road safety

A study has compared data from 2,100 accidents involving autonomous vehicles and just over 35,000 accidents involving human-driven vehicles between 2016 and 2022, mainly in California (US). Their findings are that autonomous vehicles are safer in many driving situations, but suffer more accidents in situations such as turning times or during dawn and dusk. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.  

Combining two types of cameras could enable autonomous vehicles to detect objects accurately and efficiently, say researchers in Switzerland in a study published in Nature. Autonomous vehicles need visual systems capable of detecting fast-moving objects without sacrificing image quality. The system described combines a colour camera with a reduced frame rate - to lower the bandwidth needed to process images - and an event camera, which detects fast movements - such as pedestrians or vehicles - and compensates for the higher latency of the colour camera.  

According to a study on the number of pedestrian accidents in Great Britain between 2013 and 2017, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, the risk of pedestrian crashes was twice as high for electric and hybrid vehicles as for petrol and diesel vehicles.