From Green Car Congress:
"A new report, “Automated Vehicle Crash Rate Comparison Using Naturalistic Data,” performed by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and commissioned by Google, shows that the crash rates for self-driving cars are lower than the national crash rate of conventional cars.
"A new report, “Automated Vehicle Crash Rate Comparison Using Naturalistic Data,” performed by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and commissioned by Google, shows that the crash rates for self-driving cars are lower than the national crash rate of conventional cars.
Results show that when data is adjusted for unreported crashes and take into account accident severity, the national crash rate for conventional vehicles is higher than the crash rate of self-driving cars."
Old news (January 2016), but new news to me. "Level 1" is the least severe form of crash, "Level 2" is more severe, and "Level 3" is most severe (these are not the SAE automation levels). The article notes that there is not enough data on Level 3 crashes to draw a firm conclusion:
"Current data suggest that conventional vehicles may have higher rates of more severe crashes than self-driving cars, but given the small overall number of crashes for the self-driving car at these levels, there is insufficient data to draw this conclusion with strong confidence.
However, there is statistically-significant data that suggest less severe events may happen at significantly lower rates for self-driving cars than conventional vehicles."
However, there is statistically-significant data that suggest less severe events may happen at significantly lower rates for self-driving cars than conventional vehicles."
