Exploring the Mechanism of Crashes with Autonomous Vehicles Using Machine Learning

The safety issue has become a critical obstacle that cannot be ignored in the marketization of autonomous vehicles (AVs). The objective of this study is to explore the mechanism of AV-involved crashes and analyze the impact of each feature on crash severity. We use the Apriori algorithm to explore the causal relationship between multiple factors to explore the mechanism of crashes. We use various machine learning models, including support vector machine (SVM), classification and regression tree (CART), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), to analyze the crash severity. Besides, we apply the Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) to interpret the importance of each factor. The results indicate that XGBoost obtains the best result (recall = 75%; G -mean = 67.82%). Both XGBoost and Apriori algorithm effectively provided meaningful insights about AV-involved crash characteristics and their relationship. Among all these features, vehicle damage, weather conditions, accident location, and driving mode are the most critical features. We found that most rear-end crashes are conventional vehicles bumping into the rear of AVs. Drivers should be extremely cautious when driving in fog, snow, and insufficient light. Besides, drivers should be careful when driving near intersections, especially in the autonomous driving mode.