dr. avent, you talked about animals and how would we ensure in the rural portions where these accidents happen that they are being tested? >> i am reminding that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. to people in rural areas, it might look like magic. to developers, this is technology. we understand how it works and what we are building. we don't have to understand it is a horse or a quirlsquirrel or a person to know there is something there and we need to stop. we can engineer the vehicles that understand abstractly to understand geometrically to get the requisite safety we need. what we really need to do, take the public, everyone in america, on the journey of how this works, so they can understand and get the assurance they need that it is safe. >> let me ask you one more question. why was it advantageous for you to go from australia to the united states to do are work here as opposed to your own home country? >> thank you for the question. i think the interse

dr. avent, please proceed. welcome. >> mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to address you today on this very important topic. as many of you know, the vision of driverless cars has been around well over 50 years, but very little progress was made in that area until 2004, which d a arpa created a prize competition called the darpa grand challenge. since then, there's an exponential growth in the underlying av technology that mirrors the development trajectories in other markets. today, i'd like to briefly touch on three dimensions of connected and autonomous vehicles. as you all pointed out, numerous papers abound, outlining the promises of autonomous vehicles. if developed correctly, the primary advantage of autonomous vehicles centers on significantly lowering driver-related deaths. as you pointed out, senator, last year alone, there were nearly 40,000 fatalities in the u.s. at a cost of over $410 billion. and more than 90% of those were due to human error.

dr. avent. ey-klay: ranking member nelson, senators. thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. arrived to the u.s. from a straley a just over three years ago, it is indeed an honor to be here before you among respected business leaders. on the safety opportunity 2012. watching from afar, while google was attempting to drive and develop a self driving car. , correctly understood, will transform how we move everyone and everything on this planet. ookzooks ise hold at vehicle willmated take us to the next mobility age. fully automated transportation. theere founded to ask question, what is the full realization of autonomy and mobility? can we imagine that? and if we can, let's not build it in 10 years. let's build it now. we have gone from a founding vision to today augmenting cars with a taunus vehicle driving in downtown san francisco. we are driving during the day, during the night, and in heavy rain and fog. we also drive a taunus on freeways. of features, as we speak. the ful