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In the first large-scale data release on these evolving systems, the federal government’s top auto safety regulator announced on Wednesday that nearly 400 car crashes in the United States over 10 months involved advanced driver assistance technologies.

Six people were killed and five seriously injured in 392 incidents cataloged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from July 1 to May 15 last year. Teslas working with Autopilot, the more ambitious Full Self-Driving mode or any of their associated component features, had 273 crashes.

The disclosures are part of the federal agency’s broader effort to determine the safety of advanced driving systems that are increasingly common. Beyond the futuristic appeal of self-driving cars, numerous automakers have launched automated components in recent years, including features that allow you to take your hands off the wheel under certain conditions and assist you with parallel parking.

In Wednesday’s broadcast, NHTSA announced that Honda vehicles were involved in 90 incidents and Subarus was involved in 10. Ford Motor, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai and Porsche each reported five or fewer incidents.

“These technologies show great promise in improving security, but we need to understand how these tools perform in real-world situations,” said Steven Cliff, director of the agency. “This will help our researchers quickly identify emerging potential defect trends.”

Speaking to reporters before Wednesday’s broadcast, Dr. Cliff cautioned against drawing conclusions from the data collected so far, noting that not every manufacturer takes into account factors such as the number of cars on the road and equipped with these types. your technologies.

“The data may raise more questions than they answer,” he said.

About 830,000 Tesla cars in the United States are equipped with Autopilot or the company’s other driver-assist technology – this offers an explanation for Tesla vehicles accounting for about 70 percent of reported crashes.

Ford, GM, BMW, and others have similar advanced systems that allow hands-free driving on highways under certain conditions, but far fewer of these models have been sold. But these companies have sold millions of cars in the past two decades equipped with individual components of driver assistance systems. Components include adaptive cruise control, called lane keeping, which helps drivers stay in their lane, which maintains the car’s speed and brakes automatically when traffic ahead slows.

Dr. Cliff noted that NHTSA will continue to collect data on crashes involving such features and technologies, noting that the agency will use them as a guide when creating any rules or requirements on how they should be designed and used.

The data was collected under an order issued by NHTSA a year ago that required automakers to report accidents involving cars equipped with advanced driver assistance systems, also known as ADAS or Level-2 automated driving systems.

The order was due in part to accidents and fatalities over the past six years involving Teslas working on Autopilot. Last week NHTSA expands investigation Whether the Autopilot has technological and design flaws that create safety risks. The agency is investigating 35 crashes that occurred when Autopilot was activated, including nine that resulted in 14 deaths since 2014. It also launched a preliminary investigation into 16 incidents where Teslas crashed into Autopilot-controlled emergency vehicles. stopped and the lights flashed.

Under the mandate issued last year, NHTSA also collected data on accidents or incidents involving fully automatic vehicles, most of which are still in development but have been tested on public roads. Manufacturers of these vehicles include GM, Ford, and other traditional automakers, as well as tech companies like Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company.

NHTSA found that such vehicles were involved in 130 incidents. One resulted in serious, 15 minor or moderate injury, and 108 resulted in no injury. Most crashes involving autonomous vehicles involved fender benders or bumps into the bumpers, as they were mostly operated at low speeds and in city driving.

Waymo, which operates a fleet of driverless taxis in Arizona, was part of the 62 incident. GM’s Cruise division, which has just begun offering driverless taxi rides in San Francisco, is embroiled in 23. A minor accident involving an automated test vehicle made by a start-up Pony.ai resulted in the recall of three of the company’s tests. Tools to fix software.

NHTSA’s order was an unusually bold move for the regulator, which in recent years has been criticized for not being more assertive towards automakers.

“The agency is collecting information to determine if these systems pose an unreasonable risk to safety in the field,” said J. Christian Gerdes, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford University.

An advanced driver assistance system can steer, brake and accelerate vehicles on its own, but drivers must always be alert and ready to take control of the vehicle.

Safety experts are worried because these systems allow drivers to relinquish active control of the car and can lead them to think their car is driving them. When technology fails or cannot cope with a particular situation, drivers may not be ready to take control quickly.

NHTSA’s mandate required companies to provide data on accidents that occurred when advanced driver assistance systems and automated technologies were used within 30 seconds of an impact. While this data provides a broader picture of the behavior of these systems than ever before, it is still difficult to determine whether they reduce collisions or otherwise increase security.

The agency did not collect data that would allow researchers to easily determine whether using these systems is safer than turning them off in the same situations.

“Question: What is the baseline against which we compare this data?” Stanford professor, who was the first chief of innovation for the Department of Transportation, of which NHTSA was a part from 2016 to 2017. said Gerdes.

But some experts say it shouldn’t be the goal to compare these systems with human driving.

Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said: “When a Boeing 737 falls from the sky, ‘Is it more or less from the sky than other planes?’ We don’t ask,” he said. engineering schools specializing in emerging transport technologies.

“Accidents on our roads are equivalent to several plane crashes each week,” he added. “Comparison is not necessarily what we want. If there are accidents that these drive systems contribute – accidents that would not otherwise happen – that is a potentially solvable problem that we need to be aware of.”