Safety implications of the introduction of Autonomous Vehicles on rural roads

Abstract

With the increasing research of autonomous vehicles coming closer to introduction in society, it is necessary to research the effects on traffic safety for the introduction of these types of vehicles for rural roads. A lot of research has been done for the introduction of AVs on highway roads, researching the introduction for rural roads is the next step for the implementation of AVs in society. With this thesis the goal is to explore the traffic safety effects on rural roads with the help of agent-based modeling. An agent-based model was created to examine the effects of the penetration rate of AVs on traffic safety and how the characteristics of rural roads would affect traffic safety in this regard. Two main conclusions were drawn from the results. The first is that the introduction of AVs would lead to a lesser heterogeneity of speed between vehicles, this would in turn result in fewer casualties. The second conclusion is a conclusion drawn based on the emergent behavior of the model, the introduction of AVs would lead to less headway for AVs. Future research could be undertaken to study effects of overtakes on vehicle platoons.