Driving In Reverse Is A Surprisingly Tough Challenge For Both Human Drivers And Self-Driving Cars

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]

One of the worst nightmares for any driver is the chance of backing up a car and running over someone.

When you are backing up, it can be very difficult to know what’s behind the vehicle.

There’s a famous video of a crawling baby in Brazil that unbeknownst to the parents crawled behind the family car as it was being backed out of the garage. The car got about halfway over the top of the baby when a person walking nearby pointed out there was a baby underneath.

Getting out of the car, now stopped over the baby, the family members were fortunately able to pull out the baby and did so without much harm having come to the child.

They were lucky.

Statistics were against them in the sense that by-and-large once a backout is underway, whomever is getting hit is likely to be severely injured or even killed.

Per federal data, in the United States alone there are over 200 deaths annually and more than 15,000…