Regulators taking wheel in driverless sector

Cui said: "ADAS features work well in many circumstances, so drivers tend to believe things will be fine all the time. Many drivers have no idea how dangerous their actions are, and when things go wrong, they will fault the technology."

There exist disparities between carmakers and drivers in their understanding of ADAS features, said Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Carmakers know their ADAS features are Level 2 and human drivers are required. They know autonomous driving is the future, but they may exaggerate the facility of the features prematurely.

Car drivers fall into different groups. Some wrongly take them as autonomous vehicles and drive them as so, while others may know they are ADAS and drivers should not take their hands off the wheel, but they still feel somewhat immune from harm.

Shi said legislators should draft relevant standards and laws to keep abreast of auto sector developments. Last year, vehicles with ADAS features accounted for 15 percent of China's new car sales.

"Legislation will regulate the sector and facilitate its healthy progress," he said.

In the US, where Tesla introduced the world's first ADAS features, authorities are beginning to scrutinize driver-assist technologies more closely after largely giving companies a free rein.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had identified 11 crashes since early 2018 in which a Tesla vehicle on Autopilot struck one or more vehicles.

It is studying the Autopilot system in some 765,000 Tesla vehicles from the 2014 through 2021 model years. Autopilot is available on vehicles made in late 2014 and later, according to Tesla's website.

The NHTSA, which closed an earlier investigation into Autopilot in 2017 without taking any action, has come under fire for failing to ensure the safety of the system that handles some driving tasks and allows drivers to keep their hands off the wheel for extended periods.

The National Transportation Safety Board criticized Tesla's lack of system safeguards for Autopilot and the NHTSA's failure to ensure the safety of Autopilot, according to Reuters.

Tesla recently recalled more than 285,000 vehicles in China to address a cruise control issue.

China's State Administration for Market Regulation said Tesla's cruise-control system could be activated accidentally, potentially causing sudden acceleration.

Tesla apologized to car owners in connection with the recall and said it would continue to improve safety in line with national requirements.