Don’t ‘Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good,’ Says Shapiro of Self-Driving Deaths

Industry “can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” tweeted CTA President Gary Shapiro Thursday on the two recent autonomous-driving deaths involving a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, and a Tesla driver in Mountain View, California. “Self-driving car casualties are tragic. But we shouldn’t stop improving the technology,” headlined a piece Shapiro wrote for USA Today. “Only an ongoing, transparent discussion will create the sort of framework that combines consumer safety, company accountability and flexibility to advance self-driving technology” and prevent accidents like those in Tempe and Mountain View “from happening again,” he said. The “safety and security that passengers have come to expect” from commercial air travel “didn’t occur immediately,” he said. “It took years of investment and years of missteps to create the safe flight ecosystem we now have in this country.” Self-driving technology “has the same kind of potential,” he said.