Will Google's self-driving car really be able to save a million lives?

The title comes from a statement by Sebastian Thrun, the person in charge of getting Google’s self-driving car project off the ground and developing it. Its development and application could save a million lives, with vehicles that drive themselves, without the need for a human driver.

So far, the experiment has proven very viable, with around 200,000 kilometres covered by the first prototypes in all kinds of traffic conditions, by day and by night, on motorways and secondary roads, without any incident, and using several different types of vehicle, although the most used seems to have been the Toyota Prius.

Like anything new, such a change is hard to accept, bearing in mind that those of us who follow the world of cars every day also enjoy driving. And what Thrun has said about the self-driving car may sting: future generations will look back and say it was very ridiculous that humans used to drive cars.

I don’t have a formed opinion on this yet either for or against, and I imagine time will shape the view I have on it. The first thing I felt is that I don’t like this at all, but the prospect of saving a million lives, by avoiding human driving errors, seems worth it.

Have you thought about whether you would like to see your car drive itself? I think it would also be interesting to know what you think about it and to form an idea of whether this change would be for the better.