Driverless vehicle technology is being put through the paces all over North America with promises of a safer, more efficient mode of transportation.

Domino’s is testing driverless vehicles for hot pizza delivery right to your door. Automated vehicle testing for grocery and restaurant delivery is occurring too. 

It’s a $54 billion market that’s expected to grow to half a trillion dollars by 2026, according to Allied Market Research.

“Definitely the way of the future,” said John Coupar, president of Novex Delivery Solutions, a courier company in Metro Vancouver.

Novex recently purchased a Tesla 3 and engaged the car’s autopilot system to do simulated deliveries.

The hope was to see where autonomous delivery might work best.

In the suburbs and on the highway, the data showed it was effective 45 per cent of the time but only five per cent effective in city environments.

The Tesla’s auto-pilot system is not an autonomous system, it’s more of an enhanced driver-assist but Novex hoped to get a better understanding how the technology could be useful.

There are much more advanced systems being tested like Google’s 10-year self-driving project now called Waymo.  

But there have also been many crashes involving driverless technology. A self-driving Uber struck and killed and cyclist last year in Tempe, Arizona. 

A Tesla X with the autopilot feature engaged ran into a highway barrier in Mountain View, California killing the sole occupant.

And a recent survey by the American Automobile Association found 71 per cent of people are afraid to ride in fully self-driving vehicles.

Waymo has been involved in several road incidents as well but many times human error by other drivers has been at fault.

Safety experts say 94 per cent of crashes are blamed on human error, and proponents of autonomous vehicles say the technology can greatly reduce accidents and deaths.

However, it’s unlikely anything less than a zero per cent chance of risk will satisfy many members of the public.

In B.C., an autonomous public transportation system called ELA is undergoing testing, but as of now there is no legal framework for allowing self-driving vehicles on public roads. 

There are many legal and ethical questions to be worked out.  For example, when a collision is unavoidable, whom should the vehicle save and whom should it harm? For instance; a child jumps into the path of a self-driving vehicle and there's no time to brake, does the veer into oncoming traffic?

There are millions of permutations programmers and testers will have to consider but in the meantime, the testing and data gathering continues and Coupar says his company wants to be ready.

“The autonomous features as things progress we’ll be watching that really closely. Any time there’s something new, we like to be on top of it,” he said.