In 2023, Japan recorded 2,678 traffic fatalities. With a population of 124.9 million, this equates to a fatality rate of about 2.14 deaths per 100,000 people. I'd say this is still a pretty gruesome number, but it is one of the lowest globally.
In the same year, the US recorded 40,990 traffic fatalities. With a population of 339.9, this gives us a fatality rate of 12.1 deaths per 100,000 people. Considerably worse than Japan. This isn't the highest globally, but it is at the upper-end.
We have all grown up in this car culture. We kind of half ignore these numbers and half accept them as a tragic but necessary part of the modern world. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, amirite? Not to mention, most of us have this superiority complex and think "Those people died in car accidents because they were bad drivers; I am an excellent driver and so I will never die in a car accident." Thing is, most of the victims of those car fatalities in 2023 probably thought the same thing. And many of them probably actually were excellent drivers, but—to put it frankly—shit happens. The semi driver driving next to you falls asleep, his truck violently twists into you, knocking you into the next car, creating a big collusion that kills several people. It happens more often than you think. Being a great driver isn't going to save you there.
Already self-driving cars are driving better than people. We tend to obsess about the single time a self-driving car has an accident, while unfairly not considering all the many many times humans have accidents, and ignoring the fact that statically speaking the self-driving car is already safer. Presumably as this technology increases it will get even better. We might also presume that at some point in the future, manually driven cars will actually become illegal on certain roads, and at that point self-driving cars will become even safer. That is, if you can even find a manual driving car by that point, and I think that will be tougher than you think. More on that in a bit.
People will rant and rave and say this is the government trying to put us down and take away our rights, but no... it's just trying to make things safer. In 50 years when we look back at this driving era, I think we will be horrified by how gruesome it was, how many people died and how the people of this time just didn't seem to care.
Like I said, I think manual cars will be tricky to find in the not-so-distant future. Manual cars will slowly evolve into self-driving cars. This will undoubtedly take place in stages. It already is.
Most new cars have lane assist, a feature that helps keep the car centered in the car lane and also gives a warning when you drift over the line. There is also auto braking in most new cars, a feature that not only warns you to brake when you are approaching an object too quickly, but may even apply the brake automatically if you still don't slow down. These features are optional now and can be disabled by the driver, but I bet in the future you won't be able to turn them off anymore. And there will be more and more of these assist features every few years as we step ever close to self-driving cars.
And that's the thing. I don't think we will just one day switch. "Oh, for my next car I think I'll buy a self-driving car instead of a manual car". No, it won't be like that. Our cars are going to slowly evolve into self-driving cars so we really aren't going to be given a choice. Well, unless we fix up and drive an old car, but like I mentioned above, I think these will likely be made illegal on many roads, if you can even find one.
Of course there are other factors here than safety. Self-driving cars will put a lot of professional drivers out of work. Taxi drivers, truck drivers, maybe even eventually stunt drivers. This will be an unfortunate consequence and one that I'm sure the fat cats at the top are going to shed no tears about. Cutting out expensive and accident-prone peons and replacing them with self-driving cars will be very very good for Wall Street.
As mentioned above, I reject the more conspiratorial thinking that would say they are pushing self-driving cars specially for this reason, to put us out of work, to shake up society, to... I don't know... decrease the surplus population or something Orwellian. The Great Reset, right? Nonsense. I reject all that. The reason for self-driving cars is one of safety—but yes, the capitalists are not going to be crying about saving money by firing everyone.
I am ok with self-driving cars. While I do enjoy driving (in low stress situations, without many others on the road), I am happy to give that up if it ultimately makes society safer. Having lived in a train culture for the past 20 years, I have definitely seen how nice it is to not have to drive and to be able to focus on other things while traveling, like reading or catching up on sleep (yes, everyone sleeps on the trains here, and it's safe).
But what do I know. The real question is, what do you think? Why? Let me know in the comments.
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon. |
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