8 ways driverless cars will drastically improve our lives

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Like it or not, self-driving cars are on the way. 

Most automakers have pledged to have at least their semi-autonomous systems available by 2020, and many industry experts predict it will only be a few more years after that before fully autonomous cars hit the road. 

These self-driving cars will bring about more changes than you might expect. 

Here's a look at some of the big ways autonomous cars will transform the world. 

Thousands of lives will be saved each year.

About 1.24 million people worldwide die each year in collisions, and that number is expected to skyrocket to 2.2 million by 2030, according to the World Health Organization. 

In the US alone, about 33,000 people die in traffic-related deaths every year.

Driverless cars, though, have the potential to dramatically reduce the number of accidents, thus potentially saving millions of lives.

According to a study by the Eno Centre for Transportation, if about 90% of cars on American roads were autonomous, the number of accidents would fall from six million a year to 1.3 million and deaths would fall from 33,000 to 11,300.

Google driverless cars have already driven more than two million miles during the last six years and have only been involved in 16 minor traffic accidents, none of which were the fault of Google’s vehicles.

Carbon emissions will be dramatically reduced.

In addition to saving lives, driverless cars may also help save our planet.

Because autonomous vehicles are built to optimize efficiency in acceleration, braking, and speed variation, they help increase fuel efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

According to McKinsey, adoption of autonomous cars could help reduce car CO2 emissions by as much as 300 million tons per year. To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of half of the CO2 emissions from the commercial aviation sector.

People will stop owning cars.

Industry experts predict self-driving cars will dramatically change consumers’ traveling habits, spurring them to trade car ownership for on-demand robo-taxis.

In fact, vehicle ownership could decline as much as 43% in the US once autonomous cars are adopted, according to a study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

One big reason for this is because it will be more cost effective to use a shared fleet car as opposed to your own autonomous vehicle.

In fact, by taking a shared, driverless fleet vehicle, your cost per mile could be reduced as much as 80% versus a personally owned vehicles when driven 10,000 miles per year, according to Casualty Actuarial Society.