An article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post suggests that its very difficult to predict how much Americans will spend on future healthcare because of technological advances like driverless cars reducing the number of people killed or injured. The article itself covers several topics so here’s the bit on driverless cars:

Advances in information processing mean driverless cars are coming, and fast. If you live in the Bay Area, actually, they’re already here. Let’s say — and I don’t know if this is optimistic or pessimistic — that full adoption of driverless cars could cut the number of accidents in half.

In 2010, more than 32,000 Americans were killed in car accidents, more than 2 million were injured, and the resulting medical costs and productivity losses were, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the $100 billion range. Car accidents are theleading cause of death for Americans between the ages of one and 30.

The only thing I would disagree with is that driverless cars would cut the number of accidents in half. I would suggest that a 99% reduction in accidents is more likely (once driverless cars are widespread and all the bugs are worked out). I base this on the current data that prototype cars by Google and others don’t seem to cause accidents, at least not yet.

Apart from that we have previously noted that driverless cars may cause a shortage of  donor organs  as less people dying due to automotive fatalities will reduce the pool or organ donors.

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