There's been a bit of chatter on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Self Driving systems lately as this technology becomes the next big thing in the automotive industry so I think it deserves its own thread away from the EV thread where it seems to get lumped due to Tesla being in most headlines surrounding the topic.
Todays interest stems around the NHTSA in the US releasing a report that led to headlines of "Tesla at the top of the chart" for accidents where ADAS was active. However, the NHTSA mentions in their own report that one shouldn't jump to conclusions just from this report as some companies (Tesla) more readily report their data compared to others. Tesla vehicles are always connected and Tesla has easy access to pull information from the vehicles whereas a Honda on the other hand can't actively report this information back to Honda, it's up to a human to bother to note that its ADAS system was active and report it.
The report also doesn't specify whether these ADAS systems were the cause of the accident they were involved in or whether they were just active when someone crashed into the vehicle. eg, it doesn't say whether someone in a Tesla had the TACC and Autosteer aspect of Autopilot active when someone ran a red light and t-boned the Tesla vs Autopilot was active and ran off the road into a tree.
I don't think it's a bad thing to investigate these systems but I do think it should be done in a way that doesn't create FUD for these systems that are genuinely helpful. Releasing vague stats without context is irresponsible, IMO.
-------
My own personal experience with Autopilot has been mostly positive with a number of impressive moments. For context, Autopilot in Tesla is the name for the collection of driver assistance safety features (such as automatic emergency braking, collision avoidance, etc) as well as the Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer features.
As an example, the other week I was driving on an urban street that had a median strip in the middle. A person was on the other side of the road and started to run out to cross. While running, they were looking towards the direction of traffic in the other lane and it didn't look like they were slowing down as they got to the median strip. As they were still running and looking the other way as they go to the median strip I was thinking that they weren't going to look my way and see that I was approaching so I was about to lift off the accelerator to prepare to stop but at the same time the car sounded its emergency alarm and highlighted the pedestrian in its visual representation of the world it sees as a bright red.
Now, this all happened just as the person was crossing into the median strip and well before they were crossing into my lane. The pedestrian did end up stopping within the median strip and didn't end up being an issue but to me, it seemed like Autopilot had done some pathing prediction for this person and had predicted as I had that this could be a hazard and sounded the alarm. It's instances like this that shows that these systems can save lives, and not just that of the occupants of the car with the ADAS system.
