# Data-driven Diffusion Models for Enhancing Safety in Autonomous Vehicle Traffic Simulations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.04809 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04809/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 11 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [Diffusion-LM Improves Controllable Text Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14217/) (2022)
- [Diffusion Models in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04747/) (2022)
- [Guided Conditional Diffusion for Controllable Traffic Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.17366/) (2022)
- [Stochastic Trajectory Prediction via Motion Indeterminacy Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13777/) (2022)
- [Generating Useful Accident-Prone Driving Scenarios via a Learned Traffic Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05077/) (2021)
- [SafeBench: A Benchmarking Platform for Safety Evaluation of Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09682/) (2022)
- [WcDT: World-centric Diffusion Transformer for Traffic Scene Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02082/) (2024)
- [Generating Driving Scenes with Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18452/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Foundation Models in Autonomous Driving: A Survey on Scenario Generation and Scenario Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11526/) (2025)
- [Non-differentiable Reward Optimization for Diffusion-based Autonomous Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12977/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Safety-critical traffic scenarios are integral to the development and validation of autonomous driving systems. These scenarios provide crucial insights into vehicle responses under high-risk conditions rarely encountered in real-world settings. Recent advancements in critical scenario generation have demonstrated the superiority of diffusion-based approaches over traditional generative models in terms of effectiveness and realism. However, current diffusion-based methods fail to adequately address the complexity of driver behavior and traffic density information, both of which significantly influence driver decision-making processes. In this work, we present a novel approach to overcome these limitations by introducing adversarial guidance functions for diffusion models that incorporate behavior complexity and traffic density, thereby enhancing the generation of more effective and realistic safety-critical traffic scenarios. The proposed method is evaluated on two evaluation metrics: effectiveness and realism.The proposed method is evaluated on two evaluation metrics: effectiveness and realism, demonstrating better efficacy as compared to other state-of-the-art methods.