One of the major issues in VANETs is spectrum scarcity. The cognitive radio-based methods have the capability to handle the spectrum scarcity issues of VANETs effectively. The cognitive radio models allow the vehicles to access the available spectrum channels based on sensing opportunistically. The cognitive radio-based VANETs significantly maximizes the reliability and end-to-end delay performance. Thus, it is used to solve safety and infotainment issues and autonomous vehicle performance enhancements.