Disruptive driving
Two Carolina researchers are raising some important questions about the impacts — both positive and negative — that autonomous vehicles will have on our daily lives and public health.
More than 30,000 Americans die in car accidents every year — 94 percent of those fatalities are caused by human error. Around the world, approximately 1.2 million people lose their lives in car crashes each year.
While organizations like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the World Health Organization calculate these grim statistics annually, they don’t account for all car accidents.
“Keep in mind those are just fatalities,” says Travis Crayton, a master’s student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “That number doesn’t account for all the hardship and healthcare costs included in crashes where people don’t die.”
What if we could eliminate all car accidents caused by human error?
That is one of the main arguments made by proponents of autonomous vehicles — safety. Our country, and the world, is on the cusp of a revolution in transportation technology and infrastructure. While industries are focused on perfecting the technology, and consumers are skeptical about trusting it, researchers face a blank page — there is no pre-existing data.
But that didn’t stop Crayton from pursuing his question. He went to Benjamin Mason Meier in the Department of Public Policy.
“He was interested in what automated cars would mean for the shape of our cities in the future, and I was interested in what this would mean for public health,” Meier said. “There were no articles out there really thinking about the health impacts.”
While car manufacturers and tech companies around the world work to make autonomous vehicles a reality, the two UNC researchers are raising some important questions about the impacts — both positive and negative — that this massive change will have on our daily lives and public health.
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