Working paper on the road safety impacts of CCAM

LEVITATE aims to forecast impacts of developments related to Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM). Impacts are estimated for different so-called ‘sub use cases’ (SUCs) that reflect applications or interventions which can be implemented by policy makers. The impacts for the sub use cases are estimated by comparing the situation with intervention to the situation without intervention, i.e., the baseline scenario. The baseline scenario reflects the starting point for which increasing penetration levels of first cautious and later more ambitious automated vehicles (CAVs) are estimated over time. One of the relevant impact areas of CCAM is road safety.

This working document prepared by SWOV discusses in which way road safety is impacted by increasing penetration levels of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and 2) quantifies the road safety impacts of increasing penetration levels of CAVs as far as possible.

Read the working paper Road safety related impacts within the Levitate project »

Can the impacts of connected and automated vehicles be predicted?

A huge research effort is going on in order to develop connected and automated vehicles. Small-scale trials of automated vehicles in real traffic are already taking place. Can the societal impacts of a transition to fully connected and automated vehicles be predicted?

The answers to the question is that many of these impacts depend on the policies implemented to regulate the introduction of connected and automated vehicles. This applies particularly to two of the impacts that are difficult to predict: whether vehicle automation will be associated with a transition to electric vehicles, and whether it will be associated with a transition to shared mobility.
It is more likely that automated cars will be electric than that they will have combustion engines. However, to make a transition to electric cars more likely and speed it up, policies favouring electric cars may be necessary. Norwegian experience shows that a transition to electric cars can be stimulated by public policy.

Studies (e.g. Clayton et al. 2020) consistently show that individual use of automated cars is preferred to shared use. If the introduction of connected and automated cars is left to the market, it is likely that individual car ownership will continue at current rates. In that case, traffic is likely to increase, as the generalised cost of travel will be lower in automated cars than in manual cars, chiefly because the value of travel time savings is likely to become lower. Travel time is less burdensome and less wasted if it can be used to work or relax. An increase in traffic will reduce the benefits of connected and automated cars in terms of less congestion, fewer accidents and less emissions.

If this prediction is accepted, policies aimed at maximising the societal benefits of connected and automated cars may, perhaps paradoxically, need to counteract some of the private benefits of these cars. Experience shows that whenever transport becomes cheaper and more convenient, the demand for it increases. In economic terms, the societal benefit of an increase in travel demand is the increase in consumer surplus associated with it. However, as noted, an increase in travel demand increases the external impacts of travel in terms of congestion, accidents and pollution. Estimates of impacts made in LEVITATE suggest that even if there is an increase in traffic volume, there will still be a net gain in travel time, a reduction of accidents and a reduction of pollution. While the reductions are smaller than they would have been without increased traffic volume, they are not eliminated. Thus, all potential impacts remain favourable. In view of this, it is unlikely that policy makers will introduce controversial and often unpopular measures like road pricing or parking restrictions to curb the growth of traffic.

It is concluded that, at the current state of knowledge, it is predicted that connected and automated vehicles will lead to increased travel demand, but nevertheless reduce travel time, make travel time less wasteful, reduce accidents and reduce pollution, including global warming.

Read the whole paper, written by Rune Elvik »

Planning for automated vehicles

The session ‘Planning for automated vehicles’ was part of the POLIS Conference 2020, which took place online from 30 November to 3 December. How can cities prepare for automation or should automation prepare for cities? With a focus on policy, planning and capacity-building. The session was chaired by Anna Clark from EIT Urban Mobility.

Presentations and contributors:

  • Automated vehicles in Dutch cities: 3 actions you can do now to prepare yourself: Richard van der Wulp, City of Rotterdam
  • Roadmap towards automation of EMT buses: SHOW and AUTO-BUS Sergio Fernández Balaguer, EMT Madrid
  • Autonomous Vehicles: Stakeholder engagement and urban planning: Richard Laing, Robert Gordon University
  • Building the capacity of cities to plan for automation – The Co-Exist automation-ready framework: Wolfgang Backhaus, Rupprecht Consult
  • Supporting policy making and planning for automated vehicles – the LEVITATE policy support tool: Apostolos Ziakopoulos, National Transport University of Athens

Anna concludes the session as follows: “Planning is a very important part of ensuring that we get the outcomes and impacts that we want, so based on the city policy goals. Public policy is going to be what determines this, rather than just the vehicle techinolgy, but they do go hand in hand.”

The session was recorded and can be viewed below:

Watch now: Impact assessment of automated vehicles

The LEVITATE and CoEXist projects are developing knowledge and tools to help cities prepare for and steer the introduction of automated vehicles. The webinar, moderated by Suzanne Hoadley, provided insights into the methods developed for assessing the impacts of automated vehicles across a range of mobility domains and the findings from their application in real-life scenarios and using policy options such as parking regulation, road pricing and dedicated AV lanes.

Featured speakers were:

  • Dr. Hitesh Boghani, Senior Research Associate at Transport Safety Research Centre, Loughborough University (representing LEVITATE)
  • Dr. Johan Olstam, Senior Research Leader, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (representing CoEXist)
  • Prof. Andrew Morris, Professor of Human Factors in Transport Safety at Loughborough University (representing LEVITATE)

The webinar, which took place on 15 October, was a Polis initiative in cooperation with LEVITATE and CoEXist.