Final fall, Missy Cummings despatched a doc to her colleagues on the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration that exposed a shocking pattern: When individuals utilizing superior driver-assistance methods die or are injured in a automotive crash, they’re extra more likely to have been dashing than individuals driving automobiles on their very own.

The 2-page evaluation of practically 400 crashes involving methods like Tesla’s Autopilot and Common Motors’ Tremendous Cruise is way from conclusive. However it raises recent questions concerning the applied sciences which were put in in a whole lot of 1000’s of automobiles on U.S. roads. Dr. Cummings mentioned the information indicated that drivers have been turning into too assured within the methods’ skills and that automakers and regulators ought to limit when and the way the expertise was used.

Individuals “are over-trusting the expertise,” she mentioned. “They’re letting the automobiles velocity. And they’re moving into accidents which can be severely injuring them or killing them.”

Dr. Cummings, an engineering and pc science professor at George Mason College who makes a speciality of autonomous methods, not too long ago returned to academia after greater than a 12 months on the security company. On Wednesday, she is going to current a few of her findings on the College of Michigan, a brief drive from Detroit, the primary hub of the U.S. auto trade.

Techniques like Autopilot and Tremendous Cruise, which might steer, brake and speed up automobiles on their very own, have gotten more and more frequent as automakers compete to win over automotive consumers with guarantees of superior expertise. Corporations generally market these methods as in the event that they made automobiles autonomous. However their authorized fantastic print requires drivers to remain alert and be able to take management of the car at any time.

In interviews final week, Dr. Cummings mentioned automakers and regulators ought to forestall such methods from working over the velocity restrict and require drivers utilizing them to maintain their arms on the steering wheel and eyes on the highway.

“Automotive corporations — that means Tesla and others — are advertising and marketing this as a hands-free expertise,” she mentioned. “That may be a nightmare.”

However these usually are not measures that NHTSA can simply put in place. Any effort to rein in how driver-assistance methods are used will most likely be met with criticism and lawsuits from the auto trade, particularly from Tesla and its chief government, Elon Musk, who has lengthy chafed at guidelines he considers antiquated.

Security consultants additionally mentioned the company was chronically underfunded and lacked sufficient expert workers to adequately do its job. The company has additionally operated and not using a everlasting chief confirmed by the Senate for a lot of the previous six years.

Dr. Cummings acknowledged that placing in impact the principles she was calling for could be tough. She mentioned she additionally knew that her feedback might once more inflame supporters of Mr. Musk and Tesla who attacked her on social media and despatched her loss of life threats after she was appointed a senior adviser on the security company.

However Dr. Cummings, 56, one of many first feminine fighter pilots within the Navy, mentioned she felt compelled to talk out as a result of “the expertise is being abused by people.”

“We have to put in rules that take care of this,” she mentioned.

The protection company and Tesla didn’t reply to requests for remark. G.M. pointed to research that it had performed with the College of Michigan that examined the security of its expertise.

As a result of Autopilot and different related methods enable drivers to relinquish energetic management of the automotive, many security consultants fear that the expertise will lull individuals into believing the automobiles are driving themselves. When the expertise malfunctions or can not deal with conditions like having to veer rapidly to overlook stalled automobiles, drivers could also be unprepared to take management rapidly sufficient.

The methods use cameras and different sensors to verify whether or not a driver’s arms are on the wheel and his or her eyes are watching the highway. And they’re going to disengage if the driving force is just not attentive for a big period of time. However they function for stretches when the driving force is just not centered on driving.

Dr. Cummings has lengthy warned that this generally is a drawback — in educational papers, in interviews and on social media. She was named senior adviser for security at NHTSA in October 2021, not lengthy after the company started amassing crash knowledge involving automobiles utilizing driver-assistance methods.

Mr. Musk responded to her appointment in a put up on Twitter, accusing her of being “extraordinarily biased towards Tesla,” with out citing any proof. This set off an avalanche of comparable statements from his supporters on social media and in emails to Dr. Cummings.

