DETROIT — The automotive and tech companies pursuing the driverless car share a utopian belief: Autonomous vehicles will benefit society, saving most of the nearly 33,000 people each year killed in road accidents in the United States alone.
“If the situation was reversed, and we had automated vehicles today and someone proposed to let people drive cars, what would the reaction be?” asks Glen De Vos, vice president of global engineering for Delphi Automotive PLC, a supplier of driverless-car technology.
“You would be basically asking that 33,000 deaths per year be allowed on highways as part of a policy plan. There’s no way on earth anybody would accept it.”
The big win for society wouldn’t be big, or even a win, for everybody, however. There will be losers and winners.
Take automakers. Eventually, if fully driverless cars — “L4” vehicles under the federal government's classification system — can be summoned with a smart phone just like Uber cars today, many people might forgo car ownership. Or families in developed nations might own one car instead of two.
That could be a financial boon for families. In the United States, cars are usually the second-largest item in the household budget. But automakers would suffer.
If driverless cars catch on, U.S. car sales could plunge 40 percent in the next 25 years, Barclays analyst Brian Johnson wrote in a report last year. General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., he added, would have to cut their combined number of assembly plants in the United States and Canada to 17 from the current 30. Some 25,000 auto workers would lose their jobs.
People who drive taxis, Uber cars, transit buses, or delivery trucks would be losers too.
The number of jobs lost in the U.S. alone could total 2.6 million, or nearly 2 percent of the work force, calculates economist Martin Zimmerman at the University of Michigan.
To put that in perspective, Mr. Zimmerman said, U.S. manufacturing has shed jobs equivalent to 11 percent of the work force since 1979.
The U.S. economy has adjusted well, although many individuals have suffered and haven’t recovered. Those who moved into other jobs often settled for lower pay.
Eventually, adoption of autonomous driving and automated accident-avoidance technology could undermine auto insurers.
The collapse of auto-insurance premiums would create a “giant, sucking sound,” Kate Brown, senior vice president of Swiss Re, told a recent conference on autonomous driving at UM law school.
Insurers would “make it up in China and India” and other emerging markets, Ms. Brown said.
Trial lawyers can probably breathe easy: Autonomous driving won’t end litigation over accidents. But it will change who gets sued.
In other words, when cars drive themselves, manufacturers — as opposed to human drivers — would be liable.
First Published May 1, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
