Alphabet says self-driving cars should be a ‘national priority’

The opportunity for vehicle automation to reduce road traffic incidents resulting from human error has not been lost on Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Speaking at Alphabet’s 2016 Annual Meeting of Shareholders in June, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt remarked: “I’ll say it as bluntly as I can; there are 32,800 people who are scheduled to die this year on American highways, we just don’t know who,” he said. “That is a horrific number,