From Autopilot to I, Robot: The 6 Levels of Autonomous Driving Explained

Summary

In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick® explores the current state and future of autonomous driving technology. She discusses the various levels of vehicle autonomy, from manual driving to fully autonomous systems, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the legal responsibilities that come with these advancements. The conversation delves into the implications of AI in driving, the challenges of regulatory environments, and the potential future of personal autonomous vehicles.

Takeaways

• We're at least a decade away from true autonomy.
• Level 0 is 100% manual driving.
• Level 1 is assisted driving, where the driver must remain engaged.
• Level 2 is partially automated driving, requiring driver attention.
• You are still legally responsible for everything the vehicle does at Level 2.
• Level 3 is where AI starts to think for itself.
• Level 4 can intervene if things go wrong without human input.
• Level 5 is full driving automation, currently in the realm of science fiction.
• The road to autonomous vehicles is not going to be smooth.
• The technology is getting there very quickly, but infrastructure and regulations need to catch up.

You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here.

Connect with LeeAnn:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

Work with LeeAnn:

• Course: The No BS Guide to Buying a Car
• Car Buying Service

Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Autonomous Driving
• 1:58 Understanding Levels of Autonomy
• 12:32 The Debate on Driver Responsibility
• 19:41 Level Three and the Role of AI
• 23:54 Exploring Level Four Automation
• 28:11 The Future of Level Five Automation

Transcript

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:00)
Hey everyone and welcome back to the Straight Shift, the podcast where we take the wheel, cut through the bull and drive straight into what's really going on in the world of cars, driving, and in today's case, the technology that's trying to replace us behind the wheel.

If you caught the last episode, we drove into the wild world of robo taxis, those driverless wonders or disasters kind of depending on the day that are already creeping through cities like Phoenix and San Francisco. Today, I want to zoom out to the bigger picture and talk about where are we really on the road to true self-driving cars? What do those levels of autonomy actually mean? And where are we now?

Versus how long is it going to take us to a future where we can just take a nap in the backseat where the car does all the work? According to the World Economic Forum, we're at least a decade away from that true 100 % autonomous vehicles like they had in the movie "I, Robot" And that movie was actually set in 2035, I believe. So that is 10 years from now. So maybe we're right on schedule.

But both the technology and the regulations still have a long way to go to reach the level where these vehicles can just be turned loose on the world streets and highways, and we humans don't have to do a damn thing. But there is a roadmap for this, so to speak. For better or for worse, we are getting there. So we're going to look at what that roadmap looks like. I'm going to pull out my inner geek, which let's be honest,

doesn't take much, it's never far from the surface. We're going to talk about those six levels of autonomous driving and what they mean for us mere mortals behind the wheel. So let's get into it.

The first thing we need to do is to decode what this whole levels of autonomy thing even means. If you've heard someone say, hey, my car basically drives itself. Yeah, they're wrong. So let's set the record straight. According to the SAE, which is the Society of Automotive Engineers, there are five levels of vehicle autonomy. Well, actually there's technically six because they start at level zero.

Level 0 is 100 % manual. That means the vehicle is 100 % operated by the human with no help whatsoever. And that is what the majority of cars on the road today, they fall into that category. My 2004 Mini Cooper, Maggie, she falls into this category. The only thing I have on her is just old fashioned cruise control and it's terrible. It never works well, so I never use it. You might get a safety warning like,

old fashioned blind spot monitoring or a little lane departure warning, but all the action to control the car is taken by the driver. We hope. Now, when you start getting into actual levels of autonomy, the first level one is called assisted driving.

