Over the next decade, self-driving cars could help eliminate roadway crashes and injuries across the United States. A new study in JAMA Surgery suggests that self-driving cars (AVs) could prevent more than one million injuries between 2025 and 2035, or one-third of all road-related injuries during that period. Car crashes remain a public health epidemic, killing more than 120 people per day in the US and accounting for more than 2.

6 million ER visits in 2022. Apart from the human tragedy, the country loses more than $470 billion in medical costs and lost productivity due to accidents, so road safety is an urgent issue. Autonomous vehicles could prevent more than one million US road injuries by 2035, study finds As JAMA Surgery reports, researchers analyzed US national road traffic injury data from 2009 to 2023 and projected trends for 2025-2035 with a linear regression model.

They looked at how many collective miles an AV would travel and how safe such vehicles are compared to humans. The proportion of AV penetrance varied from 1% to 10%, while the safety benefit ranged from 50% to 80%. In a best-case scenario, AVs could eliminate more than 1 million injuries nationally.

Researchers say self-driving cars could reduce accidents by 80%, but more real-world data is needed Most accidents are caused by human errors of distraction or impairment, and self-driving cars could reduce them. According to early data from companies like Waymo, AVs can reduce accident rates by up to 80% compared to human drivers. The researchers stressed that additional real-world data will be needed to improve these estimates.

Further work focusing on highways will be needed, as these types of roads represent the location of the most serious injury and fatal crashes, to more comprehensively understand the public health burden associated with AVs.