Autonomous vehicles are set to upend the transportation industry, including how motorcyclists enjoy the roadways. This much, we know. But, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) says that the effect might not be as large as we think it will be.
According to a recent study that they performed, the IIHS says that autonomous vehicles will only prevent about one-third of on-road accidents.
The work by the IIHS is interesting, though the study comes with some rather large caveats to come to its conclusion.
To get to their conclusion, the IIHS looked at the data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (5,000 crashes where a vehicle had to be towed away or an ambulance called for an injury), and then looked for accidents that were marked as being the result of a distracted driver.
Since autonomous cars don’t take breaks to check their cellphones, and have superior situational awareness to their surroundings, thanks to 360°, LIDAR, and radar, they are more likely going to be able to respond to an on-road incident.
However, the IIHS says that while driver error is present in about 90% of vehicle crashes, the events leading up to the accident might not be preventable if the car was driving itself (imagine a car suffering a blown out tire, for instance). Looking at the data, the IIHS says that only one-third of crashes could be prevented by autonomous vehicles.
The IIHS has broken out those categories where an autonomous vehicle would be a benefit into the following:
- “Sensing and perceiving” errors included things like driver distraction, impeded visibility and failing to recognize hazards before it was too late.
- “Predicting” errors occurred when drivers misjudged a gap in traffic, incorrectly estimated how fast another vehicle was going or made an incorrect assumption about what another road user was going to do.
- “Planning and deciding” errors included driving too fast or too slow for the road conditions, driving aggressively or leaving too little following distance from the vehicle ahead.
- “Execution and performance” errors included inadequate or incorrect evasive maneuvers, overcompensation and other mistakes in controlling the vehicle.
- “Incapacitation” involved impairment due to alcohol or drug use, medical problems or falling asleep at the wheel.
Obviously, the effective safety of an autonomous vehicle is dependent on how good the software/hardware is on the vehicle, which could impact results.
However, the IIHS study does seem to fail to take into account the “herd immunity” that comes from having more self-driving automobiles on the road.
For instance, one of the situations they fault where an autonomous vehicle wouldn’t be effective is situations from another vehicle that happen too quickly to be prevented. Of course though, the higher the rate of autonomous vehicles on the road, the lower the instance of this circumstance would be.
The IIHS also dives into discussion about whether self-driving vehicles would purposefully break the law (as in travel faster than the posted speed limit), as speed correlates heavily with accident survivability.
The study certainly creates some interesting discussions for the automotive industry about autonomous vehicles, and we suspect the work here sets the stage for the IIHS to create a rating system for future autonomous vehicle systems.
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