Drivers still must pay attention to their surroundings and, more importantly, be ready to take over at any time
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), there’s little evidence that partial automation — Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to you and I — are preventing collisions. “Everything we’re seeing tells us that partial automation is a convenience feature like power windows or heated seats rather than a safety technology,” says IIHS President David Harkey.
Although these partially automated additions will keep your car in the centre of its lane, slow down for vehicles in front and even navigate curves, they are, says the IIHS, “far from self-driving.” They can’t manage many routine roadway anomalies or traffic situations, so the drivers still must pay attention to their surroundings and, more importantly, be ready to take over at any time, should the system require an intervention. And, as Motor Mouth has previously pointed out, the IIHS is finding that said partial responsibility is “encouraging a false sense of security as well as inducing boredom.”
The IIHS report takes pains to point out the difference between partial automation and crash avoidance. The latter — like the aforementioned AEB, blind spot warning and lane departure prevention — only come into play when danger is predicted. Because they are unobtrusive — and largely unnoticed — in normal circumstances, most owners leave them active all the time.
Partial automation features, meanwhile, work constantly and therefore can be habit forming and cause drivers to tune out. On the other hand, “features that warn or intervene in an emergency” reduce the frequency of claims. Better yet, says the agency, the reductions in claims increase incrementally as one prevention tool is stacked on another.
Theoretically, partial automation should be also having a positive effect. Adaptive Cruise Control, for instance, maintains a set distance to the cars in front and should reduce risk. Ditto for lane centering which, the IIHS says, should help prevent side-swipes and run-off-road crashes.
There is a caveat to all this HLDI data, however, and it’s a big one. The two variables not constrained in these results were whether the partial automation systems were switched on and where the accidents occurred (automated driving assistance systems should potentially have more effect on wide-open roads than stop-and-go traffic).
When these variable were constrained through police-crash data, Jessica Cicchino, senior vice president for research at IIHS, found larger reduction thanks to partial automation. Front-to-rear crashes were 62% lower for Rogues with ProPILOT Assist than for vehicles without any crash avoidance systems and lane departure collisions were 44% lower for Rogues with ProPILOT Assist than for unequipped vehicles. Further digging, however, found that these benefits were only occurring on high-speed roads where the agency’s research shows that partial automation system are more likely to be engaged.
Interestingly, one of the telling differences between the two data is that in checking the police crashes, Cicchino found that the rate difference were greatest in the dark indicating that the one biggest benefit for opting for the premium equipment in these cars were the superior headlights included. From Nissan marketing materials, she ascertained that the 2018 and 2019 Rogues with ProPILOT Assist were more likely to be equipped headlights rated acceptable by the IIHS, which the agency says reduce single-vehicle nighttime crashes by about 15% by themselves.
Besides seemingly concluding that better headlights are superior crash prevention devices than partial automation, the researchers also wonder if newer such systems — the cars in this study were all five to 11 years old — might have superior partial self-driving abilities than older models.
On the other hand, the many years of data that have accumulated for these vehicles make the findings more compelling, Cicchino, says and that “with no clear evidence that partial automation is preventing crashes, users and regulators alike should not confuse it for a safety feature.” More important, she says, is the safeguards that “reduce the risk that drivers will zone out or engage in other distracting activities while partial automation is switched on.”
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