In this research report the potenzial societal benefits induced by advancing vehicle automation are investigated. On the one hand the potenzial for safety benefits is considered, on the other hand the potenzials for reducing fuel consumption and pollutant emissions and increasing traffic efficien-cy are investigated. The main objective of this research is to assess the potenzial of increasing road safety. Within this investigation, five different automated driving functions ranging from a Traffic Jam-Chauffeur to an Urban Robot-Taxi are examined for four different market penetrations (5%, 25%, 50%, 100%). For identifying the benefits with respect to road safety, methods incorporating the characteristics of automated driving functions are used. Hence, besides investigating the change of severity of the accident by using accident resimulations, the change of frequency of occurrence induced by automated driving is considered as well. This is in particularly necessary since automated driving functions in contrast to active safety systems continuously control the behavior of the vehicle. Thus, it is possible that certain accident scenarios (e.g. rear-end scenarios) will occur less frequently with the introduction of automated driving functions. These changes in frequency of occurrence of accident scenarios are analysed by using traffic simulations. After determining the effectiveness of the automated driving functions, they are projected and depicted over the whole territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. The results indicate that, e.g. a Motorway- Chauffeur at a market penetration of 50% has a potenzial for reducing about 30% of all accidents on German motorways resulting in personal injury. This equals 2% of all accidents with personal injuries on German roads. In order to estimate the potenzials of automated driving functions concerning the energy demand the distance related energy demand will be investigated. For this purpose, the effects of automated driving functions in larger traffic scenarios will be assessed and carried out by using traffic simulations. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting