Autonomous Car Companies Will Not Tell U.S. Senator How Often a Human Driver Intervenes ⇥ wired.com

Aarian Marshall, Wired:

All the companies that responded to the senator’s office say they use remote assistants — humans charged with responding to autonomous vehicles when they get confused, stuck, or in emergencies. The programs, experts say, are an important part of any autonomous vehicle company’s safety considerations, a backstop for a technology that’s becoming safer by the year but will continue to run into new situations on the road indefinitely.

In a report also released Tuesday, Senator Markey said the new details were not enough. “Every autonomous-vehicle company refused to disclose how often their AVs require assistance from [remote assistants]—hiding key information from the public about their AV’s true level of autonomy,” he wrote. “This information is critical for lawmakers, regulators, and the public to understand the potential safety risks with AVs.”

The report (PDF) is not comprehensive but it is worth reading, along with the responses sent (PDF) by each company. Of them, Tesla is the only one to say human assistants can directly drive an otherwise autonomous car at speeds of up to 16 kilometres per hour (10 miles per hour).

I am not sure what to make of wording across the letters, which feels carefully calibrated to avoid disrupting the marketing of these services while acknowledging the need for safety drivers. I do not think Tesla’s remote driving capability is inherently a bad idea because some incidents will need the skills of a real person. But, surely, someone sitting at a desk in an office park halfway across the country is not exactly the best person to be driving that car except for a precise situation which has been engineered so that a person sitting at a desk is, in fact, the only capable driver of that car. Like, I play Gran Turismo but I do not think I would do a very good job of getting a Tesla out of a ditch with a joystick or whatever.

Anyway, sure would be nice to know how often a person needs to intervene, but I bet none of these companies are going to willingly disclose that unless they all do. Nobody is going to move first.