Assessment of Benefits in Traffic Safety for Adoption of Automated Vehicle: a System Based Dynamic Model

Abstract The increasing upward trend of traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emission, fatalities in traffic crashes have been the instigating factors among the transport planner and policy makers. It eventually urges to seek for an advanced technology to ensure sustainable transport systems for last few decades. In these prevailing circumstances, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) have emerged as an epoch-making technology in combating traffic related issues. Road traffic safety is drawing more attention to be solved by deploying CAV technology. There are very few researches address the relationship between annual fatality reduction and CAV adoption. Therefore, this research work has been conducted to develop a mathematical model to investigate the role of CAVs in reducing crash severity and analyse the impact of CAV adoption by reducing traffic crash rate in Australia. To address the safety aspects of autonomous vehicle (AV), a system dynamic model has been developed considering only traffic safety related factors. The model outputs provide satisfactory results that address the defined objectives leading to the response of research questions. The base case provides an output of 70% annual fatality rate reduction by 2030 with the development in vehicle control. Additionally, different scenarios have been analysed to test the sensitivity of the model. The scenarios might help to formulate some policy to ensure smooth shift of AV adoption.