Donald Trump is reportedly terrified of self-driving cars

If there's one thing Donald Trump is good at it's stoking the fear of the unknown.

And he's now extended that to being scared of driverless cars, according to a story from Axios. Jonathan Swan and Joann Muller walk us through several things Trump has apparently said about self-driving cars — and none of them are good. 

Among the examples:

• "Can you imagine, you're sitting in the back seat and all of a sudden this car is zig-zagging around the corner and you can't stop the f—-ing thing?"

• Self-driving cars "will never work."

• "I would never get in a self-driving car. ... I don't trust some computer to drive me around."

It's worth noting that Trump's skepticism matches that of many Americans. Last week AAA reported that 71 percent of Americans are scared of self-driving cars. A 2018 survey from JD Power found that 42 percent percent of Americans would never ride in a self-driving car.

These fears are, to an extent, understandable. When it comes to self-driving vehicles, many of the headlines are about when things go wrong. In March of last year, a pedestrian was killed by a self-driving Uber car in Arizona which prompted the company to halt its program. In fact, 2018 was a rough year overall for these self-driving car programs. 

The difference between fearful Americans and Trump, of course, is that Trump is president and promoting American innovation should be high on his list, including addressing these accidents and his administration's guidelines on companies testing and using the vehicles. 

Self-driving cars are coming and the arms race to get them on the road is an international matter. It's up to Trump to address the setbacks as well as the potential and to calm people's fears rather than feeding in to them.

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