“Geistfeld is Sheila Lubetsky Birbaum Professor of Civil Litigation at New York University School of Law.
There is a paradox central to the ongoing ascension of autonomous vehicles. AVs — also called driverless cars — may one day make the world a safer place: by eliminating the human driver and abiding safe operational standards, these machines can substantially reduce the number of vehicular crashes, which resulted in an estimated 40,000 traffic deaths domestically in 2017. But in order to reach this level of performance, driverless cars will first kill some of us. In fact, to some degree, they must be allowed to do so — ideally, within limits.”