There are high expectations for autonomous vehicles as analternative and complementary means of public transportation in rural areas. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the introduction of autonomous vehicles on regional traffic safety. The possibility of collision between pedestrians or bicyclists and vehicles at an intersection with poor visibility and no stop restrictions on the vehicle side was modeled, and this model was aplyed to evaluate the safety of the area around the non-signalized intersections in Iijima-Naganonaka-Cho, Akita City, Akita Prefecture. The results showed that compared to conventional vehicles (normal response), automated vehicles had 98.5% fewer pedestrian crashes, 25.7% fewer bicycle crashes, 93.3% fewer pedestrian crashes without a low speed range for crash avoidance, and 66.7% fewer bicycle crashes without a low speed range for crash avoidance. It was found that the introduction of autonomous vehicles is expected to improve safety in the region.
