Undefined, Unregulated Hands-Free Driving Means Unsafe Roads | The Ojo-Yoshida Report

Undefined, Unregulated Hands-Free Driving Means Unsafe Roads | The Ojo-Yoshida Report

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Undefined, Unregulated Hands-Free Driving Means Unsafe Roads

Calling their vehicles “Level 2” gives automakers a free pass to blame drivers for crashes since Level 2, by definition, means human drivers are responsible for all driving -- with or without hands. A recent crash raises concerns that BMW might be practicing unsafe testing of a iX test vehicle, using Level 2 designation as a security blanket.

By Junko Yoshida

As more vehicles are introduced with so-called “hands-free” convenience features, the automotive industry is probing uncharted territory. 

The growing list includes Ford’s BlueCruise, GM’s Super Cruise and its upcoming Ultra Cruise, Tesla’s Auto Pilot (technically, Tesla calls it “hands-on” driving) and Full Self-Driving (FSD), Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot, Volvo’s Ride Pilot, Audi’s Traffic Jam Pilot and others. 

Some carmakers call their hands-free feature SAE Level 2 automation. Others declare it L2+ (which is not an actual SAE level). Some go all the way to L3.  Only Mercedes-Benz boasts conformance to U.N. Regulation No. 157—Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS).

While the auto industry, media and even some regulators use these SAE levels to describe vehicles, no automation taxonomy helps decipher what “hands-free” driving means exactly, what it’s for, its constraints and, most important, whether it’s safe. 

There is confusion because SAE levels (described in the SAE J3016 standard) do not “define safe vehicles” and do not imply that “higher SAE levels are safer.” They don’t even suggest that safety gets better by “moving up the levels from 1 to 5,” as Phil Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon professor and a safety expert , explains in his SAE J3016 User Guide.

So, who’s to say that your next vehicle with “hands-free driving” is safe? Practically no one, argues Colin Barnden, principal analyst at Semicast Research, “other than Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy? Elon Musk? Or the FSD ‘testing’ vigilantes?” 

Undefined and unregulated hands-free driving has allowed carmakers to fudge their definitions without building safeguards.

Vehicle marketers can pitch new hands-free driving features as a big step forward to the holy grail of self-driving cars, leaving human drivers  holding both the bag and—if they know what’s good for them—the wheel. Ultimately, hands-free driving lets carmakers have their cake and eat it, too.

Among enthusiasts pushing autonomy, the concept of safety has been eroded to the point where they’ll call hands-free features “safe” as long as nobody gets killed.

Fatal crash in Germany

The hands-free issue is top of mind after a BMW iX “test vehicle” veered onto an oncoming lane, hit two vehicles and indirectly caused a collision last month in Germany. Was the “test vehicle” indeed testing BMW’s hands-free driving feature? If so, was the test driver testing it or possibly casually using it when the crash happened? 

To be clear, BMW has not cited hands-free driving in comments about the catastrophic crash, which killed one person and injured nine others. When we asked about this specifically, BMW declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.  

Here is what we know. As a BMW spokesperson explained:

The BMW’s iX car that crashed was a test vehicle.

The iX model is not self-driving.

It’s a Level 2 vehicle.

The driver at the time of the crash was a professional test driver who went through rigorous training designed specifically for the job. 

To better understand what might have caused the crash, let’s consider two different types of iX models. One is the standard-production iX with type-approval for all features, including driver assistance. This model can be bought from a dealer. Then there is the iX “test vehicle” with experimental driving features. It is not type-approved. It can only be driven legally on public roads by a trained safety driver.

Asked if BMW iX “test vehicles” had features that might not be available in the standard-production iX, BMW chose to remain silent.

Nevertheless, in a package called BMW Driver Assistance Professional (priced at $1,700), the German automaker offers buyers options called “Active Driving Assistant Pro” and “Extended Traffic Jam Assistant.”

Still, iX is not self-driving. It’s a Level 2 vehicle, one that has some automation but remains under human control. The options package offers lane-centering and steering assistance—with hands-free available under certain conditions at speeds under 40 mph.

Then, there’s a YouTube video, “BMW iX: Driver Assistant Professional real-life test on highway and country roads.” It shows a BMW iX model, test driven, highlighting a mostly hands-free automated driving function available on both divided and undivided highways, including winding country roads. 

