Safety benefits of automated vehicles: Extended findings from accident research for development, validation and testing

In his meta-analysis, Thomas Winkle documents exemplary analyses of potential safety-enhancing vehicle systems with low degrees of automation. However, a safety prognosis of highly or fully automated vehicles depends on assumptions, as so far no series applications of such features exist. For testing methods to develop and validate safe automated vehicles with reasonable expenditure, the author recommends combining worldwide traffic accident-, weather-, vehicle operation data and traffic simulations. Based on these findings, a realistic evaluation of internationally prospective, and statistically relevant real world traffic scenarios as well as error processes and stochastic models can be analysed (in combination with virtual tests in laboratories and driving simulators) to control critical driving situations.