Identifying Research Gaps Through Self-Driving Car Data Analysis

There are currently around thirty companies testing self-driving cars in San Francisco, CA, effectively creating a living laboratory. Of these companies, only Waymo is engaged in commercial operations, while Zoox conducts routine driverless testing operations in San Francisco. Despite these successes, federal investigations have been opened into both companies for safety concerns, and Cruise is attempting to reinstate its permit after a near-fatal pedestrian crash. An analysis of these three companies’ crash data from required reporting illustrates that many areas of self-driving need improvement. The most significant crash type for Waymo and Zoox are struck-from-behind events, while Cruise struggled most with unexpected actions by others. Computer vision systems are very brittle and likely play an outsized role in crashes. Self-driving cars also struggle to reason under uncertainty, and simulations are not effectively bridging the physical-to-real-world testing gap. This analysis underscores that research is lacking, especially for artificial intelligence involving computer vision and reasoning under uncertainty.