There appears to be no obvious operational design domain limit (at least not mentioned in the video). The system appears capable of switching seamlessly between hands-on and hands-off functions. As Barnden noted in a recent column, this iX model – which is built on a platform jointly developed by BMW and Intel/Mobileye – shows “by far the most advanced automated driving technology I have seen from an automaker in a series-production passenger vehicle. I sat and watched the video open-mouthed. I am extremely impressed.”

Then, why is this video so troubling? 

Of course, there’s no such thing as “hands-free driving” in the U.N. regulations. The closest thing in Germany is ALKS. The U.N. regulation defines ALKS as “the lateral and longitudinal movement of the vehicle for extended periods without further driver command.” 

Unlike in the United States, where automakers promote hands-free options willy-nilly, German companies must submit vehicles for type approval (to be certified by a third-party assessor), while ensuring their vehicles meet numerous requirements and safeguards – including driving speed, where it can drive, etc. Only then are their vehicles considered U.N. 157-compliant.

Despite BMW’s assurance that this is a non-self-driving Level 2 car, the BMW video shows an iX test vehicle doing a lot of hands-free motoring.

ALKS proscribes a maximum speed of 60 kmh. With Drive Pilot, Mercedes is thus far the only company with type-approved models complying with ALKS at 60kmh (ALKS60). ALKS updates were approved in June, allowing ALKS hands-free driving at max speed of 130kmh as of January 2023.

BMW iX models do not yet conform to ALKS60.

However, an iX test vehicle “can be driven legally on any road type irrespective of the compliance with ALKS60 or ALKS130. This is the role of testing,” said Barnden. “But only with a trained safety driver behind the wheel.” Naturally, operating any test vehicle on undivided highways puts the public at risk and must be undertaken with great care, specifically for the purposes of testing and developing the technology, Barnden explained.

BMW had a trained professional test driver behind the wheel during the August 15 crash. An 18-month-old child was a passenger. 

A scenario that includes an infant passenger in a test vehicle allegedly capable of hands-free driving at an unspecified speed on both divided and undivided roads undermines confidence in the safety-testing protocols of a prominent carmaker.

As noted, we don’t know if the driver of the iX test vehicle was in hands-free mode. But even if the no-hands issue did not directly cause the crash, the BMW iX mishap serves as another wake-up call. As the world adjusts to Tesla vigilantes’ uploading their daredevil test-driving movies on YouTube, traditional carmakers might be also getting complacent or even careless about the way they test semi-autonomous vehicles.

An equally serious problem is automakers giving themselves too much slack in how they describe their vehicles’ automation.

Misguided reliance on SAE levels

Mahmood Hikmet, head of research and development at Ohmio, a leader in autonomous vehicle design based in New Zealand, noted in an interview that the SAE J3016 description of vehicle automation levels “has nothing to do with safety or reliability. Or whether the thing can actually work. That’s outside the scope.”

J3016, however, does state, “who is responsible” and “design intent,” Hikmet added.

That said, J3016 “is not even looking at what the vehicle can do now. It’s more like what you are intending for the vehicle to do once it is finished. And that’s where the [automation] level resides,” Hikmet explained.

“Regardless of if it works, if it doesn’t work, or if it’s still under testing, or it’s not developed yet, it is still covered by [the SAE’s automation levels]. There’s nothing there that says you need to have this level of performance,” he said.

Hence, the SAE levels that companies attach to their vehicles are almost meaningless. J3016 is just a taxonomy, not a measure of a vehicle’s ability or performance. 

Even worse, underreporting a vehicle whose design intent is Level 3 but is labeled Level 2 further muddies the waters. Tesla is already using the “Level 2 loophole.”

Hikmet said, “I don’t think many people who wrote the J3016 foresaw that a company would come along and underreport their level.” 

When regulators like the California DMV started using J3016 to require AV companies with Level 3 vehicles to report accidents, Hikmet said they did so “by more or less codifying the J3016 standard into the law.”

Looking back, he asks whether that was the right thing to do. Allowing companies to self-assign levels frees them to decide, unilaterally, whether to report accidents. Hikmet believes this policy created “a lot of opportunities to game the system.”

Therefore, “hands-free driving” lurks in a murky realm of undefined and unregulated activity – where automakers are welcome to alibi, dissemble and dodge responsibility for cars that crash.