As driverless car programs continued to be impeded by slow-moving progress and repeated safety controversies, automakers have turned to partially automated systems.
Some of them will seem familiar to most people with a relatively modern vehicle: adaptive and active cruise control, electronic stability controls, and parking assistance — those sensors that detect if you’re parking too closely to a curb or about to slam into a pedestrian — are all examples of the technology. Car companies tout their partially automated driving systems as a gateway to “a world with zero crashes” and making “roads safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.”
But according to a new report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), most of these programs aren’t up to snuff. The 65-year-old auto safety nonprofit tested 14 driver-assistant systems for driver monitoring, attention reminders and safety features; just one of the systems earned a passing grade.
The Lexus Teammate with Advanced Drive received an “acceptable” grade, the second-best score in the IIHS’s criteria. Only two — the General Motors Super Cruise and Nissan ProPILOT Assist with Navi-link — scored “marginal,” while the remaining 11 received the lowest score, “poor.”
Some of the systems that earned the poor rating included Ford Motor Co.’s BlueCruise and an Adaptive Cruise Control variant, Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving and Volvo’s Pilot Assist. But in better news for automakers, many did perform well in certain categories of the IIHS’s tests; for example, only GM’s Super Cruise and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving scored poor ratings for driver-involved lane changing, which helps drivers change lanes by monitoring passing cars and blind spots.
“[A] big area that we’re looking at as part of this is whether these systems allow you to be involved in the driving decisions that are being made,” IIHS president David Harkey told Quartz. “We do not think that it’s a good idea for the vehicle to make a maneuver without some confirmation on the part of the driver.”
Although the package deals aren’t didn’t test well, some standalone systems are worth it. Automatic emergency braking systems, for example, reduce vehicle front-to-rear crashes by about half, Harkey said.
“There’s no added benefit to having these types of systems on your car beyond what you’re gonna get with the single components such as automatic emergency braking,” Harkey added.
The IIHS said the rankings are intended to encourage companies to implement safeguards that can prevent drivers from getting distracted for too long or intentionally misusing the technology. None of the systems tested got a high rating for “driver monitoring.”
“And that’s really important, because you got to be able to know where the driver is looking, on the road in front of them or off the road,” Harkey said. “You’ve got to know if their hands are free, particularly for hands-free systems; whether their hands are filled with a cell phone or something else that may prevent them from taking control of the vehicle.”
Due to the limitations of the IIHS’s tests, some of the systems the group examined have already been upgraded or replaced by a newer model. Some of the companies have even reached out to the institute and agreed to change their systems, Harkey said.
Many automakers don’t advertise their packaged systems with safety in mind. Rather, they’re largely mentioned as convenience features dedicated to making driving easier, whether you’re in rush hour traffic in New York City or cruising down the highway on a road trip.
Tesla is the only carmaker tested by the IIHS that breaks from the pack. Its systems — Autopilot and Full Self-Driving — imply that drivers don’t really need to pay attention to the road; the company has actually been accused of false advertising by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and investigated by the state attorney general office over its marketing practices.
“[T]he data is unequivocal that supervised, Full Self-Driving is somewhere around four times safer,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in November. “Maybe more than than just be human driving by by themselves.