Any system where erroneous behaviour can lead to serious injury or a potential loss of life is classified as a safety critical system. This is true for self-driving or autonomous vehicles where a vehicle malfunction can lead to the injury or death of the driver, passengers or others outside the vehicle. The potential for injury or death is why it is paramount that the developers of self driving vehicles ensure the systems works safely before deploying them to users on public roads. In the field of self-driving vehicles, it is not clear if this best practice is always being followed. While self-driving vehicles are testing extensively using computer simulation and closed circuit test tracks, they are also tested on public roads. For example, driver assistance systems like Tesla’s Autopilot have been beta-tested by real users. Fully autonomous vehicles such as Uber’s self-driving car have also been tested outside of controlled settings on public roads. In cases where testing occurs in public, the vehicle-under-test is surrounded by pedestrians and drivers who may be completely unaware that their interaction is helping to test and improve an autonomous vehicle. This was the case on March 18, 2018, in Tempe, Arizona when Uber’s self-driving car, with a human driver present, hit and killed a pedestrian (see SFGate).

More recently, news reports highlighting crashes of Tesla vehicles with semi-autonomous and autonomous capabilities have again brought the issues of safety and testing to the forefront. “Three crashes involving Teslas that killed three people have increased scrutiny of the company’s Autopilot driving system, just months before CEO Elon Musk has planned to put fully self-driving cars on the streets” (see CBC). It is important to note that unlike Uber’s self-driving car, a Tesla with Autopilot is not a fully autonomous driving system – “…Autopilot is a hands-on driver assistance system that is intended to be used only with a fully attentive driver. It does not turn a Tesla into a self-driving car nor does it make a car autonomous” (see Tesla website). The two main features of Autopilot are Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, for matching the vehicle’s speed to traffic, and Autosteer, for steering within a specific lane. Navigate on Autopilot is a Tesla beta feature which autonomously controls lane changes and highway interchange and ramp navigation.

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