Omar Mukhtar: Omar Autonomous Creating $871 Billion in Value by Targeting the 94% of Crashes Caused by Human Error
Autonomous vehicles have long promised to reshape transportation, but much of the industry has struggled to move beyond expensive lab demonstrations. Omar Mukhtar, Founder and CEO of Omar Autonomous, has set his sights on a different path: designing and creating an Autonomous platform for the world’s 1.6 billion existing (and new, yet-to-be-built) vehicles with affordable, reversible autonomous systems designed to save lives and democratize access to autonomy.
With 94% of crashes caused by human error, the stakes are enormous, both socially and economically. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that car accidents cost the U.S. alone $871 Billion annually.
Omar, CEO of Omar Autonomous, observed, “A significant, 94% to be precise, of the $871 Billion cost of crashes are caused by human error, thus we already know the root of the problem,” he says. “The question is whether we choose to act on it and build systems that genuinely save lives. Tackling human error as a major cause of road accidents is a key part of why we founded Omar Autonomous”.
Democratizing Autonomy the Way Electricity Democratized Power
His vision is to make autonomy as transformative as electricity—a force that democratizes human potential across the globe. Omar envisions autonomy for all 8.2 billion people, rather than concentrating only on Silicon Valley or high-income markets like New York or Los Angeles where such innovations are usually targeted.
Omar’s own mother developed heart disease when he was a teenager. Growing up in a developing country, procuring her medicine required a three-hour journey each way on overcrowded buses. “I still remember those days, packed in transportation like sardines, no heater in winter and no AC in summer on buses and vans” he recalls. “For ten years, every ten days, I would make that trip to get her medicine. No human should have to suffer that much for something so vital.”
“Safety is core of our mission, but empowerment is even more important to us,” he explains. “An autonomous vehicle would have allowed me to spend time with my mom rather than traveling back and forth. For a Family today, it could mean helping their child with homework instead of commuting stuck in traffic.”
Why the Autonomous Industry Has Struggled
More than $100 billion was invested in autonomous vehicle research between 2010 and 2021, yet fully autonomous vehicles remain rare on public roads. Omar Autonomous approach leverages advances in AI and hardware. “Our phones today have more processing power than the Apollo space shuttle. That means sensors and computation can be deployed in ways that weren’t possible before,” he says, emphasizing that technology alone is not enough—empathy and responsibility towards the cost of solution must guide the application.
Omar, an AI Pioneer, built his first AI product in 2004 before he had an AI degree, then built products at Amazon and Microsoft that served tens of millions of users, Omar recognized the need for a more practical approach: adapting existing vehicles with affordable, reversible systems rather than designing expensive one-off prototypes. “Companies would take one vehicle, throw millions of dollars of equipment on it, and call it autonomous. That doesn’t scale,” he remarked dryly and pointed to real world experiments that fizzled due to this approach.
Safety has too often been sidestepped instead of being treated as a systemic problem within the automotive industry. “Manufacturers have focused on luxury, performance, or incremental safety features. But they haven’t addressed human error directly,” he says. “It’s similar to smoking. It wasn’t seen as a public health crisis until society recognized the scale of the harm and with the shift in perception and then smoking went from a major crisis to being seen as preventable and solvable. With 14 million crashes annually in the U.S. and over 100 million globally, the issue is both preventable and urgent with a shift in focus.”
The Omar Autonomous Breakthrough: A Platform For Autonomous For Any Vehicle
Omar Autonomous has developed a patent-pending system that can convert standard vehicles— EV, non-EV, leased, rented, or owned—into autonomous ones in under 30 minutes. For safety, the system combines physics-based sensors like LiDAR with camera-based systems. “A camera can tell you if the light is red, green, or orange, but it struggles in sun glare or dark and low light similar to our eyes. LiDAR provides quick, reliable reactions without heavy computation. Together, they create a system that is both intelligent and safe and quick acting, in a car going 100 feet a second, every delay from camera processing increases danger, thus LiDAR plus Camera hybrid is essential” he says.
Perhaps most striking is the fact that the installation is reversible. “Most vehicles in the world are leased or rented. You cannot drill holes into them,” Mukhtar says. The system can be removed without altering the vehicle, allowing it to be reinstalled in another vehicle – think a business owner who leases their vehicle and decides to upgrade their fleet, or for a family upgrading their car, or a traveler using airport rentals, real-world applications are critical in proving the system’s value for him and his broader mission.
Balancing Innovation with Empathy
Even while addressing what is a trillion-dollar problem, Omar emphasizes that the true foundation of his company is empathy. It shapes our innovation and our impact, “Empathy is our superpower” he says.
His team, drawn from diverse backgrounds culminating in a team with 5 IPOs, is united by this excellence, and innovation must create “win-win-win” outcomes: meaningful work for himself and his team, strong returns for investors, and tangible immediate financial and health benefits for users.
“No one wants car crashes—businesses don’t want them, families don’t want them, employers don’t want them, insurance companies don’t want them. When you solve a problem that is universally unwanted, it becomes not just a good business, but the right business,” he says.
Omar sees his work as a continuation of the values his mentors, friends and mother and grandmother instilled in him: empathy, service, and resilience. “Turning that pain into purpose has been a blessing. Knowing that we are solving something good on every level gives us(the Omar Autonomous team) peace. It keeps us grounded, even while addressing a problem of global scale.”
A Global Human Mission with Impact
Omar Autonomous has a big mission: to give everyone access to autonomy, save millions of lives, and unlock human potential by eliminating the drudgery and danger of driving. By targeting the 94% of crashes caused by human error, Omar and his team aim not only to reduce fatalities but to create $871 billion in value annually for customers, businesses and investors alike.
“Autonomy is like electricity. It should empower everyone,” he says. With a vision that blends engineering, empathy, and scalability, Omar Autonomous is charting a path toward safer roads and more empowered lives.
Follow Omar Mukhtar on LinkedIn to learn more about his work.
Photo credit: Omar photographed at Stanford University, the AI for Good Institute, by Kevin Mei.
