The US authority NHTSA has published statistics on accidents with partially to fully automated cars for the first time. The US electric car manufacturer Tesla reports the largest proportion of accidents with partially automated functions to the US authorities. Since the introduction of a corresponding reporting obligation in June 2021, the US transportation authority NHTSA has received 392 accident reports from all car manufacturers. Tesla alone accounted for 273 and Honda for 90.
However, NHTSA cautions against considering the nine-page statistic (PDF) as "representative of all accidents. "Because reporting an accident depends on whether a manufacturer ever finds out about it. Therefore, vendors like Tesla with advanced data logging and telemetry systems would be more likely to learn about and report such accidents. The figures from the NHTSA also do not show how many vehicles with such functions the individual manufacturers have put on the road in the meantime.
According to NHTSA, some accidents with active Level 2 systems may not have been reported because the reporting agency was unaware of them. In addition, it can happen that the drivers do not indicate whether a corresponding system was active. In addition, an incident can be reported multiple times. For example, the car manufacturer and the provider of the assistance system. If the accidents were not recognized as identical due to missing data, they appeared twice in the statistics.
Six fatal accidents
Such systems are usually adaptive cruise control systems with steering assistants, such as those Tesla calls "autopilot." However, drivers must still be able to take the wheel at all times.
Six of the 392 incidents were fatal, and five resulted in serious injuries. There were 116 collisions with other vehicles. With nearly 43,000 road deaths in the US in 2021, the involvement of Level 2 vehicles in fatal accidents seems relatively small.
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