Autonomous Vehicles to reduce the number of vehicle collisions
According to the U.S.A. Highway Traffic Safety Administration (2016), motor vehicle collisions are one of the leading causes of death, as approximately two million crashes happen each year. In order to cope with this emerging problem, a significant amount of research has been done. Research revealed the main cause of all the accidents. And maybe Autonomous Vehicles can help!
Introduction
Reasons for having such huge amount of vehicle collisions are investigated thoroughly in one of the latest Traffic Safety reports by Singh et al. (2015). This report suggests that the main reason for the high number of vehicle crashes is assigned to the driver in 94% of all the crashes! This fact raises numerous questions, but one of the most intriguing is whether eliminating humans in the process of driving could help us to reduce the number of accidents. And the solution could be to use the state-of-the-art Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology.
AVs overcome human errors like inattention, external distractions, driving too fast, etc. They manage to do that through the use of various sensors and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Several accidents involving self-driving cars did occur (Tesla’s car accident, 2018), and showed that we are not there yet. However, I strongly believe that Autonomous Vehicles are a steady long-term solution to combat high collision rates.
Human error
Driver’s inattention, internal and external distractions, inadequate surveillance, driving too fast, drinking or sleeping while driving are all significantly increasing the risk of an accident. Having such a huge number of accidents, and knowing the causes could help us change our perspective and come up with a better solution. We need a system in which we would minimize the risk of the accident happening by eliminating the common causes of vehicle collisions. Recently, the concept of the Autonomous Vehicles has been introduced. The core idea of AVs is to have high-quality sensors which will send the data about the surrounding to its brain. Artificial Intelligence then processes this data through various Machine Learning Algorithms, which enable the car to make informed decisions about the process of driving. By combining this with vehicle-to-vehicle and infrastructure-to-vehicle communication for different kinds of warnings, we could end up with more secure transportation systems.
Companies producing Autonomous Vehicles
The fact that Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and sensors evolved so much in a last couple of years enabled us to put these vehicles to test and see where can they bring us. To date, self-driving, autonomous vehicles traveled millions of miles on both test and public roads, and they are getting better every day. Companies like Google, Waymo, Tesla, Renault, and Volkswagen are investing billions of dollars to develop this concept even more and to leverage its benefits. They envisioned the safer future with significantly less accident happening on the road. I completely support their plans and ideas and believe that such future is possible.
Recent Accidents
However, there have been accidents involving self-driving vehicles and will be in the future. One of the examples is a car crash by a renowned car company, Tesla. The driver who drove his car on autopilot died. This example proved that self-driving mechanism does not stop all the accidents. Such a scenario would be impossible to occur. Nonetheless, Tesla Team explained in their report about the accident (2018) that U.S. Government over a year ago found that Autopilot reduces crash rates by 40%. They go on to argue that there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. On the other hand, for Tesla, there was only one fatality on every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. This is a tremendous improvement.
Future
We only see the accidents that did occur and pay no attention to ones that did not. Self-driving systems today caused some accidents. However, this number is much smaller than the number of accidents involving regular, manual-steering systems. Many people die every year due to different reasons in car crashes. I think that vehicles containing the intelligent self-driving system can and will replace the current vehicles with manual steering and decision-making. Autonomous Vehicles are the future, as they eliminate the most common causes of accidents, all characteristic to humans. This will lead to safer roads and AVs will save many human lives.
For Electric Autonomous Vehicles to really hit the road, proper charging infrastructure is needed. The team of researchers at Innopolis University is currently researching the possibilities of Electric AV charging using Distributed Ledger Technology and, more specifically, IOTA Cryptocurrency. To find out more about our research, please feel free to contact me.
References
- Singh, S. (2015). Critical reasons for crashes investigated in the national motor vehicle crash causation survey (No. DOT HS 812 115). https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812506
- Tesla Team (2018). An Update on Last Week’s Accident. Retrieved from https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2016). 2015 motor vehicle crashes: overview. Traffic safety facts research note, 2016, 1–9. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/812456
