Self-Driving Cars Have More Crashes
Burney Simpson
Self-driving vehicles have a higher crash rate than conventional vehicles though they haven’t been at fault for the crashes, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI).
Self-driving vehicles have an overall crash rate that is nearly five times that of conventional vehicles, according to “A Preliminary Analysis of Real-World Crashes Involving Self-Driving Vehicles.” (Links to an abstract).
The self-driving vehicles also had an injury rate about four times that of conventional vehicles, though the severity of the injuries is less that of standard vehicles. There has been no recorded fatality from a crash involving a self-driving vehicle since tests began in 2009.
However, all the crashes involving self-driving cars were the fault of the driver of the conventional vehicle, UMTRI reports.
In their study, the researchers warned that their findings were preliminary because the data covered only 50 self-driving vehicles traveling about 1.2 million miles, mostly in the warmer areas around Silicon Valley.
Results for those vehicles were compared with 269 million conventional vehicles that had traveled 3 trillion miles across all 50 states in a mix of geographic and weather conditions.
In addition, many crashes involving conventional vehicles go unreported. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that 60 percent of property-damage only crashes and 24 percent of injury crashes involving conventional vehicles go unreported every year, the UMTRI researchers noted.
The researchers developed their findings by analyzing the on-road safety record of self-driving vehicles released by Audi, Delphi, and Google, three of the 10 firms conducting tests in California.
The data covered 1.2 million miles traveled by the Google car, primarily in Silicon Valley though some around Austin, Texas, along with the 3,400 mile cross country trip taken by Delphi, and a 550 mile trip from San Francisco to Las Vegas conducted by Audi.
Crashes resulting in injuries for the self-driving cars were 10 percent lower than for conventional vehicles, while the self-driving cars had 10 percent more crashes that resulted in property damage.
The study authors are Brandon Schoettle, and Michael Sivak, UMTRI’s director of sustainable worldwide transportation.
