The Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) are closely watched around the self-driving world for the considerable number of companies testing their autonomous vehicles on Californian public roads —also for the data about the miles driven, accidents or setbacks that happens, and disengagements from the autonomous mode. The DMV classifies a disengagement as any situation where a human driver is forced to take manual control of the autonomous vehicle in order to intervene in the interest of safety or take control because the autonomous vehicle system has failed or disengaged on its own.
The DMV reports expose insights about both the work in progress that some car makers, technology companies, and startups are doing and the improvements they are achieving; considering not all car makers (like Ford, BMW, Honda, or Volkswagen) are testing their vehicles in California but other locations or even on closed-course testing fields. Some of them have applied for DMV permits, indicating they will be on-road testing at some point.
- Waymo (a subsidiary of Alphabet) self-driving car drove the farthest without any human intervention.
They achieved a performance increase based on the year-over-year disengagement data: reaching on average almost 5,600 miles between a disengagement. They drove +2 million miles only during the last year, accumulating +4million miles in their entire program.
- General Motors and its Cruise Automation had the two-lowest rate of disengagements.
They reported a 1,400% improvement in performance: escalating from average 300 to 1,200 miles between a disengagement. The increase gave confidence to the company to target an initial autonomous commercial service deployment by 2019, as they are also testing in dense and challenging San Francisco urban environment.
- Nissan had the third longest drive without human intervention.
They reached almost 210 miles per disengagement, a much less mileage than Waymo and GM.
IMAGE: Autonomous Miles Driven in California from 12/16 - 11/17
The Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports are a way to rank the reliability of autonomous vehicles (showing that self-driving cars can operate with only occasional human intervention) from car makers, technology companies, and startups. However, regulators and policymakers have not agreed how safe autonomous vehicles must be before they move to mass-production, as is still unclear if the average person would be able to take back manual control when needed.
Nowadays, there is a hurry to accelerate autonomous vehicle deployment because of safety and economic benefits, but technology should not be rushed before it is truly ready and the public become familiarized with it. Experts forecast a decade time frame for a reliable commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles.