Self-driving cars? Pah! How about just meeting basic safety standards first?

Safety. This single word is ostensibly one of the major driving forces behind the global push towards the autonomous car.

The self-driving vehicle, many proponents believe, has the potential to virtually eliminate fatal car crashes. How? Well, such vehicles would effectively render drivers obsolete, thus eradicating the sort of “human error” responsible for so many on-road incidents.

In an ideal world (from a safety standpoint, anyway), every single vehicle on a given road network would be of the autonomous variety, connected to both other cars and the relevant road infrastructure. Constant wireless communication between all elements would at best prevent the overwhelming majority of crashes and at worst mitigate the effects of the utterly unavoidable ones.

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