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Another voice: Lessons from the Tesla crash

 
Published July 11, 2016

A recent fatal crash in Florida involving a Tesla Model S is an example of how a new technology designed to make cars safer could, in some cases, make them more dangerous. These risks, however, could be minimized with better testing and regulations.

Tesla says that the wrecked car's assisted-driving system, called Autopilot, did not detect a white semitrailer truck when — against a bright sky — it turned in front of the car. The driver, Joshua Brown, who died in the crash, also did not hit the brakes, possibly because he was distracted.

More than 35,200 people were killed in car crashes in this country last year, up 7.7 percent from 2014. People caused most of those crashes. Driverless cars could help reduce that toll substantially, but those vehicles are still years away. In the meantime, many car companies are trying to improve safety in other ways. For example, some systems, primarily found in luxury cars like Teslas, can slow or stop cars when drivers are not paying attention.

Tesla's electric cars are not self-driving, but when the Autopilot system is engaged it can keep the car in a lane, adjust its speed to keep up with traffic and brake to avoid collisions. Tesla says audio and visual alerts warn drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and watch the road. If a driver is unresponsive to the alerts, the car is programmed to slow itself to a stop.

Such warnings aren't sufficient, though; some Tesla drivers, as shown in videos on YouTube, have even gotten into the back seat while the car was moving. Such reckless behavior threatens not just the drivers but everyone else on the road, too.

It's not surprising that technology that helps drivers can lull them into thinking they need not pay attention at all. Chris Urmson, who heads Google's driverless car project, said in a TED talk last year that when his company tested a driver assistance system some drivers became so dangerously distracted that Google pulled back on that concept. It has decided to focus its efforts on fully self-driving cars instead.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should study how automakers can minimize driver distraction. This will become more urgent as advanced systems become available in cars made for the mass market.

The agency plans to issue voluntary guidelines on driverless cars this summer. It should also establish minimum standards for driver assistance features and a testing protocol for these systems. And the agency needs to hasten development of a communications system it has been working on for several years that would allow cars to transmit their location, speed and other data to one another. If that system had been in place, Brown might have survived.

Federal officials could take lessons from the history of air bags and the lack of strong regulations. After air bags were installed widely in cars, it became clear that they could be deadly to women and children because the bags inflated with too much force. That prompted the traffic safety agency to set new rules that reduced the force of the bags, changed how the devices were tested and required that they not inflate in low-speed crashes.

The agency does not yet have regulations for driverless cars or cars that have driver assistance systems. But when officials do put rules in place, they will have to update them regularly as they learn about how the technology works in practice. Automation should save lives. But nobody should expect these vehicles to be risk-free.