katz Personal Injury Lawyers are dedicated to the representation of persons injured in car accidents in the metro Atlanta region and across Georgia. If you or a loved one have suffered injuries in a car accident, talk to a lawyer at our firm and determine if you have legal options to a claim for damages. You may be eligible for compensation that includes medical expenses, lost income and other types of damages. Talk to an attorney at our firm and discuss your case.