The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) is warning drivers that there is so such thing as a self-driving car, following a new study that reveals many drivers surveyed treat their partially automated vehicle as such. The IIHSA says its new study found that drivers who use partial automation on a regular basis often treat their vehicles as fully self-driving, despite widespread warnings and numerous high-profile crash reports.
The study highlights three systems: Cadillac Super Cruise, Nissan/INFINITI ProPILOt Assist and Tesla Autopilot. Researchers say that regular users of these three systems said they were more likely to eat or text while using their partial automation systems than while driving unassisted.
The IIHS says it's even more worrying that:
“The big-picture message here is that the early adopters of these systems still have a poor understanding of the technology’s limits,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “But we also see clear differences among the three owner populations. It’s possible that system design and marketing are adding to these misconceptions.”
The IIHS says systems rely on two main automation features to assist in highway driving: Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Centering.
The IIHS cautions that none of the current systems are designed to replace a human driver or to make it safe for a driver to perform other activities that take their focus away from the road. Researchers say that track tests and real-world crashes have provided ample evidence that today’s partial automation systems struggle to recognize and react to many common driving situations and road features. It also cites previous research that's also shown that the high level of assistance they provide makes it hard for drivers to remain engaged and tempts them to turn their attention to other things.
ADAS Systems
For this study, IIHS researchers surveyed around 600 Cadillac, Nissan/INFINITI and Tesla owners (about 200 each) who routinely use their vehicle’s partial automation system. The IIHS says it chose these particular systems because they reflect the diversity of designs on the market.
Although all three systems use sensors in the steering wheel to detect when the driver’s hands are on it, the IIHS says Cadillac’s Super Cruise is designed to allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel for extended periods, whereas the other two systems require drivers to keep their hands on the wheel essentially all the time. Super Cruise uses a driver-facing camera to monitor whether the driver is looking at the road, and as of 2021 Tesla’s Autopilot does as well.
The three systems use different methods to recall the attention of the driver when it strays as well as different escalation sequences and fail-safe measures. Only Autopilot and Super Cruise include a lockout feature that disables the system and prevents drivers from immediately restarting it as a final step in their escalation sequences.
ProPILOT Assist allows the driver to make manual steering adjustments without automatically suspending the lane centering feature, while Autopilot’s lane centering feature deactivates and Super Cruise’s temporarily suspends operation until the driver has stopped steering.
Drivers seem to have the most confidence in the Super Cruise and AutoPilot systems. The IIHS says its survey illustrates some striking differences in how the systems’ owners use them, too.
Researchers say system design and marketing likely contributed to those differences. When it comes to Super Cruise, TV commercials focus on its hands-free capabilities by depicting drivers patting their laps and clapping their hands along with a song. When it comes to Autopilot the IIHS says the name evokes a system used by commercial airplanes and implies its more capable than it really is. As for ProPILOT Assist, the IIHS says the name suggests that it’s an assistance feature, not meant to replace the driver.
The IIHS also suggests demographics play a roll and influenced survey responses. The majority of Super Cruise and Autopilot owners were male, while both sexes were more or less equally represented among the ProPILOT owner group. In terms of age:
“These results from frequent users of three different partial automation systems once again drive home the need for robust, multifaceted safeguards,” said IIHS Research Scientist Alexandra Mueller, the lead author of the study and main architect of the Institute’s upcoming safeguards rating program. “Many of these drivers said they had experiences where they had to suddenly take over the driving because the automation did something unexpected, sometimes while they were doing something they were not supposed to.”
The IIHS says its survey also indicates many drivers using some of the systems fail to respond to warnings from their vehicle to pay attention. Or that they repeatedly violated operating procedures often enough to trigger a feature lookout.
The IIHS cites that around 40 percent of Autopilot and Super Cruise (the two systems with lockout features) users report their systems had at some point switched off while they were driving and would not reactivate. Some of those drivers confused a temporary suspension of the feature with the lockout procedure.
Meanwhile, a substantial portion of ProPILOT Assist users reported that they had never even received an attention reminder.
While annoying for a portion of drivers, a vast majority reported that attention reminders were helpful and made them feel safer using the technology. Similarly, the IIHS says while a slim majority of the Autopilot and Super Cruise owners who experienced system lockouts said they found them irritating, most of the survey respondents agreed that lockouts would also make them feel safer once the purpose of the feature was explained to them.
“The broad acceptance of attention reminders and system lockouts suggests not only that they have the potential to make it safer to use partial automation, but also that they could be implemented more widely to help combat driver distraction in general,” said Mueller.