It found that human drivers are only safer when light levels are low or when a vehicle turns. This is attributed to the challenges autonomous vehicle sensors face in these situations.
As the study explains, the media has extensively reported accidents involving autonomous vehicles in recent years, creating the impression that such vehicles may be less safe than those driven by humans., 94% of all car accidents are due to human error. While it’s easy to say we can achieve a future without car accidents by eliminating human drivers, the reality is more complicated.
For the study, the researchers needed some actual statistics to get a good comparison. To compare crash rates, the study analyzed crash data for 2,100 autonomous vehicles and 35,113 human-driven vehicles under various scenarios.were generally safer than those driven by humans under most circumstances. In other words, they found that an autonomous car’s likelihood of an accident was lower than in human-driven vehicles under similar driving conditions.
They found two scenarios where human-driven cars were safer: at dawn/dusk and when turning. The reason appears to be that autonomous vehicles’ sensors struggled in low-light conditions such as sunset or sunrise and during complex turning situations.