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Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day for April 19, 2018
The Number of the Day columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
April 19, 2018: Twenty-four percent (24%) of American adults oppose self-driving cars and say that they will never use them.[1]
At the other end of the spectrum, 22% can’t wait to use them. In the interest of full disclosure, that’s my view. It’s been a couple of years since my first ride in an autonomous vehicle, an experience I looked forward to like a kid waiting for Christmas.[2]
Most Americans (54%) are somewhere in between the two extremes. They find the idea interesting but aren’t certain about them yet. The cultural implications of the transition to self-driving cars merit such uncertainty. Among other things, there is a possibility that most children born this year will never learn to drive.
When I wrote about my first experience in a self-driving car, I noted that it will take a generation or so “before we get fully autonomous cars that come when you summon them and let you ride without thinking about the road at all.”
One reason for the gradual adaptation, noted in an earlier Number of the Day, is because Americans tend to hang on to their cars for an average of 11.2 years. There are still nearly two million cars on the road from the 1960s.
Although it will take time to get there, the potential benefits are significant. The vast majority of interactions between police officers and American citizens are related to cars and driving. Self-driving cars might eliminate more than 32 million such interactions every year, freeing police for other duties.
Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology.
- April 18, 2018 – $76,111 a month pension for retired university president
- April 17, 2018 – 18.7 million U.S. homes have smart speakers
- April 16, 2018 – 342,057,461 visits to IRS.gov
- April 13, 2018 – 2,767,699 FBI background checks for gun sales in March
- April 12, 2018 – 309 women running for U.S. House in 2018
- To see other recent numbers, check out the archive.
Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day is published by Ballotpedia weekdays at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. Click here to check out the latest update.
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Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
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