Despite what you may have read, a fully self-driving vehicle likely remains many years away from hitting a showroom near you — but semi-autonomous features like adaptive cruise control and lane-centering steering are becoming increasingly common. Automakers including BMW, Ford, GM and Toyota are taking this technology one step further by introducing hands-free driving capability. And as more semi-autonomous driving features are introduced, the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety is launching a new program to evaluate their safeguards.
IIHS will focus on the driver-attention warnings that accompany semi-autonomous systems. The agency will not measure additional system functionality, such as how well a vehicle’s camera or radar system identifies obstacles. Following the same format as the agency’s headlight evaluation, safeguards will be rated good, acceptable, marginal or poor. To earn a good rating, a vehicle’s system must issue multiple types of alerts when it identifies that the driver is looking away from the road or hasn’t touched the steering wheel for an extended period of time. Evidence shows that the more alerts, the better, so the agency will look for a mix of warnings including chimes, vibrations, the pulsing of the brakes or a tug on the driver’s seat belt. The longer the driver ignores the alerts, the more aggressive they should become, with more frequent and urgent warnings, IIHS says. If the driver remains inattentive, the vehicle should slow or come to a stop, and the driver should be locked out of using the system entirely.
Some semi-autonomous systems employ a driver-facing camera to monitor the driver’s gaze and issue alerts when distracted driving is detected. For example, GM’s Super Cruise offers a progression of three alerts if it detects inattention: First, a light bar flashes green on the steering wheel; second, the bar turns red if no action is taken; finally, a voice prompt is issued and the vehicle slows and brakes while the hands-free system is disengaged. However, even these may not be enough to earn GM vehicles a passing grade. In fact, according to IIHS spokesperson Joe Young, most vehicles would not currently achieve a good rating.
