Tony Han, founder and CEO of autonomous driving technology company WeRide, likened the development of self-driving cars to the Wright brothers’ successful first flight of a powered aircraft. This four-year development process culminated in 12 seconds of being airborne.
The iterative invention process made headlines for crashes, not unlike the ones autonomous vehicles are making now, with 3,979 incidents involving autonomous vehicles from 2019 to 2024, 10% of which resulted in injuries. While the accident rate for traditional cars was 4.1 accidents per million miles driven in 2021, the rate for autonomous vehicles was more than twice that at 9.1 per million miles, according to the National Law Review. Han said it is all part of what it takes to make technology better for future generations.
