Nissan Stresses Hands-On Approach to Autonomous Driving

Nissan Motor Co. says its new ProPilot driver-assist system will warn drivers if they take both hands off the steering wheel during autonomous driving and disable the feature if they don’t return at least one hand to the wheel after a few seconds.

The safety provision comes amid growing concerns about hands-free autonomous technology following three recent accidents involving Tesla cars operating in “Autopilot” mode, including a fatality last month. Stressing the need for better consumer education about advanced technologies, Nissan says it is training dealers to inform customers about the capabilities and limitations of driver-assist features.

Nissan officials also suggest the carmaker’s ProPilot system would have worked properly and applied the brakes to avoid an accident in similar scenarios to the one that resulted in the Tesla fatality.

In that case, which currently is being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Autopilot system didn’t recognize the white side of a tractor trailer and failed to trigger the brakes as the truck turned in front of the Tesla car against a brightly lit sky.

Nissan will launch ProPilot, which can automatically control steering, braking and throttle functions during single-lane highway maneuvers, next month in its Serena minivan in Japan. The technology will be offered in in the Qashqai crossover in Europe next year, followed sometime later by unspecified applications in the U.S. and China.

Planned upgrades to the system include lane-changing capability in 2018 and in 2020 the ability to navigate stop-and-go city traffic with intersections. Nissan says it also is studying how driving conditions differ in various regions so it can better tailor ProPilot to them.