The State of Autonomous Vehicle Safety

The inclusion of assisted driving, which aids the driver of a car with braking or steering in specific situations, has been the norm for newly manufactured automobiles for a while now. Fully autonomous driving, however, is still not considered ready for the mass market, even though the development and deployment of robotaxis in select cities in China and the U.S. have been advancing at a steady pace. 

One major roadblock often brought up by critics is safety issues, which led to the suspension of the driverless testing permits for General Motors' AV subsidiary Cruise in San Francisco in 2023 after an accident with a pedestrian. The safety of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is also, in part, reflected in their crash/collision rate compared to regular passenger cars.

In 2022, 1,552 AVs driving 5.7 million miles were reported registered for testing in California. These AVs were involved in 150 collisions throughout the year, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles' (DMV) Autonomous Vehicle Collision Reports, which puts AVs at a crash rate of 96.7 per 1,000 vehicles and 26.3 per million vehicle miles. Statista calculations with data from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the California Highway Patrol show that the overall rate of crashes per 1,000 vehicles in California stood at 7.0 in 2022, while the crash rate per million miles traveled came to 0.7. Looking at the same rates for all motor vehicles in the U.S., the crash rates were 20.9 and 1.9, respectively.

The high figures for AVs don't necessarily translate to reckless driving behavior by autonomous cars. Crash reports for 2022 show that most collisions are minor and are often caused by other traffic participants trying to swerve around the AV, being distracted or impatient. Ten collision reports filed in 2022 included the participation of bicyclists, pedestrians or e-scooters, while the rest involved motorcycles, trucks or cars. AV makers are also held to a higher standard when reporting collisions. 

The overall traffic crashes on public roads aggregated by the California Highway Patrol and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that form the basis for the calculations for the crash rates for all motor vehicles in California and in the United States are, on the other hand, estimates and only counted when police are involved. This makes it likely that the real collision figures are considerably higher.