Autonomous Vehicles - The Next Frontier

Introduction

According to the Centre for Automotive Research, the first commercially available, fully autonomous vehicles could arrive on dealership floors as early as 2019.¹ On the regulatory front, the United States precedes Canada, as California, Florida, Michigan, and Nevada currently have laws on the books permitting the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads, with additional neighbouring states considering the same.² The innovation of autonomous vehicles could have a significant impact in terms of the number of annual automotive collisions in Canada and in the United States, which total 120,000³ and 10,000,000,⁴ respectively. In fact, according to Peter Sweatman, Director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute⁵, this number could potentially be reduced by 90-percent, since nearly all motor vehicle collisions are caused by a form of human error, which would be minimized or wiped out with autonomous vehicles.⁶