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The Cost of Waiting

An estimate of the deaths and serious injuries that each year of delay in deploying automated driving costs the EU, country by country.

In preparationLast updated

Research question

How many road deaths and serious injuries does each year of delay in deploying automated driving cost each EU member state?

Method

We start from road deaths and serious injuries in each member state, split by road user and road type. The data come from national statistics and the EU’s CARE database.

We then take the crash reductions measured for automated systems in published data. For each result we state which crash types and which roads it covers.

We compare scenarios in which deployment starts in different years. The difference between the scenarios is the cost of waiting.

What we will publish

Ranges, with every assumption in a public spreadsheet. Results from US cities may not carry over to European roads, and the paper will say where they cannot.

First estimate

≈390 lives

lost by 2035 for each year that automated driving reaches EU roads later. A first estimate, with a range of 160 to 620

Delta-V calculationA first estimate from our paper The Cost of Waiting. It starts from 19,400 deaths in 2025. Car occupants are 44% of EU road deaths and 60% of deaths in crashes involving cars. So about 73% of deaths involve a car, and we use 70%. The share of new cars sold with automated driving follows McKinsey's worldwide scenarios. That is 4%, 12% or 20% in 2030, and 17%, 37% or 57% in 2035. Sales stay at 10.8 million cars a year and the fleet at 256 million. We assume these cars drive 50% of their kilometres automated, with 80% fewer fatal crashes on those kilometres. A roll-out that starts one year later costs about 390 lives by 2035. The slow and fast scenarios give 160 and 620. With 50% fewer fatal crashes instead of 80%, the estimate is about 250.

SourcesEuropean Commission, “EU road deaths drop by 3% in 2025”, 24 March 2026; European Road Safety Observatory, Facts and Figures: Car occupants, 2023; ACEA, Vehicles on European roads, 15 January 2026; ACEA, “New car registrations: +1.8% in 2025; battery-electric 17.4% market share”, 27 January 2026; McKinsey & Company, “Autonomous driving’s future: Convenient and connected”, 6 January 2023

Link to this figure

This estimate uses EU-wide figures and stated assumptions. The paper will refine it country by country and publish every input in a spreadsheet.

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