“The point of self-driving cars is not to eliminate accidents, but to reduce the number of accidents,” Vahid Behzadan, a data and computer science professor at the University of New Haven, told the Washington Examiner.

While AI can rely on maps or road signs to stay on track, Behzadan said, it cannot always sufficiently account for quickly changing scenarios like speeding cars or emergency vehicles. This slow response may put the vehicles at risk and cause injury to their passengers. The companies will have to create guardrails to account for these situations.

While controlled tests can offer substantial data for creating guardrails, Shaheen argued, they cannot account for all of the possible chaos that may arise on the road.

Cruise is not the only one having problems with human collisions. The Google-funded robotaxi startup Waymo was involved in more crashes between Jan. 1, 2022, and August 2023 than Cruise, but resulted in fewer injuries. The two companies offered robotaxi services to a limited audience during that period.