In vehicles with partial automation, driver-facing cameras are far safer systems than steering wheel-based ones in making sure that drivers are paying attention, a new study released by AAA on Monday found.
The study analyzed four different vehicles equipped with partial automation: the 2021 Cadillac Escalade, the 2021 Subaru Forester, the 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe and the 2020 Tesla Model 3. Both the Cadillac and the Subaru use driver-facing infrared cameras, a direct system, to monitor drivers’ attention, while the Tesla and Hyundai use sensors on the steering wheel, an indirect system.
On average, the direct systems alert drivers about 50 seconds faster than the indirect ones in scenarios when drivers are looking away from the road and have their hands off the steering wheel. The percent of times test drivers were engaged during their drives was approximately five times higher with camera-based systems than with steering wheel ones.
In each test, the Hyundai Santa Fe’s Highway Driver Assist mode performed the worst.
“The camera-based system is actually looking at the driver’s behavior and not simply looking for input,” AAA Director for Automotive Engineering Greg Brannon said. “The indirect system simply requires that you turn on the steering wheel once every so often and has nothing to do with whether or not that driver is paying attention.”
However, both systems still have significant flaws. None of the vehicles disabled semiautonomous features or forced drivers to pay attention after multiple alerts. All the safety systems are also easy for the driver to cheat with, Brannon said.
AAA is not the first to recognize the lack of safety measures in these vehicles with partial automation, and in January, both the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Consumer Reports released their own reports on vehicles with partial automation, calling for these cars to implement safety measures, both direct and indirect.
One of the reasons these measures are so important is that many drivers believe these are self-driving vehicles, Brannon said. A 2018 study conducted by AAA even found that 40 percent of American believe this.
Much of this is because of misleading marketing on the part of automakers about these features, or the misleading names of these systems such as “Autopilot” or “Super Cruise,” he said.
“You see many times on TV an advertisement that conflicts with what you might find in the owner’s manual,” Brannon said. “The marketers are definitely out ahead of the engineers, and that’s a dangerous place for consumers.”
One thing he recommends is a unifying name for all these systems to stop buyers’ confusion, he said.