And under level one, means that either the steering or the speed, but not both at the same time, is controlled by the system. The driver still has to be fully eyes on and hands on. Perfect example of this is adaptive cruise control and the lane keeping assist. So if you have adaptive cruise control in your car, you know that it can speed up and slow down with

other vehicles on the road, but most of those systems still require you to keep your hands on the wheel. You just get to take your foot off of the pedals, which can help you on long trips. Your foot doesn't get as tired and it's a little bit easier to drive with that. Or the lane keeping assist, which if it detects if you're kind of wandering outside the lines a little bit, it's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, get back, get back, get back. Or if someone's in your blinds, that'll be like, hey, hey, buddy,

somebody's in your blind spot, you can't move over. But you are still controlling everything except either the steering or the speed, but it can't do both at the same time under level one. So that's when we get into level two, and that's when things start to actually get interesting. This is called partially automated driving. This is where the steering and the speed can be controlled by the system at the same

time. This is like Tesla's Autopilot, which is a totally misleading name and I will give more on that in a bit, or GM Super Cruise or Ford's Blue Cruise. Yeah, you can kind of say the car is technically driving itself, but only under extremely limited conditions. These systems only work well on highways that are

properly marked with very clear lane lines. They only work in good weather because things like rain or snow or fog mess with the sensors. Bad weather and poor visibility can just disable the system altogether. And these systems cannot make true decisions. They're only following very simple pre-programmed logic for the most basic of driving situations.

They're not capable of kind of understanding or anticipating the behavior of other drivers on the road. And they can't react to adverse situations like debris in the road or some idiot trying to change into your lane while you're already there because they aren't looking. The systems just can't handle those types of scenarios. So that's why you, the driver, must still be 100 % paying attention to the driving environment. And you have to be able to immediately

take control of the vehicle.

Some of these systems like the GM Super Cruise, they allow you to take your hands off the wheel. That's because the car is controlling both the speed and the steering at the same time. But you have to still pay attention and keep your eyes on the road to monitor what's going on around you. And these systems are babysitting you. They are paying attention to you to make sure that you are paying attention to the road.

Many of them use a camera that's looking at your face and it can tell if your eyes are not on the road or if your head is turning around. If you're looking down to check the email on your phone or playing a video game, or if you're looking over your shoulder talking to your kids in the back seat, it will know that and it will not be happy about it. So most of these systems will use kind of a three alert system.

They start out very politely with a nice little visual warning. Often it's a little green light bar on the steering wheel or something like that. It's like, hey, come on, pay attention, pay attention. If that doesn't work, then it starts to get a little shirty with you. It starts flashing red lights at you and some of them will even give you a little verbal alert like, hey, dumbass, pay attention. It's more polite than that. And that's exactly why they did not hire me as the voice actor to do these systems because I would not have stuck

to their polite script. But anyway, some of them will even vibrate your seat. Like, hey, hey, hey, buddy, are you falling asleep? What's going on? You're not paying attention. If that doesn't work, the automated system will give up on you entirely and disengage and verbally demand that you retake control of the vehicle. GM cars will even slow down. They'll turn the hazards on. They're going to assume that you've had a heart attack or you've fallen asleep with a wheel or

some other disastrous thing has happened to you that you're not paying attention. And they may even call on-star emergency services and have an ambulance meet you because they think you are dead. You also won't be able to re-engage that automated system until you stop the car completely, turn it off, turn it back on again, and then proceed driving. It's considered a new driving session. And then you can re-engage the automated system.

However, it does keep track of your behavior. For example, with Tesla's autopilot system, if you repeatedly ignore the warnings and the autopilot has to disengage multiple times, it will ground you and send you to your room. The system will literally lock you out for an entire week until it thinks you have learned your lesson and you will behave properly next time. Tesla owners affectionately refer to this as autopilot jail.

But when used properly, these systems, they keep you nicely centered in the lane. They keep you going a set speed, a set distance between you and the car in front of you. And those are things that you can tweak to a certain extent. The system will also automatically change lanes for you when you request it by, imagine this, activating the turn signal. Amazing concept. So if you activate that turn signal, you tell the system, hey, I would like to change lanes.

