Autonomous vehicles and traffic accidents

Traffic accidents are a national public health crisis that result in multiple injuries and fatalities. Conventional vehicle crashes are largely attributed to human errors, but autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the ability to minimize human involvement and improve road safety. To assure the safe operation of these vehicles, extensive field and simulation experiments are being conducted, and this study delves into their impact on traffic accidents and injuries by providing a thorough review of the relevant literature on this topic, as well as an evaluation of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) crash data to understand how AVs function on public roadways. The moral ramifications of AVs and unavoidable collisions are also addressed. The results of this research revealed that AVs are more likely to be involved in rear-end collisions but are not the faulty party in most accidents, which supports the premise that they improve road safety. Although they are designed to reduce accidents, AVs may nevertheless get into unavoidable collisions. Manufacturers could try to program the vehicles with shared ethical standards to handle this issue, or they could develop a flexible computational strategy that considers a wide range of ethical standards. Transportation experts will gain a thorough understanding of AV collisions and interactions in a mixed environment through this review, and AV manufacturers and legislators will gain greater insight into the moral and legal ramifications of inevitable crashes.