Driverless cars, when they’re perfected enough to markedly reduce road fatalities, may force the issue with 3D-printed organs, since far fewer crashes would interrupt the steady delivery of hearts and livers. From Erin Griffith at Fortune:

“It’s a dark thought, and the sort of thing only a futurist would think of. Which is why I’m not surprised that Bre Pettis, founder and CEO of the 3D printing company Makerbot, brought it up. When I asked him about 3D-printed organs earlier this summer at the Northside Festival, a conference in Brooklyn, he told me that 3D-printed body parts won’t become a reality until autonomous vehicles arrive to market. It makes for a surprising connection between two futuristic technologies.

‘The self-driving car is coming, and right now, our best supply of organs comes from car accidents,’ he said. ‘So, if you need an organ you just wait for somebody to have an accident, and then you get their organ and you’re better.’ I suggested that was a dark way of looking at it.

His response: ‘We have this huge problem that we sort of don’t talk about, that people die all the time from car accidents. It’s kind of insane. But the most interesting thing is, if we can reduce accidents and deaths, then we actually have a whole other problem on our hands of, ‘Where do we get organs?’ I don’t think we’ll actually be printing organs until we solve the self-driving car issue. The next problem will be organ replacement.'”