This week, a United States Department of Transportation report details crashes experienced by advanced driver assistance systems in the past year or so. TeslaAdvanced features of, including Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, accounted for 70% of the nearly 400 incidents — more than previously known. The report may raise more questions about this safety technology than it answers, the researchers say, given the blind spots in the data.
The report examined systems that promise to eliminate some of the tedious or dangerous things of driving by automatically changing lanes, staying in lane, braking before a collision, slowing down before big turns on the road. roads and, in some cases, operate on highways without driver intervention. Systems include Ford’s Autopilot, BlueCruise, General Motors’ Super Cruise and Nissan’s ProPilot Assist. While it shows that these systems aren’t perfect, there’s still a lot to learn about how a host of new safety features actually work on the road.
That’s largely because automakers have different ways of submitting their crash data to the federal government. Some, like Tesla, BMW and GM, are able to pull detailed data from their cars wirelessly after an accident. That allows them to quickly comply with the government’s 24-hour reporting requirements. But others, like Toyota and Honda, don’t have these capabilities. Chris Martin, a spokesman for Honda USA, said in a statement that the automaker’s reports to the DOT were based on “unverified customer statements” about whether the driver assistance system whether their advanced is turned on when the crash occurs or not. The automaker can then pull “black box” data from its vehicles, but only with customer permission or as required by law enforcement, and only with wired equipment. dedicated.
Of the 426 crash reports detailed in government reporting data, only 60% came from the car’s telecommunications system. The remaining 40 percent is through customer reports and inquiries—sometimes distributed through widespread dealer networks—reports in the media and law enforcement. As a result, the report doesn’t allow anyone to make “bold” comparisons between safety features, said Bryan Reimer, who studies vehicle safety and automation at MIT’s AgeLab.
Even the data that the government collects is not put in full context. For example, the government doesn’t know how often a car with advanced assistance crashes per mile it drives. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which released the report, warned that some incidents could appear more than once in the data set. And automakers with high market shares and good reporting systems in place — Tesla in particular — are likely to be overrepresented in crash reports simply because they have more cars on the road.
The NHTSA report does not prevent automakers from providing more comprehensive data, said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the federal watchdog’s National Transportation Safety Board. “The last thing we want is to penalize manufacturers for collecting robust safety data,” she said in a statement. “What we want is data that tells us what safety improvements need to be made.”
Without that transparency, it’s hard for motorists to understand, compare, and even use the features that come with their vehicles — and for regulators to keep track of who’s doing what. “As we gather more data, NHTSA will be better able to identify any emerging risks or trends and learn more about how these technologies are performing in the real world,” said Steven Cliff, the agency’s administrator, said in a statement.
