The People Fighting Technology That Could Save Thousands of Lives

Somewhere in Los Angeles this year, someone will get home who otherwise wouldn't have. You'll never learn her name. There will be no headline, no celebration, no council resolution—only an unremarkable Tuesday that ends the way Tuesdays are supposed to end. The same non-story will eventually play out in more than a dozen other metro areas where autonomous vehicles will serve as cabs. Last year, 36,640 Americans died in traffic crashes. That was the fewest since 2019, yet it still works out to more than 100 fatalities per day. The new generation of vehicles quietly accumulating mileage on our streets offers enormous promise to bring the number down even more and more each year. Over at Marginal Revolution, economist Alex Tabarrok reminds us that as of March, Waymo's driverless vehicles had