She mentioned she ultimately needed to shut down her Twitter account and briefly go away her residence due to the harassment and loss of life threats she was receiving on the time. One menace was severe sufficient to be investigated by the police in Durham, N.C., the place she lived.

Most of the claims have been nonsensical and false. A few of Mr. Musk’s supporters observed that she was serving as a board member of Veoneer, a Swedish firm that sells sensors to Tesla and different automakers, however confused the corporate with Velodyne, a U.S. firm whose laser sensor expertise — known as lidar — is seen as a competitor to the sensors that Tesla makes use of for Autopilot.

“We all know you personal lidar corporations and if you happen to settle for the NHTSA adviser place, we are going to kill you and your loved ones,” one e-mail despatched to her mentioned.

Jennifer Homendy, who leads the Nationwide Transportation Security Board, the company that investigates severe vehicle crashes, and who has additionally been attacked by followers of Mr. Musk, informed CNN Enterprise in 2021 that the false claims about Dr. Cummings have been a “calculated try to distract from the actual questions of safety.”

Earlier than becoming a member of NHTSA, Dr. Cummings left Veoneer’s board, bought her shares within the firm and recused herself from the company’s investigations that solely concerned Tesla, considered one of which was introduced earlier than her arrival.

The evaluation she despatched to company officers within the fall checked out superior driver-assistance methods from a number of corporations, together with Tesla, G.M. and Ford Motor. When automobiles utilizing these methods have been concerned in deadly crashes, they have been touring over the velocity restrict 50 p.c of the time. In crashes with severe accidents, they have been dashing 42 p.c of the time.

In crashes that didn’t contain driver-assistance methods, these figures have been 29 p.c and 13 p.c.

The quantity of knowledge that the federal government has collected on crashes involving these methods remains to be comparatively small. Different components could possibly be skewing the outcomes.

Superior drivers-assistance methods are used much more usually on highways than on metropolis streets, for example. And the crash knowledge that Dr. Cummings analyzed is dominated by Tesla, as a result of its methods are extra broadly used than others. This might imply that the outcomes unfairly replicate on the efficiency of methods supplied by different corporations.

Throughout her time on the federal security company, she additionally examined so-called phantom braking, which is when driver-assistance methods trigger automobiles to gradual or cease for no obvious motive. Final month, for instance, the information website The Intercept printed footage of a Tesla car inexplicably braking in the course of the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland and inflicting an eight-car pileup that injured 9 individuals, together with a 2-year-old.

Dr. Cummings mentioned knowledge from automakers and buyer complaints confirmed that this was an issue with a number of driver-assistance methods and with robotaxis developed by corporations like Waymo, owned by Google’s guardian firm, and Cruise, a division of G.M. Now underneath check in a number of cities, these self-driving taxis are designed to function with no driver, and they’re ferrying passengers in San Francisco and the Phoenix space.

Many crashes apparently occur as a result of individuals touring behind these automobiles usually are not ready for these erratic stops. “The automobiles are braking in ways in which individuals don’t anticipate and usually are not ready to answer,” she mentioned.

Waymo and Cruise declined to remark.

Dr. Cummings mentioned the federal security company ought to work with automakers to limit superior driver-assistance methods utilizing its customary recall course of, the place the businesses conform to voluntarily make adjustments.

However consultants questioned whether or not the automakers would make such adjustments and not using a vital struggle.

The company might additionally set up new guidelines that explicitly management using these methods, however this could take years and will end in lawsuits.

“NHTSA might do that, however would the courts uphold it?” mentioned Matthew Wansley, a professor on the Cardozo Faculty of Legislation at Yeshiva College in New York who makes a speciality of rising automotive applied sciences.

Dr. Cummings mentioned robotaxis have been arriving at about the precise tempo: After restricted checks, federal, state and native regulators are holding a lid on their progress till the expertise is healthier understood.

However, she mentioned, the federal government should do extra to make sure the security of superior driver-assistance methods like Autopilot and Tremendous Cruise.

NHTSA “must flex its muscular tissues extra,” she mentioned. “It must not be afraid of Elon or of transferring markets if there’s an apparent unreasonable threat.”