Way More Safe Than Politicians

John Stossel's latest column is eye-opening for three reasons, perhaps the least being the astounding safety record of Waymo's driverless cars:

Waymo claims its cars are 10 times safer than human-driven ones. I wouldn't believe that if insurance companies, with their own money at stake, didn't agree.

Reinsurance News reports Waymos had an "88 percent reduction in property damage claims and a 92 percent reduction in bodily injury claims."

"We have the data," says Adam Thierer, author of Permissionless Innovation. "94 percent of all accidents are attributable to human error ... We can address one of the leading killers of Americans."

Stossel notes earlier that car accidents kill 100 Americans per day.

I heard that such cars were safer, but I had no idea how much safer they were.

Even more incredible -- although appalling is a better term -- is the fact that mafioso-like politicians are waging war against driverless cars and are -- thanks to the altruism behind their featherbedding rationale -- proud of the comparison:

[Luis] Sepulveda [(D-NY)] responds: "Waymo is going to make billions of dollars -- let them pay for the disruption to the labor force."

"Sounds like a mafia pitch," I push back. "'Want to come here, Waymo? You have to pay.'"

"If the pitch sounds like a mafia pitch, so be it," Sepulveda replies.

I thought I might change his thinking by making a creepy comparison, telling him his ban would kill more people than infamous serial killers have. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy combined killed about 80 people. Human-driven cars kill more people every day.

"The data on Waymo is not 100 percent safety," he replies. "A Waymo vehicle struck a child in California."

Like most critics, he cites isolated incidents. Even that child wasn't injured. [bold added]

The daily human sacrifice of 100 humans to the god of make-work reminds me of Ayn Rand's apt turn-of-phrase to describe altruism: moral cannibalism.

If this isn't a story that at once shows the power of altruism to motivate and whitewash evil, I don't know what is.

-- CAV