Autonomous Vehicle Engineering - July 2022 - 3

The Navigator
We finally have some data on ADAS!
For too many years, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) took a laissez-faire
approach to advanced driver-assistance
systems (ADAS) and automated-driving systems
(ADS). That changed in June 2021 when the U.S.
road safety regulator issued an order requiring
automakers, suppliers, and ADS developers to
provide data on crashes where these systems were
active before or during a crash on public roads.
NHTSA recently released a trove of data collected
in the first eleven months of this effort.
The purpose of the mandate was to build
Unfortunately,
an understanding of the efficacy of automation
technology ranging from SAE Level
2 systems that control speed and
steering to fully automated vehicles.
Longer-term, the agency may build
on this data-gathering effort, with
the aim to (hopefully) begin a rule
making process that leads to setting
some standards for this technology.
ADAS began appearing on
mainstream vehicles nearly a decade ago and
despite the proliferation of basic versions of the
technology, our roads have become less safe. It's
clear that without standards, these technologies
have been more of a feature checklist item than
an actual safety benefit.
A dive into the actual data reveals some fascinating
insights. The data was split into two groups,
one for vehicles with L2 ADAS and the other for
L3 to L5 ADS. To the surprise of no one except
the hardcore Tesla fans who believe Elon Musk's
claims about the brand's AutoPilot and " Full SelfDriving, "
Tesla vehicles accounted for 70% of the
392 reported ADAS crashes. A genuine surprise,
however, was seeing Honda reporting 90 crashes.
It's debatable if Honda even should have been
included, since the Honda Sensing ADAS package
doesn't tightly integrate lane-keeping assistance
and adaptive cruise control under a common
control regime, as other automakers are doing.
However, the company submitted data, so it's
worth a look.
We also need
telemetry data
on when ADAS
activates to
prevent a crash.
I believe NHTSA made a
mistake in allowing companies the option to flag
the crash descriptions as " confidential business
information (CBI). " Anything flagged as CBI
was redacted from the published dataset. Tesla
continued its history of being opaque when
discussing statistics for its AutoPilot driver-assist
system, so all 273 records had the crash descriptions
redacted.
Honda, conversely, left the crash descriptions
involving its vehicles open to read. Given that there
has been no media reporting of issues with Honda
ADAS, I thought it was worth scrutinizing. It turns
out that although LKAS or ACC was
active just before or during the impact,
it does not appear to have been a
factor in any of the crashes. Instead,
most were incidents of being struck
by another vehicle at an intersection,
being rear-ended or something else
irrelevant to ADAS operation.
Since GM has never previously
provided any data on crashes involving its handsfree
Super Cruise, it was interesting to see two
reports included in the NHTSA data. In both cases,
the Super Cruise system was manually overridden
by the driver seconds before impact. In one case,
a driver slammed on the brakes before striking a
deer. In the other, the driver admitted hitting the
steering wheel with a knee that caused the system
to deactivate. The vehicle then ran into a median.
There are opportunities for both the industry
and regulators to learn from these reports.
Understanding the scenarios involved could lead
to improvements in the technology. But going
forward, NHTSA should no longer allow companies
to redact crash description information - this data
is too important to our understanding of the technology
and manufacturers should not be allowed
to keep the scenarios private.
We also need telemetry data on when ADAS
activates to prevent a crash. Hopefully, this will lead
to some common-sense regulation of ADAS and
ADS sooner rather than later. ■
Sam Abuelsamid
Principal Analyst,
eMobility
Guidehouse Insights
sam.abuelsamid@
guidehouse.com
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING
July 2022 3
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