And then the system will look for a clear and safe opening in that adjacent lane. And once it sees one meets its safety parameters, it will move you over nice and smoothly. But if it doesn't think that there is a sufficiently safe opening, it's not going to move you over. Even if you disagree, dude, you totally could have moved over. We had plenty of room. Uh uh. Those systems drive like grandma. They are a little more cautious than you or I might be.

The system can also choose to initiate a lane change on its own without you requesting it when necessary. So this usually happens when you have your cruise control set for a certain speed and you get too close to the vehicle in front of you, which is going slower. It says, okay, I'm going to pass this vehicle. There's room. I'm just going to pass them. Instead of slowing you down, it's just going to pass that other vehicle just as you would as a human. It just might do it a little more conservatively.

I realized that a lot of people really love these systems, especially on long road trips. The idea is that if you don't have to have your hands on the wheel, you can relax your shoulders. It just keeps your body from getting more fatigued. I'm not a hundred percent sure I agree with it. And I haven't seen enough scientific

data to sway me yet, but I just think if you're not actively driving, that gives you even more of an excuse to not pay attention. And clearly the number of people that end up in autopilot jail proves that that is true. Or I think you could get actually more tired and sleepy because your mind is not as active, your senses are not as engaged because you're not actively driving. For me, it would be

unbelievably boring, which is another way that you get distracted and the system would have to yell at for me is a very active thing, you know, and I don't use these systems because my 2004 Mini Cooper S does not have anything like that. I don't even have Bluetooth, but I don't want those systems, at least not the way they are now. So we want my more to say assertive driving style. Those systems would drive me bat shit crazy.

And I realized I am not your typical driver. Driving is a very active activity for me and one that I generally enjoy with the exception of if I'm stuck in rush hour stop and go traffic, but I don't think I could relinquish the control. And my husband and friends will probably tell you that that's true in all areas of my life, but I know the system will never drive to my more

assertive standards. So like I would always be asking it to change lanes to get around the slower drivers, and then I would yell at it for not taking the opening that I know is plenty big enough. I can see myself constantly arguing with a system like that sort of like I do my GPS. I argue with the little Google lady and the GPS all the time and So those systems just wouldn't be compatible with my rather zippy driving style. And again, I would get bored. I mean, I know there are people out there and I am talking to you. I'm gonna fuss at you for a minute.

People who listen to audio books to keep themselves entertained on road trips. I get it, but I also consider that to be distracted driving because you're paying more attention to the book and what they're saying and your brain is processing the story. It's not paying attention to the environment. And when I'm on long road trips, I keep myself entertained by actively driving.

Now I will jam my tunes and I will sing along to them very loudly and very off key, but I'm still paying very close attention to what is going on around me on the road. I watch the environment. I'm looking ahead. I watch what's going on. Is there debris in the road? Is there something that's about to blow onto the road? Is there a person that's going to step out onto the road? You know, is something going to fall off a truck?

Is the road surface about to change? Or is it going to rain? Does something up there look a little bit loose or a little bit slippery? And I keep an eye on all the cars around me. I'm constantly aware. It's called situational awareness. And that's true in any area of your life, but specifically while driving. And I also keep up a snarky commentary with myself. Like I should probably just record that sometime and make that a podcast so you can hear like what I say just to myself when I'm in the car alone

about everybody else's driving. But these are things that I have learned in the driving skills that I have developed being a race car driver. It's the same thing I have to do out there, just, you know, I do it higher speeds on the racetrack typically than I do on the roads. But that training is what has allowed me to have that situational awareness on regular roads. And also I know to pay attention.

