Why Australia needs driverless cars
New research has indicated that widespread use of driverless cars could save the global economy –billions of dollars each year. So why does Australia need driverless cars? Because it currently loses billions a year due to road accidents – but can save almost all of these losses from implementing the technology.
Autonomous driving technologies have massive potential to improve vehicle safety and reduce traffic accidents and Global Positioning Specialists (GPS) has revealed how much GDP could be saved through driverless cars in 73 key countries.
GPS combined the percentage of GDP lost to traffic accidents with the total GDP of each country alongside the percentage that driverless tech could reduce traffic accidents to calculate both the total GDP lost to traffic accidents each year and the amount of GDP that driverless technology could save.
Major losses…
Australia loses over $28 billion GDP to traffic accidents a year
…but massive potential savings
Driverless tech could reduce GDP lost in Australia by over $25 billion a year
Lucile Michaut, head of GPS said: “This research has two facets to it, on the one hand there is the amount of money which we spend on accidents each year, which in itself is interesting. Then you realise how many of these accidents could be avoided with new driverless technology.
“Governments will never spend on investing in things like this unless there is concrete evidence, but here we have proved there are strong economic reasons to invest in driverless technology, as well as the obvious improvement to public safety.”
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