Patient trust isn’t built on performance (and outcomes) alone
We hold machines to a standard of perfection we’d never apply to ourselves. When a San Francisco power outage last December left Waymo’s driverless cars idling at dark intersections with their hazards blinking, the videos went viral, and a city supervisor called for a hearing. That same day, about 115 Americans died in crashes caused by human drivers, and none of it made the news.
That’s the paradox at the heart of a new essay in Noema by neurosurgeon Jonathan Slotkin: Driverless cars really are safer, with 94% fewer serious-injury crashes across more than 220 million miles. But stronger safety data hasn’t earned public trust. Being safe and feeling safe, it turns out, are two very different things.
Healthcare has explored this for decades. Research from Press Ganey’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tom Lee, shows that clinical quality and patient experience are correlated, but distinct. A knee replacement can go perfectly, yet a patient who overhears nurses arguing in the hallway walks away trusting the system less. The signals people can see—a used bandage on the floor, a bloodstain on a doctor’s scrubs—influence trust as much as care outcomes. To close that gap in any industry, healthcare has developed the playbook: Measure how safe people feel, report it publicly, and own your mistakes.