What distance should an autonomous car drive to prove its reliability?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traffic accidents are the main cause of premature death in the United States, and the cost of medical care is $ 80 billion annually. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 90 percent of automobile accidents are caused by human errors, speeding, and drunk driving and scattering attention (fatigue). Autonomous vehicles eliminate all these errors.

The new report was published by RAND - an American non-profit strategic research center.
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Key research results :

1. Autonomous vehicles must travel hundreds of millions of kilometers, and sometimes hundreds of billions, in order to demonstrate their reliability in terms of death and injury.
2. Even with “aggressive” testing, it will take dozens, and sometimes hundreds of years, to travel this distance — an impossible proposition if the goal is to demonstrate their effectiveness before launching onto roads for consumer use.
3. Therefore, at least with fatalities and injuries, testing single autonomous cars cannot provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate the safety of autonomous vehicles.
4. Developers of this technology and third-party tests will need to develop innovative methods for demonstrating safety and reliability.
5. In parallel with the development of new testing methods, it is necessary to prepare adaptive rules that will evolve with technology so that society can take advantage of autonomous vehicles and manage the risks of these rapidly developing and potentially transforming technologies.

As of March 2016, Google’s autonomous cars have driven “only” 2,411,000 kilometers. As of February 29, 2016, only one such car was the cause of the accident.