William Simpson
Self-driving cars have been crowned the future of the automotive industry, but in their current form, the software that powers these vehicles is stuck in the present.
A significant flaw in autonomous driving systems has not yet been resolved, according to experts. When there is the potential for an accident, systems often hand control back to the human driver without enough time for someone to avoid a collision, automotive industry experts told CBS MoneyWatch. In other words, the software doesn’t know how to react when the unexpected happens, like an animal running into the road.
The main failure occurred at the beginning of this year, when a Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV collided with a 56-year-old Texas man who was driving a Honda CR-V. The Mach-E had its partially autonomous feature – which Ford calls BlueCruise – activated during the accident, in which the CR-V driver died. On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it is investigating the role BlueCruise played in causing the crash in Texas.
But Monday isn’t the first time the NHTSA has launched an investigation into autonomous vehicles. The BlueCruise probe follows a NHTSA 2022 investigation into what caused robotaxis run by General Motors’ self-driving software Cruise to stall or stop moving altogether. The NHTSA also launched several investigations in accidents involving Tesla Autopilot feature dating from 2021.
The NHTSA investigations are proof that while autonomous driving is considered the next competitive frontier for automakers, the technology has not yet matured enough for widespread use, CBS News transportation safety analyst Robert Sumwalt told CBS MoneyWatch .
“It’s still not a perfect science,” said Sumwalt, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “Right now it’s like trying to send a rocket to the moon in 1910, when the Wright brothers were still working on their planes.”
The ingredients of vehicle autonomy
The autonomous driving mode that most automakers have today is known in the industry as Level 2. There are six increasing levels of autonomy overall.
Essentially, Level 2 is a vehicle with an on-board computer equipped with a map in its database. The vehicle is also equipped with camera sensors, radars, lidar (light detection and ranging) and ultrasonic systems, which work together to detect what is happening around the vehicle in real time.
“The maps they have can drive just fine if there’s nothing on the road,” Sean Tucker, senior editor at Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, told CBS MoneyWatch. “It’s a problem if someone stops in the middle of a highway or if a deer runs away in the middle of the road. That’s the hard part for the computer.”
Ford’s BlueCruise is a Level 2 system that allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel while the vehicle controls steering, braking and acceleration on highways.
Like other major automakers, Ford is betting big on autonomous technology. The company last year created its own internal division called Latitude AI, which is helping the automaker develop Level 3 autonomous systems.
During a company event in 2023, Ford electric vehicle chief Doug Field outlined how advancing to Level 3 would help the automaker and its customers.
“We want L3 to work everywhere BlueCruise works,” he said. “The main use cases we see are stop-and-go traffic – which is really tedious and actually causes a lot of accidents because people forget what’s going on – and then long cruise trips in steady state, which, same thing, you can get bored or sleepy.”
Race for the Holy Grail
Self-driving cars are much more advanced now compared to when they were first developed, said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research. Still, they need to be able to navigate, not just humans driving cars and trucks, but also people making unpredictable movements on scooters, skateboards and bicycles, Prasad told CBS MoneyWatch.
Automakers are testing their self-driving cars on closed tracks as much as they can, but they can advance the technology more quickly by putting the vehicles on a real road, Sumwalt said. But real-world testing, he said, comes at a high price — accidents, deaths and federal investigations.
In fact, Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru and Tesla have a variation of Level 2 autonomous driving. They are all in a technological arms race to perfect autonomous driving and claim all the benefits that come with it, say experts. experts.
“If you can be first in this Holy Grail of autonomy, you will get a lot of attention,” said Jonathan Elfalan, director of vehicle testing at Edmunds. “And you’ll probably make a profit from it.”
