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Driving to Safety: How Many Miles of Driving Would It Take to Demonstrate Autonomous Vehicle Reliability?

Authors: Kalra, Nidhi, Paddock, Susan M.

Published: 2016 (Technical Report)

Source: RAND Corporation

DOI: 10.7249/RR1478

Summary

Abstract

How safe are autonomous vehicles? The answer is crucial for developing sound policies to govern their deployment. This report evaluates whether it is practical to test-drive autonomous vehicles to assess their safety. We find that it would take hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles of test-driving to provide clear statistical evidence of autonomous vehicle safety, suggesting it is not a practical approach.