Even better if I have my good road trip music like some ACDC and some Guns N' Roses. But again, I know I'm not normal and most people don't have that same level of training nor the level of enthusiasm for driving that I do. However, you need to pay attention folks, so please don't listen to your audiobooks while you're driving. Do not try to watch a movie on YouTube on your phone in a holder on the dash. These are the things that cause accidents. So if you do use some of these

autopilot type of systems and they help you on long road trips. They help you from getting tired. Great. More power to you. No criticism or judgment from me. Just please use them responsibly because here is the key point of level two autonomous driving. They may call it self-driving or whatever, but you, the driver are still legally responsible. You are legally liable

for everything the vehicle does. You can't blame it on the autopilot system. Legally, it is still 100 % on you. So drive like you have the legal liability and drive like your own life depends on it because it does. Tesla, GM, Ford, all the companies have all faced multiple lawsuits over accidents involving these level two systems. Some of them,

unfortunately involving fatalities. One of the highest profile cases was that of a gentleman named Walter Huang. His family filed a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit back in 2019 against Tesla and personally against Elon Musk. He was dropping his child off at preschool and then got on the freeway to commute to work out in Mountain View, California, and he turned on his autopilot. Less than 20 minutes later,

the autopilot system suddenly veered the vehicle out of the lane, accelerated to 70 miles an hour and crashed into a concrete barrier, killing the driver instantly. He died at the scene, leaving behind his wife and two young children. It was absolutely horrible. You can argue that, okay, why did the autopilot system do that? Why did it suddenly veer out of the lane and accelerate? Yes, it probably malfunctioned. However,

evidence showed that the driver was playing a video game on his iPhone at the time of the incident. He was not paying attention. And I don't know how he was doing it. He may have been looking up periodically to keep the autopilot from locking him out and putting him in jail, but he did not react in time to take control of that vehicle

before it crashed him into a concrete barrier at 70 miles an hour. So yes, both sides were at fault there and Tesla settle the lawsuit.

But again, the bottom line is the driver is still responsible. had Mr. Wong been paying attention instead of playing a video game on his iPhone, might he be alive today? It's a good possibility. At least he might've been able to take control of the car and not crash into the concrete barrier. Unfortunately,

the life of a father and husband was lost because of it. So, all right, I will stop ranting about that now, but that does take us to level three. Level three autonomous driving is really where the big shift occurs because it's where the system begins to monitor the driving environment on its own and then makes decisions based on that data and decides and takes the appropriate action on its own.

It's called conditional automated driving. And this is where artificial intelligence starts to come into play. The system truly starts to think for itself. Okay, we're getting a little scary here, right? Terminator, Skynet. Hence why also where the controversy begins, it can be difficult to really determine when a system can truly detect and interpret the driving environment and then make its own informed decisions.

Some very limited examples of that include the traffic jam assist technology. That's what the Toyota Lexus system is called. That's essentially that automated cruise control, but at lower speeds and it can handle stop and go traffic, as well as the automated parking systems, which those I do think are cool. It may not seem like

such a huge leap from a human perspective, but it's a significant step from a technology perspective. This environmental awareness requires the combination of multiple advanced scanning systems and computer processing power, plus built-in redundancies to handle if something fails so that the system can adjust instead of having to rely 100 % on the human. The only

true, SAE certified level three system currently available in the US as of June of 2025 is Mercedes Drive Pilot system. And that is only available in their 2024 and later S-Class and EQS sedans. You know, unless you can pay well over $100,000 for a sedan, you don't get the system. Tesla likes to claim that its full self-driving system is level three,

but they have not been certified at that rating. So again, they are making claims that are not true. They are boasting. Now, Audi and Honda have level three systems internationally that are just rolling out, but they're not in the US yet. And part of that is because while they were developing these systems, the regulatory environment in the US shifted. Imagine that, right?

Originally, the guidance and standards around autonomous vehicles were at the federal level. It got pushed down to state level mandates so that state by state could control it. And that's why you see things like the robo taxis and the testing for autonomous vehicles happening in very specific and limited states. Well, the current administration just threw that out and returned control to the federal level.

