{"id":6727,"date":"2020-07-22T13:45:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T11:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/?p=6727"},"modified":"2020-07-22T13:45:55","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T11:45:55","slug":"autonomous-vehicles-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/2020\/07\/22\/autonomous-vehicles-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Autonomous Vehicles Could Only Prevent a Third of U.S. Crashes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The IIHS study contends that self-driving vehicles will need to account for uncertainty about what other road users will do, such as driving more slowly than a human driver would in areas with high pedestrian traffic or in low-visibility conditions. Photo via\u00a0Eschenzweig<\/a>\/Wikimedia.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Autonomous vehicles could only prevent a third of all road crashes in the U.S., according to a study released on Thursday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The study found that the remaining two thirds of crashes were caused by mistakes that self-driving systems are not equipped to handle any better than human drivers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s likely that fully self-driving cars will eventually identify hazards better than people, but we found that this alone would not prevent the bulk of crashes,\u201d says Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research and a coauthor of the study.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a national survey of police-reported crashes, driver error is the final failure in the chain of events leading to more than 9 out of 10 crashes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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But the IIHS analysis suggests that only about a third of those crashes were the result of mistakes that automated vehicles would be expected to avoid simply because they have more accurate perception than human drivers and aren\u2019t vulnerable to incapacitation. To avoid the other two-thirds, they would need to be specifically programmed to prioritize safety over speed and convenience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding self-driving cars that drive as well as people do is a big challenge in itself,\u201d says IIHS Research Scientist Alexandra Mueller, lead author of the study. \u201cBut they\u2019d actually need to be better than that to deliver on the promises we\u2019ve all heard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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To estimate how many crashes might continue to occur if self-driving cars are designed to make the same decisions about risk that humans do, IIHS researchers examined more than 5,000 police-reported crashes from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Five Categories of Crashes<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

The IIHS team reviewed the case files and separated the driver-related factors that contributed to the crashes into five categories:<\/span><\/p>\n