Fatal vehicle accidents spike up with drivers over 70 years old. Check out this graph of driving accidents grouped by age in the United States:
No one wants to lose a loved one earlier than necessary. As people get older, driving gets harder due to failing health. The accident rate for autonomous vehicles is decreasing everyday, but we are still waiting for the catalyst that will push autonomous vehicle adoption over the tipping point. So why don’t we incentivize people over 70 to use autonomous vehicles to save more lives. We could reduce taxes and costs, pass new laws, or even mandate autonomous vehicle usage for drivers over a certain age.
I don’t think older people would mind being at the forefront of adopting autonomous vehicles because the other choices are: don’t be able to drive at all or have a high probability of death in a car accident. No one wants to lose their mobility, so to me this looks like a win-win situation as older people get to drive as much as they want with a potentially reduced accident rate, we get more people used to autonomous driving, and we accelerate autonomous driving adoption.