So things are probably going to change yet again in the very near future. And we may actually see Audi's system get classified officially as level three here and see Honda systems and Tesla might actually finally get certified at level three, but they still have to get through all their other legal troubles right now. But even at the level three, human override is still required. However, and this is where a big shift occurs. Legal responsibility, legal liability for the vehicle's actions is now shared

between the driver and the vehicle manufacturer. You can still get your butt sued and your insurance company will no doubt ding your record if something happens and you get into an accident while using one of these systems. So don't rely on this shared liability concept. But it's where we start getting into more legally murky areas. Hence lots of controversy and why it is much more difficult for a system to get certified level three. Even the manufacturers

have to accept a certain level of legal liability to get that certification. So I hope that they will be conservative and that their systems will be very, very good by the time they get there. Otherwise, you know, they're going to have even more lawsuits that they will be liable for. Now let's get to level four. This is called high driving automation.

Not really sure who named these levels, level four autonomous driving, the vehicles not only monitored the environment, but now they can intervene if and when things go wrong. And even if there's a system failure, they don't require human interaction. In the level three systems, they will disengage and they'll tell the human, oh my God, take over, I don't know what to do. But in

a level four system will not do that. It will manage the environment and the situation all by itself. They don't require human interaction in most circumstances. However, a human can still manually override and take control of the vehicle, even if remotely, in the event that something goes wacky.

This is why those robo-taxis are limited to very specific and well-mapped geographic areas. This is called geofencing in the technology world, and they use the GPS system to know exactly where they are, and they're not allowed to go outside of this virtual geographic fence. And that's also why they are currently limited to  lower speeds on city streets. So your robo-taxis

are level four-ish.

The legal liability now falls on the vehicle manufacturer or the company. So, like Waymo is the robotaxi company. They have legal liability. You as the passenger or the rider in a robotaxi, you are not legally liable for anything happening in this vehicle and

unless I'm sure they can prove that you somehow intervened. But this is also why we only have this level four happening at the rideshare taxi type level. There are no personal level four autonomous vehicles currently on the market. However, this is where GM is now focusing all of their autonomous driving money and research. So it's on the way, it is coming. It's just gonna be a matter of

who gets there first? Will it be GM? Will it be Ford? Will it be Tesla? Who knows? And it's also gonna depend on how the regulatory environment shakes out. You wouldn't wanna have a personal autonomous vehicle if you could only drive within very limited areas, if you couldn't drive on the freeway.

Yeah, I don't think that's really worth the money. So this is why I don't think we're truly going to see personal level autonomous vehicles until we get closer to this mysterious level five. Really the sixth level because we started at zero, but this top level is called full driving automation.

And that's the way SAE defines it, not the way Tesla defines it. It is true, full driving automation. And it is currently still largely in the realm of science fiction. But this is where the vehicles don't require any human attention at all. They can just be out there on their own without any

supervision. You know, they've graduated. Nobody is babysitting them. We are talking full on I, Robot mode. They won't have any steering wheels, probably. They probably won't have any pedals or any type of human driver controls. And that's similar to the designs of the newest robot taxis that are out there. They're just these little pods with seats and there's not a steering wheel. So we're getting ready for this level five, but we're still not there yet.

Level five cars will be completely free from geofencing. They're gonna be able to go wherever they want, do anything that an experienced human driver can do. They could handle any type of road theoretically anywhere in the world. They could handle any type of emergency situation. They can drive in bad weather. You know, this automatically makes them better than most of the human drivers on the road today, but...

If you think about it, when the human is not even monitoring the situation or doesn't even have the ability to override and control the vehicle, that's where it's going to get really scary. That's when we're going to get started getting to the Skynet because what could possibly go wrong there? And it's also the reason why we are still years away from this fifth level really becoming a reality in our society. The step from the different levels, it's not linear. It is exponential.

To get to level five, why this is such a technology development nightmare. The cars need to have super, super advanced sensors that can make sense of the real world in the same way that human eyes and ears can. They won't rely on these very detailed centimeter level maps. Like that is why the robotaxis today are limited to certain areas. They rely on these detailed, detailed maps.

