The Challenges of Autonomous Vehicles In Malaysia: From The Perspective Of Motorcycle Traffic Crashes

The Level 3 autonomous vehicle (AV) is now a reality on the public roads. While the emergence of AV is to eliminate the traffic crashes due to human error by 90%, the unexpected or errant drivings on the roads would, however lead to traffic crashes as the operation of AVs are depending on the artificial intelligence, which involve constantly teaching the computer to learn. In Malaysia, motorcycle fatalities accounted for about 60% of the total traffic fatalities, of which the majority of the fatalities were due to human errors. - The presence of motorcyclists in the traffic stream then becomes challenge to the operation of AVs due to the unpredictable and inconsistent behaviour of the motorcyclists. Therefore, to ensure the safe deployment of AVs in the country, this study is taken to unveil the characteristics of certain traffic crashes involving motorcyclists. The findings show that as high as 40% of the motorcycle casualties were due to the motorcycles’ faults. Careless driving, speeding, dangerous overtaking and turning are among the causal factors. The findings shed important insights to AV software programm developers in the process of detecting and processing necessary response plans. Besides, the car makers can also propose more crashworthiness vehicles from the perspective of vulnerable road users.