Self-driving technology will drastically decrease the number of motor vehicle accidents and will lower costs for ride-hailing services
Over the otherwise sunny postwar period loomed the dark cloud of polio, with case numbers rising from 4,000 in 1942 to 57,000 in 1952. That year, the virus killed 3,000 American children and left 20,000 more paralyzed. By 1962, however, an innovative public health solution—Jonas Salk’s vaccine—had all but eliminated polio in the United States. Beginning in 1955, children across the country took a jab in the arm, and polio soon became a disease of the past. Decades removed from the horrors of its death and disfigurement, we now look at the polio era as a grim aberration.
And yet, another public health horror—one of much graver annual and cumulative impact—exists today in our collective blind spot. Since 2020, motor vehicle collisions have killed more than 120,000 people in the U.S. and sent an estimated 10 million more to emergency rooms. Mercifully, a solution of a profundity comparable to Salk’s vaccine—autonomous vehicles—could significantly lower these terrible figures if strategically adopted.
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Jordan McGillis is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
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