Events several years ago led Google to change its development policy towards 'driver handover' autonomous cars, it has been revealed.
According to a Reuters report, parent company Alphabet's self-driving car unit stopped developing features that required drivers to take control in dangerous situations, because relying on the autopilot left users prone to distractions and ill-prepared to manoeuvre the vehicle.
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Experiments in Silicon Valley showed test users napping, putting on makeup and fiddling with phones as vehicles sped along at up to 56mph.
John Krafcik, head of Waymo, formed in 2009 as a project within Google, told Reuters that, about five years ago the company envisioned technology that could autonomously drive cars on highways as a quick way to market.
Other self-driving automakers included similar autopilot features for highway driving in vehicles which require drivers to take over the steering wheel in difficult situations. Waymo planned to do the same.
"What we found was pretty scary," Krafcik told Reuters. "It's hard to take over because they have lost contextual awareness."
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By GlobalDataLast month, the National Transportation Safety Board reported a truck driver's failure to yield the right of way and a car driver's inattention due to over reliance on vehicle automation were the probable causes of the fatal 7 May, 2016, Tesla crash near Williston, Florida.
The NTSB also determined the operational design of the Tesla's vehicle automation permitted the car driver's over reliance on the automation, noting its design allowed prolonged disengagement from the driving task and enabled the driver to use it in ways inconsistent with manufacturer guidance and warnings.
There have been similar 'loss of situational awareness" cases in the airline industry, notably in the case of an Air France flight which crashed after the autopilot disengaged due to sensor icing between South America and Europe.
Krafcik told Reuters Waymo decided a system which asked drivers to jump in at the sound of an alert was unsafe after seeing videos from inside self-driving cars during tests.
The filmed tests were conducted in 2013, with Google employees behind the wheel. The videos had not been publicly shown until this week, Waymo spokeswoman Lauren Barriere told the news agency.
The company decided to focus solely on technology that didn't require human intervention a couple of days after the napping incident, said Krafcik, CEO since 2015. It has also since argued against allowing 'handoffs' between automated driving systems and people.
Reuters said the two drive controls provided to passengers in Waymo's Chrysler Pacifica minivans are buttons for starting a ride and asking the vehicles to pull over at their next opportunity.
