driverless cars and the end of death

In my course in introductory sociology, I have a module on health. One lecture describes the leading causes death, across age groups and across time periods. In modern times, one of the leading causes of death is “unintentional injury.” What does that mean? Roughly speaking, the three major categories of unintentional injury death are, in order, falling, auto accidents, and accidental poisoning.

The interesting thing is that these are all types of death that relate to economic development: cars, chemical, tall buildings, stairs and so forth. The other side is that economic development can also help us out. For example, in about one generation, driverless cars will be widespread. The implication is that drunk driving will be eliminated over night and accidents relating to drifting driver attention will disappear overnight. Truck accidents should also disappear. My hypothesis is that computer driven cars will probably be better than most people when they drive in the rain or snow. They might even automatically shut down if conditions are bad enough.

Bottom line: Economic development has unintended consequences. Sometimes they are bad, such as auto related deaths. But development can introduce solutions. The driverless car will be one such example.

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