Los autonomous vehicles They are safer than human-driven cars in many driving situations, but they suffer more accidents at specific times, such as turning maneuvers or in low-light conditions, both at dawn and dusk.
These are the main conclusions of a study that has compared the data of 2,100 accidents suffered by autonomous vehicles and 35,113 that occurred with vehicles driven by humans between 2016 and 2022, mainly in California (United States).
The research is published in the journal Nature Communications and, according to the authors, supports the idea that autonomous technology could improve road safety – by reducing human errors – while identifying specific areas for improvement.
Understanding the conditions under which autonomous vehicles perform better or worse than human drivers is crucial to maximizing their safety benefits, recalls a summary in the magazine.
In routine driving tasks
Researchers Mohamed Abdel-Aty and Shengxuan Ding, from the University of Central Florida, conducted an analysis comparing accident data collected from 2,100 autonomous vehicles and 35,133 human-driven vehicles.
They found that, in general, autonomous vehicles are safer and less likely to be involved in accidents when performing routine driving tasks, such as maintaining lane position and adjusting to the flow of traffic.
In addition, robotic vehicles were also shown to be safer in rear-end and lateral accidents, which were 0.5 and 0.2 times less frequent, respectively.
However, autonomous vehicles appear to be more prone to accidents in specific situations, such as during low visibility conditions at dawn or dusk and when executing turns (5.25 and 1.98 times more than human-driven vehicles, respectively).
These are areas, scientists say, where self-driving technology may need further refinement to consistently match or surpass human driving capabilities.
“Our research reveals crash risk disparities between autonomous vehicles and human-driven vehicles, which will inform future development of autonomous technology and safety improvements,” they write in their paper.
However, the researchers warn that their conclusions have limitations, so further research is necessary to better understand the safety differences between both types of driving.
For Luis Ignacio Hojas, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, the work is very useful due to the abundant information it offers. The study has a quantitative approach and is ‘highly recommended’ for people who work with databases, in particular, for insurance companies.
For those who do it in qualitative aspects, in particular in the analysis of risk situations and the problems they entail, the article is less interesting because due to its approach it provides little detailed information, he explains to Science Media Centre, a platform of scientific resources for journalists.
In his opinion, the most important limitation of the article is the result of the type of statistical data it provides, since it does not describe in detail the systems used at the different levels of driving and the problems that occurred in the accidents.
Regarding the issue of safety and efficiency, this researcher, who is not involved in the work, says he has no doubt: autonomous cars in the long term will be much safer than human drivers because the latter are unstable and dangerous for various reasons. reasons.
“I think autonomous vehicles will be safer and more efficient, but I think they have difficult social implementation in countries like Spain,” he concludes.