Infrastructure requirements for the safe operation of automated vehicles: Opinions from experts and stakeholders

The need to future-proof road transport networks is becoming increasingly urgent in order to take full advantage of automated vehicles (AVs). It is now vital to understand the basic road infrastructure requirements of AVs in order to assess the readiness of the existing road network and prepare the roads for the safe operation of these vehicles. However, current literature on this subject is limited. As such this research seeks to understand the desired infrastructure-related requirements of highly automated vehicles (SAE Level 4) for safe operation based on a survey with experts and stakeholders. On the basis of 168 expert responses from 29 countries, this study presents stakeholders’ views on: (1) deployment paths of Level 4 automated driving, (2) the concept of road certification for automated driving, (3) basic road infrastructure elements for the safe operation of automated driving, and (4) factors affecting safe operations of Level 4 automated driving. The findings show that different types of stakeholders (e.g. academics, infrastructure owners and operators, and vehicle and information technology developers) have broadly similar views on most criteria requiring consideration in the early stages of automated driving implementation. However, there is no clear consensus on issues regarding operating constraints on road networks and some are in favour of waiting for the technology to mature or until it proves beneficial to overall community goals and then acting on the infrastructure needs.