Driverless Cars and the Traffic Safety Policy Conversation

While some preliminary findings suggest self-driving cars have fewer accidents compared to their human driver counterparts, research shows what appears to be heightened risks when executing any turn or operating in dim light.

As highway and traffic safety becomes a more prominent issue across the country – even being elevated by some to a crisis-level situation – driverless car research reveals components that can help and hurt the situation. In one of the largest and most comprehensive studies done to date, studies reveal areas of heightened risk when autonomous vehicles are making any turn or operating at dawn or dusk. From the New Scientist report:

The overall results suggest autonomous vehicles “generally demonstrate better safety in most scenarios”, says Abdel-Aty. But the analysis also found self-driving cars had a crash risk five times as great as human drivers when operating at dawn and dusk, along with almost double the accident rate of human drivers when making turns.

One researcher from an earlier study at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Virginia additionally found that, in prior tests of self-driving cars, just three out of ten crashes were actually reported. So the data isn’t necessarily capturing all errors by the autonomous vehicle.

The general consensus does hold that many believe more research is necessary. Some municipalities have already authorized the use of autonomous vehicles and these findings could present cause for potential rollbacks to current provisions – especially as resolving the technological problem demands more innovation in the use and transmission of sensor data on the cars, particularly weather and light detectors on the vehicles. Research suggests a significant amount of more reporting and study will be required to make well informed policies on the use of autonomous vehicles on public roadways.

Read the full New Scientist article.

Interested in traffic and highway safety issues? Don’t miss the MACo Summer Conference session, “Pump the Brakes: Addressing Maryland’s Traffic Fatality Crisis,” on Friday, August 16. Read all about our sessions in our Registration Brochure and be sure to register before July 12 for lowest rates!

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