The potential benefits of self driving vehicles include

• A. Improved traffic flow
• B. Increased fuel consumption
• C. Higher accident rates
• D. Reduced road maintenance costs

Answer: (A)

Smooth, coordinated driving is the idea here. Self-driving vehicles can share data and respond quickly to each other and to traffic signals, maintaining steady speeds, reducing abrupt braking, and coordinating lane changes. This lowers stop-and-go driving and can increase the number of vehicles that move through a given stretch of road, improving overall traffic flow and reducing congestion.

The other outcomes aren’t benefits here. Increasing fuel consumption runs counter to the efficiency goals of autonomous systems, which aim to optimize energy use. Higher accident rates would be the opposite of what automated driving seeks to achieve, since removing human error should cut crashes. Reduced road maintenance costs could happen in some scenarios, but it’s not as direct or universal a benefit as the improvement in traffic flow.