Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles on Operation and Maintenance of Minnesota Roads

As autonomous vehicle technology evolves, transportation agencies want to understand how road maintenance and traffic operations may also need to evolve. Fully autonomous vehicles (AVs), though not quite road-ready, are progressing. “Local transportation agencies and MnDOT need to understand the implications of autonomous vehicles on the daily operation of our roads. Investigators manually drove when lane markings were covered but still gathered data measuring the detection quality of the lateral controller. The vehicle’s autonomous mode was good at matching a lead vehicle’s speed but at slower speeds, the speed changes caused lurching.