Self-Driving Cars for Testing Are Supported by U.S. The Transportation Department said that driverless cars should not yet be allowed, except for testing, but noted that some safety features could save lives. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/technology/self-driving-cars-for-testing-are-supported-by-us.html?ref=business
Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2012Not a pretty picture. Early estimates show a 5.3% increase in fatalities over ’11 to 34,080 due to a very large YoY increase in Q1 (12.6%) and a an extremely large increase of greater than 15% in the Northeast region. While some of this may be attributable to increased VMT, Fatalities per VMT also increased. http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/PDFs/EarlySafetyFacts2012NHTSA.pdf
The only silver lining may be that these are “estimates” not counts. In the last paragraph there is the following sentence: “The methodology used to generate the estimates for 2012 is the same as the one used by NHTSA to project the decline in the fatalities for the whole of 2011” and that methodology is: “ … time series cross-section regression was applied to ana-lyze the data with both cross-sectional values (by NHTSA region) and time series (by month), to model the relationship among FARS, MFC and FF…” (Yipes!). I find this very strange. One would think that “NHTSA’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), FastFARS (FF), and Monthly Fatality Counts (MFC)” would be good enough such that one could simply count the fatalities defined as occurring in vehicle traveling on “a trafficway and must result in the death of at least one person (occupant of a vehicle or a non-occupant) within 30 days of the crash”. So why are “estimates from models” being reported rather than simply facts from counts? One has confidence that NHTSA can count; one doesn’t necessarily have confidence in NHTSA’s models. My question is: what are the counts of fatalities for 2011 and 2012?
Update on PRT:Heathrow pod Celebrates its 2nd Anniversary: Back on May 8th the Heathrow PRT system between the Business Carpark and Terminal 5 celebrated its 2nd year of operation in which it has logged more than a million vehicle miles of completely safe autonomous passenger service (what NHTSA would term as “Level 4 Full Self-Driving Automation”; of course, the Morgantown PRT system has logged more than 25 million vehicles mile since its introduction in 1975, all without any accidents causing serious injury). Heathrow Airport Limited’s business plan for the next five years (April 2014-2019, also known as Q6) includes an additional Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. The proposed system which will run from Terminals 2 & 3 out to the terminal’s own particular business car parks will aid Heathrow Airport Limited in its vision to create a far simpler Central Terminal Area for passengers. Also, the Amritsar India PRT remains on the “Project Pipeline” of the Punjab Infrastructure Development Board but has not moved to it “Projects Started” category on Board’s website. At least it is still in the “pipeline”.
Self-Driving Cars for Testing Are Supported by U.S. 
