According to a recent study, self-driving cars cause fewer accidents than human drivers. But: The driverless vehicles are apparently bad at turning. The backgrounds.
Humans or autonomous cars: who actually causes more accidents? Some people may assume that the accident rate for self-driving cars must be higher than for humans. An actual study However, suggests that driverless vehicles are safer under normal circumstances.
Self-driving cars steer more safely than humans
The investigation is one of the most extensive accident studies ever. It was carried out by scientists from the University of Central Florida. To do this, Shengxuan Ding and his colleague Mohamed Abdel-Aty compiled accident data from 2,100 accidents from California and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
All cases involved vehicles equipped with self-driving or driver assistance technologies in some form. The researchers also used data on 35,000 accidents involving human drivers without assistance systems.
Using statistical matching, the research team looked for pairs of accidents in which incidents occurred under similar circumstances. To do this, they compared factors such as road conditions, weather and time of day. They also examined whether the accidents occurred at an intersection or on a straight road. They found 548 matches.
Self-driving cars can’t turn as well
The analysis shows that vehicles with advanced driving systems are less likely to be involved in an accident in similar accident scenarios than vehicles driven by humans.
However, autonomous cars also seem to have some weaknesses. The evaluation shows that self-driving vehicles have a five times higher risk of accidents than humans at dusk and darkness. In addition, the accident rate when turning is almost twice as high.
“It is important to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles at dusk and when turning,” Shengxuan Ding told the science magazine New Scientist. “Key strategies include improving weather and light sensors and effectively integrating sensor data.”
Experts criticize missing data
How meaningful the results of such studies are is controversial among experts. Abdel-Aty also sees some obstacles. To date, the database for accidents involving self-driving vehicles is still too small and limited.
Missy Cummings from George Mason University in Virginia shares this opinion. She described the number of accidents involving autonomous vehicles as so small that no blanket conclusions can be drawn about the technology’s safety performance.
In addition, many accidents would not be reported to the police if they were only minor damage to the sheet metal. According to Eric Teoh from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Virginia, this factor also needs to be taken into account. He conducted a study on Google’s early self-driving car tests back in 2017. The result: only three out of ten accidents appeared in police reports.
The study comes at a time when autonomous vehicles are increasingly taking over the streets, especially in various cities in the USA. For example, Google’s spin-off Waymo is expanding its robotaxis operations in Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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