Data from the first year of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's project to track the safety of advanced driver assistance systems looks terrible forTesla. Its electric vehicles were involved in 70% of the reported crashes that involved Level 2 technologies.
The data was collected under the Standing General Order that was issued in June of last year. None of the fully automated vehicles currently on the market are available to consumers.
There are five levels of automation Two functions, adaptive cruise and lane keeping, are automated and still have a human driver in the loop at all times. Level 2 is an advanced driver assistance system.
There were three serious injuries and five deaths in the 273 crashes reported byTesla. Most other manufacturers only reported a handful of crashes and one death. Nissan didn't report a single thing.
Does that mean that owners of the Model 3 should trade in their car for a Nissan Leaf or ProPilot?
One might think that it is a simple question.
More ADAS-equipped cars from Nissan are on the road than from other manufacturers.
Nissan's ProPilot and GM's SuperCruise systems are limited to highways and can only be used on them. Without knowing the number of miles driven with each ADAS system in operation, and where, it's not possible to compare their relative levels of safety.
Most vehicles on the road don't have remote telematics that send vehicle data back to the factory, even though the Order required them to. Consumer complaints, law enforcement contacts, and media stories, all of which may not have accurately reported whether their ADAS systems were in use, were relied upon by the manufacturers of these cars.
When a vehicle crashes, the data from the vehicle's cellular and wi-fi connections is automatically reported to the driver. The majority of its crash reports were derived from such systems, compared to just a few from other companies.
The order required makers to include crash data 10 days after it was served. Three of its five fatal crashes, as well as all three of its serious ones, took place in the past year. It is not clear why the accidents were not reported toTesla months or years after they occurred. Honda had a few crashes before June 2021.
All of these variables seem to point in the same direction, but it's not possible to quantify their impact from the NHTSA data. Some Level 2 systems are more dangerous than others because of driver inattention. It is possible that the deployment ofTesla's autopilot is less competent and more dangerous than other ADAS technologies.
The data released today is a good start, but it doesn't give an apples-to-apples comparison of advanced vehicle safety. NHTSA provided a fruit bowl of data with a lot of caveats, making it hard for the public and experts to understand what is being reported. Any safety gaps and potential remedies can be identified with the help of independent analysis.
The final word on autopilot will have to wait for NHTSA's separate, ongoing and recently expanded investigation, which could potentially lead to a recall. No commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves, so NHTSA advises drivers with Level 2 systems in their cars.
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