Here are 5 interesting and surprising facts about autonomous cars :
1. More than 1,400 driverless vehicles are currently in testing by over 80 companies.
2. The first step towards autonomous vehicles was taken in 1925 when Francis Houdina attached a radio control system to a car, driving it around New York City streets with remote control.
3. Audi equipped one of its RS7 Sportback models with self-driving technology that reached 150 mph on the Hockenheim Formula 1 track, only 10 seconds slower than a professional human driver.
4. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, has been testing its self-driving cars in Arizona since 2017 and has logged over 20 million miles of autonomous driving.
5. Driverless vehicles are expected to save thousands of lives annually by reducing the 94% of crashes caused by human error.