Casualty Actuarial Society E-Forum, Fall 2014-Volume 1 1 Restating the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey for Automated Vehicles Casualty Actuarial Society Automated Vehicles Task Force

leading up to a motor vehicle crash to determine what was causing automobile accidents. This study, which found that 93 % of accidents are caused by human error, is often referenced to justify and quantify automated vehicles ’ accident reduction potential. However, this study was never intended to be applied to automated vehicles. Currently celebrating its 100th year, the Casualty Actuarial Society fulfills its mission to advance actuarial science through a singular focus on research and education for property/casualty actuarial practice. Among its 6,200 members are experts in property-casualty insurance, reinsurance, finance, risk management, and enterprise risk management. The Casualty Actuarial Society has created an Automated Vehicles Task Force (CAS AVTF) to research the technology’s risks and their implications for insurance and risk management. To this end, the Task Force has re-evaluated the NMVCCS in the context of an automated vehicle world. It found that 49 % of accidents contain at least one limiting factor that could disable the technology or reduce its effectiveness. The safety of automated vehicles should not be determined by today’s standards; things that cause accidents today may or may not cause accidents in an automated vehicle era. Rather, things like the vehicle’s failure rate (after accounting for any fail-safes, infrastructure investments, and driver interactions) an