Safety Enhancement by Automated Driving: What are the Relevant Scenarios?

Abstract

Automated driving offers great possibilities in traffic safety advancement. However, evidence of safety cannot be provided by current validation methods. One promising solution to overcome the approval trap (Winner, 2015) could be the scenario-based approach. Unfortunately, this approach still results in a huge number of test cases. One possible way out is to show the current, incorrect path in the argumentation and strategy of vehicle automation, and focus on the systemic mechanisms of road traffic safety. This paper therefore argues the case for defining relevant scenarios and analysing them systemically in order to ultimately reduce the test cases. The relevant scenarios are based on the strengths and weaknesses, in terms of the driving task, for both the human driver and automation. Finally, scenarios as criteria for exclusion are being proposed in order to systemically assess the contribution of the human driver and automation to road safety.

Functional Resonance Analysis in an Overtaking Situation in Road Traffic: Comparing the Performance Variability Mechanisms between Human and Automation

“…Therefore, overtaking situations represent accident black spots on rural roads, offering great potential for road safety improvement. Additionally, overtaking situations are classified as a relevant scenario category for a scenario-based validation of AD [33]. Third, according to Netzer [63], overtaking is a very complex traffic process with a variety of influencing factors involving several different subtasks, such as swerving, adjusting speed, merging, and the interaction of at least two drivers.…”

“…However, the historical development of the scientific study of safety points out two fundamental concepts where safety is concerned: the traditional thinking about safety, also called safety-I [29], which is based on the Newtonian and reductionist approach [30], and the modern view of risk and safety management, also called safety-II [29], which follows a complexity-oriented holistic approach [31] based on Resilience Engineering (RE) [32]. A critical perspective on the two safety perspectives concerning AD and road safety by Grabbe et al [12,33] unveiled that the safety argumentation, as well as the safety assessment of AD, is largely safety-I driven, and the safety-II perspective is strongly neglected. Thus, they requested an urgent application of this safety view.…”