Baidu Executive: The Death Rate of Traffic Accidents to be Reduced by 90% In Era of Autonomous Driving

At the first REAL Technology Conference hosted by Jiemian on Wednesday, Wei Dong, Vice President and Chief Safety Operation Officer of Baidu‘s Intelligent Driving Business Group, said in a recent speech that in the era of autonomous driving, the death rate in traffic accidents will be reduced by 90%.

Wei also provided some data. At present, the number of people who die in traffic accidents in China fluctuates between 50,000 and 60,000 every year, and more than 94% of the main causes of accidents are human factors.

When referring to the road conditions in the era of autonomous driving, Wei said, “The meeting between cars will be a perfect miss.” He believes that there is no need to compete between vehicles with autonomous driving mode. He took Chaoyang Road in Beijing as an example, which can be commanded by computer to cope with traffic congestion.

However, he stressed that “in the future, a special lane for human drivers should be set aside, and the feelings of human drivers should be considered.”

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When talking about which industries will be affected by autonomous driving in the future, Wei said frankly that the current designated driving service may be greatly impacted, while the auto insurance and auto rental businesses will face tremendous changes. New opportunities, however, will be provided for such fields as new remote cloud driving, urban cleaning and mining machinery vehicles.