Self-Driving Cars Need to Be 99.99982% Crash-Free to Be Safer Than Humans

As companies race to build self-driving cars, there’s always a question: How safe is safe enough? Just how good does an autonomous car have to be, in order to beat us fleshy human drivers at the safety game? A system that’s 99.9-percent reliable sounds nearly perfect, but in reality, that 0.1-percent error rate is enormous. Buy for $179 at Amazn AdvertisementHere’s how the numbers break down for human drivers in America:AdvertisementAmerican human drivers have a 0.000181-percent crash rate. AdvertisementUnfortunately, it’s tough to tell whether today’s crop of experimental autonomous vehicles are coming close to human safety levels.