What Are Different Levels of Autonomous Vehicles and Their Safety Features?

Did you know that autonomous vehicle technology's capabilities exist at different levels? The Society of Automotive Engineers has classified autonomous vehicle technology capabilities into six levels.

The mishaps that took place due to autonomous cars, have raised the question – how safe is this technology and how ready is it to be leveraged for general and commercial use? As the automotive industry continues to innovate at a fast pace, it is essentially required to understand the innovations happening at different levels currently and what are their future prospects.

As described by the Society of Automotive Engineers, her is the list of six levels:

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Are these levels safe?

As described by Forbes, levels 2 and 3, and up to some extent level 4, are the most dangerous levels of autonomous driving. Drivers can be easily tricked to distract themselves believing that they need not to pay full attention. Once disengaged with the roads it is not possible for them to quickly take over the charge in sudden adverse conditions. It also depicts that possibly levels 2,3 and 4 could be more dangerous than others because of this uncertain element of control.

Also, level 2 vehicles can be easily confused with level 3 vehicles based on the way the car manufacturers are marketing and promoting their cars which can make people think that the vehicle has more autonomous capabilities than it actually does. Similarly, level 4 vehicles become "downgraded" to lower levels when situations worsen.

Additionally, Google/Waymo and Ford have said that they will pursue only Level 5 driving to jump users to a safer and more valuable future.

Another reason for its un-safety is that drivers can lose practice to drive, once they get habitual to the autonomous behavior of a car. They will possibly become increasingly dependent on somewhat autonomous capabilities of the vehicle.