American roads are full of dangers. According to the Department of Transportation (DoT), 37,461 people died in traffic accidents in the United States in 2016, a 5.6% increase from 2015. This is down from 1970, when roughly 60,000 people died in traffic accidents in the United States. The number of fatalities has decreased thanks to added safety features such as seat belts and airbags, and new technology for autonomous vehicles could save even more by eliminating driver error.
Department of Transportation researchers estimate that fully autonomous vehicles (also known as self-driving cars) could reduce road fatalities by up to 94 percent by eliminating accidents caused by human error. Using the 2016 figures as a base, multiplying 37,461 by 10 means there could be 374,610 potential deaths over 10 years, of which 94 percent, or 352,133, could be prevented by eliminating driver error with fully autonomous cars.
And according to the World Health Organization, 1.25 million people died in road accidents worldwide in 2013, meaning fully self-driving cars could save millions of lives worldwide every decade. The 94 percent figure doesn’t apply to developing countries, where some accidents are caused by dangerous roads rather than driver error, but self-driving cars still have the potential to save many lives, IDC analyst Mark Zanoni said.
“Most people, most experts, would say automated technology has a good chance of preventing crashes that are related to human error. We have hard numbers that show roughly 94 percent of fatal crashes in the United States are attributable to or caused by human error,” said John Maddox, CEO of the American Center for Mobility.
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Wayne Powell, Toyota’s North American vice president of electrical engineering and connected technology, said older drivers and teenagers are likely to particularly benefit because self-driving cars can monitor conditions that drivers themselves cannot.
“Teenage drivers are typically in a higher-risk category. If you put teenage drivers in a car that will keep them safe, they’re less likely to make bad choices, and that can have immediate benefits,” Powell said.
People are optimistic about self-driving car technology because it works well in areas where humans struggle: “For example, human error often involves a lack of attention — texting, eating, talking to a kid in the back seat, being distracted in some way, or it could be that your driving ability is impaired, or you’re driving in difficult conditions, like a dark night in a city area with pedestrians,” Maddox said.
Always be alert and always calm
Cars with self-driving technology are equipped with sensors that keep them alert. “The car is always looking for pedestrians. It’s always looking for the edge of the road. It’s always looking at the car in front of it. It’s not distracted or drunk. I think that’s the main reason why most experts say that automation definitely has the potential to significantly reduce fatalities due to human error,” Maddox said.
However, there is a learning curve as drivers of cars equipped with autonomous technology operate in the same environment as drivers in cars without any level of automation. The five levels of autonomous driving defined by the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) provide a range of levels of autonomy that drivers can choose from. At level 1, certain functions such as steering and acceleration are performed automatically by the car, while at level 3 the autonomous system begins to monitor the driving environment.
Sometimes, drivers can become irritated by slow-moving vehicles that are actually self-driving cars, even though other drivers are unaware of them. And frustrated drivers often behave aggressively, which can lead to accidents. Maddox said he has been in a Level 2 self-driving car and witnessed aggressive drivers trying to avoid slow-moving cars.
“Really, the jury is still out. [on the safety of autonomous vehicles]”You need a lot of data. We know a lot about human-caused accidents because we’ve been studying them for 100 years. But we don’t have the same level or the same scope of data for autonomous vehicles. We don’t even come close. So to really see the impact, we need to collect and analyze a lot of data,” Maddox said.
“It would take years to collect data comparable to what we have today, but the good news is that autonomous cars are data collection machines. That’s how they work – they collect data about their environment and other road users. So, if we can use that data correctly and effectively, we don’t need to wait 100 years. The data that these vehicles have and don’t have on board will make the data collection and analysis process much faster,” he said.
Not every vehicle on the road needs to be self-driving to realize safety benefits, said Carrie Morton, associate director of the University of Michigan’s Mcity Autonomous Vehicle Test Facility, which says benefits can be realized from earlier levels of automation.
“I think for almost every mistake that humans make, there’s an opportunity for automation and artificial intelligence to replace that flawed behavior with a safe behavior,” Morton said.
Susan Beardsley, a senior analyst at ABI Research, said the types of accidents that self-driving cars could potentially avoid include front-end collisions, which real-world tests have shown to reduce by 40 percent.
City infrastructure will change to accommodate autonomous vehicles. First, by providing electric vehicle (EV) stations. Many vehicles will be electric because EVs have a lower total cost of operation, said Paul Stith, director of transformational technology strategy and innovation at Black & Veatch. The firm outlined several strategies in its 2018 report on smart cities and utilities.
Cities will need to be prepared to invest in EV charging station infrastructure and the proper communications fabric to collect data from autonomous vehicles on the road. “Each vehicle will need to transmit terabytes of data,” Stith said.
One thing to keep in mind is that initially, there will still be accidents with autonomous vehicles. “Aviation is very safe, but in the early days of aviation, there were a lot of accidents. Traditional cars also had a lot more in the early days. As new things get better and better, whether it’s an FDA drug or a new surgical procedure, they get safer. But when a new product is first released, it may break down, but eventually it can get better,” Zanoni said.
Note: John Maddox, CEO of the American Center for Mobility, is not related to Teena Maddox, a senior writer at TechRepublic.
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Image: iStockphoto/zoff-photo
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