On the Road

Self-driving vehicles are coming—like it or not

We can just hear the “I told you so’s” echoing across the land. But don’t be that quick to jump on the bandwagon.

On Wednesday, a driverless shuttle made it’s official debut on the busy streets of Las Vegas.

Anyone who has been to Sin City knows what the traffic is like. It’s often bumper-to-bumper on the famous Strip and not much better on other busy roads. That’s because for many years Las Vegas’ population outgrew its infrastructure.

So there were concerns about unleashing a vehicle full of people with no human behind the wheel into such perilous territory.

And sure enough the self-driven shuttle got into an accident—in the first couple of hours it was on the road.

So, does this mean the whole “no human” shuttle idea is a colossal failure? Some are saying that very thing. But wait, there’s more. The accident—a fender bender at best—was caused by a delivery truck piloted by a flesh-and-blood human who backed into the shuttle. It might have been worse but the shuttle automatically detected the approaching truck and stopped.

The companies behind this launch didn’t just point the shuttle toward the streets and hope for the best. It’s been extensively tested with no problems.

Self-driving vehicles have a good safety record. They aren’t perfect, but they seem to do better than we do at safe driving. At least they aren’t constantly looking away from the road at their smartphones. Still, we think it will be quite a while before they are everywhere. But one day they might be as common as pickups and SUVs right here in Texarkana.