Here’s how AI safety technology will save more lives than seatbelts, anti-lock braking, and airbags combined.
Johan Land
Senior Vice President, Safety and AI, Samsara
Our roads are more dangerous than ever. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, road crashes are the primary cause of death for young people ages 5-29, with more than a million people killed globally each year. Why is that the case when we are living in the most advanced age? Drones, autonomous vehicles, and electrical vertical take-off and landing vehicles are spreading, and recent data suggests autonomous vehicles result in 85% fewer injury-related crashes than human-operated vehicles.
However, even the most optimistic forecasts predict that autonomous rides will account for just 10% of all trips by 2035. What about the other 90% of trips? When we survey the course of history, the most profound technological advancements haven’t been about saving a few extra minutes at work. They’ve been about saving lives. They’ve been about human flourishing. That’s why I believe the real AI revolution will happen on our roads, not in our offices. In fact, AI will be the single most important technology for road safety, saving more lives than the seatbelt, anti-lock braking, and airbag combined.
The real AI revolution is on our roads
For too long, commercial fleets have focused on reactive safety measures like seatbelts and airbags that address the aftermath of a crash. With AI, we’re shifting from a reactive to a preventative approach to road safety. In a few years, AI will help prevent most human-caused crashes, making our roads safer for everyone.
This isn’t some far-off dream. This technology is here, on our roads — and not just in the form of robotaxis. Each year, Samsara helps prevent a quarter of a million crashes. Edge AI enables this impact by shaving milliseconds off response times and analyzing over 30 variables associated with risky driving in real time. Even more compelling, a recent Safety Report analyzing thousands of fleets showed that complete adoption of Samsara’s AI Safety solution can help reduce crash rates by nearly 75% after 30 months.
Original equipment manufacturers play an important role here by standardizing Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems. But the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads approaches 13 years, with even longer turnover rates for commercial vehicles. The data is clear. We must act now, and we must act with conviction to make our roads safer.
We don’t have to wait for safer roads
So, what will the AI-powered future of transportation look like? It starts with an increasing number of AVs sharing roads with human drivers. That’s underway with the robotaxi and autonomous freight expansion. Due to the enormous complexity of long-haul routes and final-mile tasks, a subset of commercial driving will remain human-operated. Now, imagine a seamless, connected network of autonomous and AI-augmented vehicles sharing roads and communicating to reduce crashes across our transportation system.
AI will do for road safety what modern medicine did for infectious disease — save lives. It’s up to us to determine on what timeline this safety revolution unfolds. We need governments to advance safety gains by incentivizing fleets to integrate AI safety technologies. And we need business leaders to invest in AI to protect their frontline workers. Finally, we need consumers to demand the latest AI safety features from manufacturers. Because the impact of safer roads — improved pedestrian safety, fewer fatalities, safer communities — matters to all of us.
When we embrace AI in vehicles, we will come incredibly close to eliminating human-caused fatalities from our roads, ushering in a new era of human flourishing. And it will be thanks to AI.
Learn more about the future of road safety at samsara.com
