Enhancing Safety Measures for Automated Vehicles on Roads

Literature Review
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Automated vehicles are meant to share the available infrastructure with the human driven
vehicles. With the different interactions of the vessels on the infrastructure, the safety measured
in the AVs need to be improved to enhance the safety measures. Drivers with driven cars have
raised their key concerns on the safety when interacting with these AVs (Fischer-Wolfarth &
Meyer 2014). Interaction and communication between fully autonomous vehicles and human
driven cars is important in analyzing the safety measures on the roads. The presence of the
human driven cars and AVs on the same roads means that the traffic enforcement rules will
always exist to enhance the safety (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 2016). The
different authorities will have the mandate to ensure that the safety is enhanced on such roads.
Traffic safety issues and communication will be able to enhance the safe operation and
movement of the AVs on the roads. Dikmen, Burns and University of Waterloo (2017), were
able to conclude that external measures are necessary to ensure that conflict issues are solved in
advance between the AVs and the human driven cars. The decision making process for the
drivers should not at any point be able to conflict that of the AVs. Since the AVs cannot learn the
decisions of the drivers, it is recommended that the drivers have to understand the operation of
the AVs and enhance the safety on the roads.
According to Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), (2016), AVs are able to exist at
different levels and therefore their safety factors are influenced by different factors. Rom level 1
to level 5 of the AVs, the vehicles have different specific characteristics which will influence the
design of the safety measures to be put up. The analysis of the AVs at these different levels will
ensure that the road users and able to understand their operations (Liu & Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers 2017). Some key crashes have been able to happen over the past and
this has raised serious concern over the safety of the AV technology. The level of automation is a

key influencer on the safety measures of the AVs. The control of the crashes therefore needs to
be controlled with proper communication channels for the AVs (Kockelman, Texas, United
States., & University of Texas at Austin 2016). Constant monitoring of the different AVs is
required to ensure that the safety measures are achieved. Moreover, the AVs, which involve key
AVs such as connected vehicles involve different communications which are means to enhance
the safety measures (Boyer, California & CTC & Associates 2014). Communication occurs at
different levels such as the vehicle-to-vehicle communication and vehicle-to-infrastructure and
cloud communication. The main aim of all these communications is to ensure that the safety on
the roads is enhanced.
To ensure effective communication is achieved, the AVs have to receive signals from the
other parties such as the moving vehicles, infrastructure and even the cloud. The information will
facilitate the decision making for the AVs and ensure viable decisions are made (In Valavanis &
In Vachtsevanos 2016).). The infrastructure needs to be fitted with proper communication
channels which will help the AVs in making decisions. The current infrastructure systems are
most designed to cater for the human driven cars. Therefore in order to meet the expected level
of safety on the infrastructure when sing the AVs, there is need to fit new technologies on the
roads. Moreover, the AVs are able to trace the other AVs through the available communication
channels. The human driven cars are able to lack the relevant communication technologies which
will enhance the operation and safety of the AVs. The AVs are able to understand the decisions
they make key decisions on enhancing safety on the roadways. To achieve high safety, the AVs
should therefore be able to communicate with other non-AVs. The human drives cars for
instance need proper signals which will ensure that drivers and AVs make decisions which go
hand in hand (Smith & Stanford University 2012). Moreover, the infrastructure needs the same