Autonomous vehicles are likely to fundamentally transform transportation as we know it. Not only will they be more convenient than today’s cars, they’ll also be much safer. And many experts believe they’ll improve traffic congestion and shrink our carbon to boot.

There’s no single definition for how an AV works – there are still many viable approaches under development – but the general idea is the same: vehicles use various sensors to see the roadway around them, and then use machine learning and AI to make better, safer decisions than any human driver could.