If technology could bring traffic fatalities down to nearly zero, why not embrace it?

A culture of fear makes it easy to cloud our judgment

For thousands of years, walking and horseback riding were the fundamental modes of transport, and settlement patterns were a direct reflection of transport options. Compact, low-rise villages and cities made sense based on how far people could reasonably travel on foot or by horse. This was true all the way up until the late 1800s.

Then came an invention that let people travel incredible distances in seconds, entirely reshaping cities with dense population clusters. The technology was a sturdy box designed to transport multiple people at once, but often carried just one. I’m talking, of course, about the elevator.

Elevators transformed city planning in remarkable ways, long before automobiles sprawled life horizontally. Before elevators, buildings stayed squat because stairs limited height. Walking up two or three flights isn’t terrible. Carrying a briefcase up 10 flights of steep, dark stairs to the office is, pardon the pun, another story. It didn’t take long for skylines to change following the invention of the elevator.

Each early elevator had its own operator who mastered the timing and touch of hand-crank controls. These operators wore their Sunday best as a psychological reminder: “We will safely get you to your destination.” Brilliant minds innovated on the elevator, adding safety technology like automatic brakes, but it was the human touch that eased public nerves. It’s hard now to imagine feeling completely helpless in an elevator, but such was life in the early 20th century. Zero chance ordinary people like you and me were going to attempt to operate an elevator without rigorous training first.

Full automation

That changed dramatically with the September 1945 New York City elevator operators’ strike. Around 15,000 operators, doormen, porters, and maintenance workers walked off, halting service in over 2,000 buildings. About 1.5 million people avoided elevators, opting for stairs or staying home rather than risk operating the cars themselves. But “self-service” features like electric power, emergency phones, and push buttons were already spreading, so the strike helped open the doors to full automation. 

Self-driving elevators! You can practically hear the traveling public gasp. Walk into a box, let the doors close and lock you in, and trust that this thing would take you quickly—but not too quickly—the proper distance.

Otis gets credit for installing the first fully automated elevator in 1950 in Dallas. But the transition took time, both for technology to improve and for a skeptical population to trust it. Operators were still employed in some cities 30 years later. Today, you can casually scan your hotel room key in a lobby that summons a box to whisk you to your precise destination without even pressing buttons inside.

A public health crisis

You and I will never have the time, energy, or need to read the thousands of opinion pieces about the dangers of autonomous technology as it relates to cars. And as robotaxis accelerate deployments in 2026, there will be no shortage of fear-based stories.

There’s no scenario, with or without technology, that results in a danger-free life. The challenge for us is to identify and analyze trade-offs without being clouded by ideology or thwarted by lazy straw man arguments.

I’m not a technology expert, so I don’t get too deep on what a particular shiny new object can or can’t do. I am a traffic safety expert, though, and I can tell you motor vehicle deaths remain a public health crisis. 

Every day, more than 100 people are killed in traffic crashes, and thousands more experience life-altering injuries. That’s the track record of human drivers for decades. Software can save lives by preventing people from driving too fast, running red lights, passing school buses, tailgating in bad weather, or committing other dangerous antisocial acts. If only 50 people are killed each day because of autonomous technology, isn’t that worth celebrating? What if the technology could bring traffic fatalities down to nearly zero? 

It’s natural to be scared by emerging tech. Early elevator riders felt helpless stepping into a closing box with no operator to guide them. But people adapted because the status quo (stairs limiting how we could build and live) was worse, and incremental safety features built confidence over time.

There are absolutely valid concerns about autonomous vehicles, like software hacking, or failure to recognize a one-way street. But remember that humans are not the safest operators, that our current state of mobility is a public health crisis killing tens of thousands every year. Autonomous vehicles programmed to operate safely are part of the quest to design for human flourishing. 

If we’ve entrusted machines to carry us sky-high without hesitation, we can approach transportation systems the same way: cautiously optimistic, evidence-driven, and open to progress that saves lives.

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