Valuing the Safety Benefits of Connected and Automated Vehicle Technologies

Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technologies have a promising future in improving traffic safety, including mitigating crash severity and decreasing the possibility of crashes by offering warnings to drivers and/or assuming vehicle control in dangerous situations. Given the complexities of technology interactions and crash details, the overall safety impacts of multiple CAV technologies have not yet been estimated. This research seeks to fill that gap by using the most current U.S. General Estimates System crash records to estimate the economic and functional-years crash-related savings from each CAV application. Safety benefits of Forward Collision Warning, Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control, Do Not Pass Warning, Control Lost Warning, Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems, Electronic Stability Control, and other safety-related CAV-type technologies are estimated here. Results suggest that eleven CAV technologies, such as Forward Collision Warning, when combined with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control, and Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems, can save Americans $76 billion each year (along with almost 740,000 functional-life-years saved per year). These estimates are based on pre-crash scenarios that depict the critical event occurring immediately prior to a crash (e.g., rear-end and intersection related situations) and under conservative effectiveness scenario assumptions; the savings are due to crash avoidance and/or moderation of crash severities. Among the various combinations of driving situations and technology applications, Forward Collision Warning coupled with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control is anticipated to offer the biggest safety benefits, by saving more than $53 billion (in economic costs) and 497,100 functional person-years in 2013.