SAE Update - April 2023 - 31

ENGINEERING EVENTS
APRIL 18-20, 2023
DETROIT
TM
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
Police-reported Crashes per 100M VMT
All CrASHES
iNJUrY FATAliTY
be safer, right? So " safe enough "
needs to be better than a drunk
driver, at least.
Even if not drunk, what if every
16 18 20 25 30 40 50 60 70 80+
DriVEr AGE
Driver crash rates by age.
As we dig into this topic, let's start with a baseline
statistic. In round numbers, approximately 40,000
people die on public roads in the U.S. annually, with a
ballpark number of one fatal crash per 100M miles.
There are nearly 3 million injuries of varying severity,
and many more non-injury crashes beyond that. A
simplistic utilitarian view is to say that as long as AVs
cause fewer fatalities per mile and fewer life-altering
injuries than the current tragic road safety situation,
that technology is safe enough. But that broad-stroke
baseline metric approach does not survive a close
look at the details.
Safer than which human, where?
Digging deeper, which human driver are we safer than?
The baseline metric includes drunk driving, speeding,
texting, and not wearing seatbelts - perhaps all in the
same crash. It seems pretty reasonable to want an AV
that is at least as safe as an unimpaired, undistracted
driver behaving responsibly on the road. Not driving
drunk is one of the reasons so often given that AVs will
UPDATE
AV drove like a 16-year-old with
a new license? Perhaps we'd
prefer the equivalent of an
experienced middle-aged driver
with a crash rate many times
lower. Or even a 70-year-old with
experience and maturity that
more than compensates for
slower reflexes (seriously - look
at the data in the figure). While
one hopes that AVs will get
better at driving over time, we
probably don't want to suffer
several years of having a fleet of
robotaxis all driving like
teenagers in our urban cores.
Location also matters for
safety. Individual state fatality
rates range from 0.51 per 100M
miles (Massachusetts) to 1.73
(South Carolina), with a U.S.
average of 1.11 based on 2019
data. Within Pennsylvania (at
1.03 overall), fatalities are five
times more frequent per mile on
rural state highways than on the
PA Turnpike. An AV restricted to
only operating during the day on
a fenced super-highway needs to
be many times safer than one
dodging deer at night on a highspeed
winding country road, just
April 2023
31
Philip Koopman, based on AAA raw data

SAE Update - April 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SAE Update - April 2023

SAE Update - April 2023 - Cov1
SAE Update - April 2023 - Cov2
SAE Update - April 2023 - 1
SAE Update - April 2023 - 2
SAE Update - April 2023 - 3
SAE Update - April 2023 - 4
SAE Update - April 2023 - 5
SAE Update - April 2023 - 6
SAE Update - April 2023 - 7
SAE Update - April 2023 - 8
SAE Update - April 2023 - 9
SAE Update - April 2023 - 10
SAE Update - April 2023 - 11
SAE Update - April 2023 - 12
SAE Update - April 2023 - 13
SAE Update - April 2023 - 14
SAE Update - April 2023 - 15
SAE Update - April 2023 - 16
SAE Update - April 2023 - 17
SAE Update - April 2023 - 18
SAE Update - April 2023 - 19
SAE Update - April 2023 - 20
SAE Update - April 2023 - 21
SAE Update - April 2023 - 22
SAE Update - April 2023 - 23
SAE Update - April 2023 - 24
SAE Update - April 2023 - 25
SAE Update - April 2023 - 26
SAE Update - April 2023 - 27
SAE Update - April 2023 - 28
SAE Update - April 2023 - 29
SAE Update - April 2023 - 30
SAE Update - April 2023 - 31
SAE Update - April 2023 - 32
SAE Update - April 2023 - 33
SAE Update - April 2023 - 34
SAE Update - April 2023 - 35
SAE Update - April 2023 - 36
SAE Update - April 2023 - 37
SAE Update - April 2023 - 38
SAE Update - April 2023 - 39
SAE Update - April 2023 - 40
SAE Update - April 2023 - 41
SAE Update - April 2023 - 42
SAE Update - April 2023 - 43
SAE Update - April 2023 - 44
SAE Update - April 2023 - 45
SAE Update - April 2023 - 46
SAE Update - April 2023 - 47
SAE Update - April 2023 - 48
SAE Update - April 2023 - 49
SAE Update - April 2023 - 50
SAE Update - April 2023 - 51
SAE Update - April 2023 - 52
SAE Update - April 2023 - 53
SAE Update - April 2023 - 54
SAE Update - April 2023 - 55
SAE Update - April 2023 - 56
SAE Update - April 2023 - 57
SAE Update - April 2023 - 58
SAE Update - April 2023 - 59
SAE Update - April 2023 - 60
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