Tesla Driverless Automotive Technology Is Safer Than That Of Rivals

Tesla's technology is safer than most of the rivals, according to safety report.

Tesla driverless automotive technology proved to be much safer than its rivals. Seven driverless carmakers have posted data regarding possible accidents on public roads for the first time, disclosing Tesla might be going ahead of its competitors when safety comes into consideration.

Of the major developers of autonomous technology, including Delphi and Google, Tesla was the one automaker to report zero “disengagement” accidents, which means that a human was never required to manually control the car for security reasons.

Manufacturers testing cars on California’s public roads is required by legislation to report accidents to the Department of Motor Vehicles of the state, compelling Volkswagen, Mercedes, Nissan, Tesla, Delphi, and Boschi to reveal test results.

The search engine developer’s 32-page long report detailed tests conducted over 15 months, which covered more than 424,000 miles, during which 341 important disengagements were witnessed. Subsequent computer simulations were indicative of 13 experienced incidents, which would have led to a crash if a human had not taken over controls.

Delphi, which demonstrated an Audi Q5 autonomous driving from San Francisco to New York in April last year, listed 405 disengagements during tests that covered 16,662 miles. Google noted in the introduction of the report that disengagements help to analyze and is essential for the enhancement of its algorithms.

In its report, Google has written, "Our objective is not to minimize disengagements; rather, it is to gather, while operating safely, as much data as possible to enable us to improve our self-driving system. As we continue to develop our technology, the rate of safety disengagements has fallen even as we drive more autonomous miles on public roads.”

Full driverless cars are yet not legal in California, although the American state is trying to become one of the first regions across the globe to have a law to regulate the technology. In December 2015, a first proposed regulation draft for using autonomous cars was publically called as “gravely disappointing” by the spokesperson of Google.

The proposals that might be setting a precedent for other American states require cars to have a brake pedal and steering wheel, neither of which features in Google’s two-button autonomous vehicle.

Google also disclosed most details regarding the factors responsible for the occurrence of the disengagements. 272 disengagements were experience when the vehicle detected a sort of abnormality and was not able to reconcile – these include objects such as broken wire, abnormalities due to GPS readings or accelerometer, or "anomalies in the monitoring of key functions like steering and braking.”

According to BBC, CEO Elon Musk initially thought that the chance of SpaceX and Tesla to succeed might be 10% and that Apple would probably succeed in developing an electric car soon.