Over ten months, auto manufacturers reported nearly 400 crashes involving autonomous or driver assist systems. The report was requested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). However, the NHTSA cautioned using the numbers to compare to other vehicles on the road as the data does not consider the number of vehicles on the road or the total miles traveled.

“As we gather more data, NHTSA will be able to better identify any emerging risks or trends and learn more about how these technologies are performing in the real world,” Dr. Steven Cliff, NHTSA’s administrator, said in a statement.

Automakers reported crashes from July of last year through May 15 under an order from the agency, which is examining such crashes broadly for the first time. Tesla crashes happened while vehicles were using Autopilot, Traffic Aware Cruise Control, or other driver-assist systems that have some control over speed. Tesla has about 830,000 vehicles with the systems on the road. It is essential to note the report does not state if the accidents were the fault of the Tesla’s systems, the driver, or other drivers on the road.

With 273 crashes reported, Tesla had the highest share, followed by Honda with 90. Tesla may have the highest number reported, but the collection methods are not comparable. Tesla uses telematics to monitor its vehicles and get real-time crash reports. NHTSA said that other automakers don’t have such capability, so their reports may come slower, or crashes may not be reported at all.

As it relates to the fully autonomous side, the data is more comparable. That’s because autonomous vehicles are not owned by customers but by companies as part of AV fleets. Data collection is similar across the various companies, giving us a more standardized data set. But even so, there are still a lot of nuances. Waymo, for example, said that one-third of its 60 reported crashes occurred when the vehicle was in manual mode. NHTSA’s order requires companies to document crashes when ADAS and automated technologies were in use within 30 seconds of impact.

Even if a car was rear-ended or T-boned by another vehicle, it was still reported as one of the 393 crashes during the 10-month period.

The Vexnova Take

During the same period, the US had roughly 29,000 crashes in total, and thus crashes involving autonomous functions represent 1.3% of all crashes on US roads. The data collected is a step in providing more insights and, eventually, regulations. However, it is clear the methodology and lack of other insights make this data set nearly impossible to formulate any conclusions on the safety of these features on the road.

We are confident that autonomous vehicles are substantially safer than standard manual automobiles. Unlike manual drivers, increasing the number of autonomous vehicles on the road will improve safety. This technology improves with more data points to identify needed corrections to the system and communication between vehicles.

We don’t expect these findings to impact autonomous vehicles’ expansion and development.