A white paper written by Clifford Winston, Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at Brookings and Fred Mannering at Purdue University has suggested self-driving vehicles will help solve the highway traffic and safety issues throughout the United States. Through their research, traffic congestion costs the U.S. economy $100 billion yearly.
The duo suggests that if one in every 10 vehicles in the U.S. was replaced by an autonomous car, traffic fatalities and injuries, time spent traveling and fuel consumption would decline. The approximate savings could be $40 billion a year. If the number of autonomous cars increased to half of the cars on the road, there could be a savings of $200 billion a year.
