Joe Young, a media relations associate for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, demonstrates a front crash prevention test on a 2018 Tesla Model 3 at the IIHS-HLDI Vehicle Research Center in Ruckersville, Virginia, in 2019.Amanda Voisard/Reuters
All high-tech safety features in new cars are not created equal, and sorting through the marketing hype and confusing terminology is about as easy as untangling a spider’s web. To make matters worse, these driver-assistance systems may increase the risk of accidents if they lack proper safeguards.
Help is, thankfully, on the way for car shoppers. The U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – the same independent organization behind the well-known Top Safety Pick ratings – will soon begin rating the safeguards built into advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). This should help drivers cut through the marketing jargon to figure out which cars are most capable of keeping them out of trouble. And that could make roads safer for everyone.
Advanced driver-assistance systems aren’t exactly new. Tesla introduced its Autopilot system in 2015.
They use a combination of cameras and sensors to help the vehicle and its driver recognize and avoid dangerous situations. They typically include features such as lane-departure warning or correction, cross-traffic collision warning, blind-spot detection and so on, right up to automatic braking and hands-free cruise control.
They go by many names: Tesla’s Autopilot, Volvo’s Pilot Assist, Ford’s BlueCruise, BMW’s Driving Assistant Professional, General Motors’ Super Cruise, and on and on. You might also see this technology labelled as a partially automated driving system, a Level 2 system or as a driver-support system. Each ADAS is different, but under certain circumstances, they can enable drivers to take their feet and hands off the controls while driving.
“Partial automation systems may make long drives seem like less of a burden, but there is no evidence that they make driving safer,” IIHS president David Harkey said in a statement announcing the new rating scheme. “In fact, the opposite may be the case if systems lack adequate safeguards.” The institute goes on to note what everyone who watches the car industry already knows: “Some manufacturers have oversold the capabilities of their systems.”
The first IIHS ratings will be out this year, but the institute has already said none of the technology currently available meets all of its testing criteria.
The criteria themselves are telling. Rather than try to settle whether, say, GM’s steering-assist is more accurate than Tesla’s, or if Autopilot is better than UltraCruise, the IIHS is only concerned with how well each partially automated vehicle helps its driver stay focused on the road. That makes sense, because the driver is still who matters here.
It seems this can’t be repeated enough, so let’s say it again: In every vehicle you can buy today in Canada, the fleshy human driver is still the one in charge.
Case in point: A Tesla driver using Autopilot was recently charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter by California prosecutors after the driver ran a red light and crashed into another car, killing two occupants. The Washington Post reported this as the first case of a driver being charged with a felony in the United States for a fatal crash involving the use of a partially automated driving system. In this tragic case, the driver faces jail time, not Tesla’s Autopilot.
Apart from egregious examples of intentional ADAS misuse, such as drivers watching TV on their phones while whizzing down the highway, even drivers with the best of intentions can sometimes be lulled into placing too much trust in the technology.
“The way many of these systems operate gives people the impression that they’re capable of doing more than they really are. But even when drivers understand the limitations of partial automation, their minds can still wander,” IIHS research scientist Alexandra Mueller said in the statement.
That’s where a driver-monitoring system (DMS) can help, and that’s what the IIHS is really rating here. A DMS watches you, to make sure your focus doesn’t wander, while you’re watching the ADAS. The idea is to mitigate the potential shortcomings of driver assists to extract the maximum safety benefit.
Long story short: You want the car with the best DMS, and that’s what these new IIHS rankings will help you find.
To earn a “good” rating from the IIHS, cars will have to monitor the driver’s gaze and hand position, and issue multiple escalating alerts to encourage an inattentive driver to watch the road. If the alerts don’t work, cars need some kind of emergency procedure in case the driver doesn’t respond.
It seems the IIHS won’t be testing how well each DMS tracks a driver’s gaze, but the new rating system is nevertheless a step in the right direction. These ratings, which are set to begin rolling out later this year, will certainly be helpful for anyone shopping for a new vehicle.
Yes, it’s unnerving to know a car is tracking your eye movements using cameras inside the cabin, but I promise it’s much more unnerving to crash because your mind wandered while using adaptive cruise control.
As many others have written, DMS is the key to unlocking the full potential of ADAS. In Europe, driver monitoring will be required on all new vehicles within the decade. It can’t come soon enough.
The real trick will be making an effective DMS that’s not so annoying that people will want to switch it off, but that’s another story.
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