If they can get away without a detailed map because they can learn in real time, they can look around and like, oh yeah, that's a curve. Oh yeah, that's a traffic cone. Oh, there's debris in the road. We as humans can see that stuff. And because we have a certain level of training, just from driver training and from just living in the world around us, we can see, we can hear, and we know what that information means most of the time and what to do to deal with it. For a computer to be able to do that,

and to be able to do it at any speed, in a chaotic city traffic, in crappy weather. That is seriously advanced technology that takes very advanced different types of sensors, as well as an incredible amount of computer processing power. That AI software has to be smart enough to make safe and correct driving decisions in totally unpredictable situations, like if a squirrel decides to play chicken with your car in the middle of the road, or...

A kid runs out in front of you or there's a pedestrian dressed up like a traffic cone. You  as a human know that's some idiot dressed like a traffic cone. Why? The AI has to know that it really is a weird human for some reason dressed as a traffic cone and not an actual traffic cone. To get to truly level five, they also have to at this point be able to talk

to each other, as well as communicate with road infrastructure around them in real time, reliably, and preferably without having a digital hissy fit. Like, can you imagine a whole bunch of autonomous vehicles getting into a road rage scenario because they get mad at each other? ⁓ my gosh, yeah, that's a horror movie rating to happen. But that's the biggest piece that's not in place. It's not just that the AI isn't there,

but the actual infrastructure that that software will need to rely on is not there. And it's going to take years and years of both technology advancements and upgrades to our infrastructure, as well as I'm sure a bazillion political and legal battles to become a reality in our country. Especially since the U.S. is so big. It's so diverse geographically, politically, just

everything. Imagine a vehicle being able to drive in New York City just as well as it could drive on the mountain roads of East Tennessee or in the wide open spaces of Montana. I mean, I don't want to drive in New York City. So for the technology and the AI to be able to do all those different things to truly be considered level five, yeah, we're not there yet. And we're not there yet in terms of having traffic lights

that can communicate with the cars and the cars communicating with each other. When you're on toll roads, can the car communicate directly with the toll booth? There's just so much infrastructure that in some ways we take for granted. And because that infrastructure is in such bad condition in many areas of our country, mean, our roads are even crap. So we've got a long way to go on that. And I know the AI technology is going to get there long before...

the infrastructure technology and certainly the regulatory and legal technology. The insurance companies are going to have to have they're going to have to revamp everything like all the rules for how you get your car insurance today and what rates they charge you. All that stuff is going to completely change. Lawyers are going to have to go back to law school and learn a whole new legal landscape for this. It's going to change absolutely everything about our society. And it's already starting to happen because we're seeing it

with the evolution of AI and who's really responsible and what legal rights do we have? Do companies have, know, does the AI itself, is it even its own legal entity? It's going to be a whole big mess. And, you know, every sci-fi movie I think that we've ever had has shown this not going particularly well. So the road to autonomous vehicles is not going to be a smooth one, but it is one that we are on and it's going to happen whether we like it or not.

And if we're really ready for it or not. So what do you think about autonomous vehicle technology, both in terms of where we are today and with the robo taxis and where we're going in the future? Would you want to have a personal autonomous vehicle to just chauffer you around everywhere?  I might for situations where I have to get across town in rush hour traffic. I really don't enjoy that type of driving. But would you still be able want to be able to drive yourself?

Let me know in the comments what your level of tolerance is and enthusiasm is for the future of autonomous driving. And if you have not done so already, please subscribe to The Straight Shift and check out my online car buying course. If you haven't subscribed to The Straight Shift newsletter, which is the companion to this podcast - it gets released on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.

And it focuses more on news and what's going on in the industry and the whole ridiculous tariff situation so that I could keep the podcast a little bit more fun. If you haven't opted into that on my website, TheCarChick.com, please do so if you want to keep up with all of the nonsense that's going on in the automotive industry and all the crazy changes. But until next time, folks, no matter what level of technology you have in your car, remember you are still responsible. So please use it responsibly and drive safely. I'm out of here.