By Chuck Martin
The deployment of self-driving cars could only prevent about a third of all crashes, according to a new study.
That would be the likely result if automated systems drive too much like people, based on the study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The study comprised an examination of 5,000 police-reported crashes from the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey.
A national survey of police-reported crashes found that driver error is the final failure in the events leading to more than nine of 10 crashes.
However, the IIHS analysis found that only a third of those crashes resulted from mistakes that automated vehicles would be expected to avoid because they have more accurate perception than human drivers “and aren’t vulnerable to incapacitation.”
“It’s likely that fully self-driving cars will eventually identify hazards better than people, but we found that this alone would not prevent the bulk of crashes,” says Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research and a co-author of the study.
The study determined that some crashes were unavoidable, like those caused by a vehicle failure, such as a blowout.
