DETROIT (AP) – Two organisations that influence many Americans’ automobile buying decisions will begin rating vehicles on how well they track behaviour of motorists who use partially automated driver-assist systems.

Consumer Reports and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) said the ratings will factor into scores for new models starting this year. Automobile buyers often turn to both groups to judge the safety of vehicles.

The new ratings, announced on Thursday, come as the auto industry struggles with how to make sure drivers stay alert as the systems take on more driving functions. Plus, the systems are being offered in more new vehicles.

Both groups said research shows drivers often rely too much on the computerised systems, even though they cannot drive vehicles themselves. At times, the systems have made mistakes and drivers have failed to take action – with deadly consequences. Some automakers have oversold the systems’ abilities in advertising, both groups said.

The organisations say they are stepping in with ratings and standards because at present there are none from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the United States (US) government’s auto safety agency. NHTSA said in a statement that it’s researching the monitoring systems to establish benchmarks and get driver data for possible future actions.

Both Consumer Reports and IIHS hope that automakers will respond with more robust monitoring systems.

“Keeping drivers focussed on the road and the vehicle is critical for the safe use of partially automated driving systems,” said David Harkey, president of IIHS, an industry group that has shamed automakers into making safety improvements with its rankings.

Partially automated systems, with trade names such as “Autopilot”, “Super Cruise”, and “ProPilot Assist”, vary in levels of sophistication. Some are a combination of lane-centring technology and advanced cruise control, which will adjust speed to keep a vehicle away from those in front of it. Others can change lanes on their own. Most use cameras and some have radar sensors.

But drivers are able to ignore some of the monitoring systems, especially with Tesla, which led the industry by rolling out its “Autopilot” driver-assist system in 2015. Government officials say no self-driving cars are available for sale and that drivers must be ready to take action at all times.

For example, in 2018, a Tesla operating on Autopilot crashed into a freeway barrier in Mountain View, California, killing the driver. The National Transportation Safety Board found that the driver likely was distracted by a cell phone video game.

NHTSA has opened a formal investigation into Teslas on Autopilot crashing into emergency vehicles parked on roadways. A message was left on Thursday seeking comment from Tesla.

Some companies, such as General Motors, Ford, Tesla, BMW and Subaru, have cameras that watch a driver to make sure their eyes are on the road. Others only check for hands on the steering wheel. But since there are no federal standards, some monitoring can be turned off by drivers, while others don’t take enough action to make drivers pay attention, both organisations said.

There is no evidence that the driving systems make vehicles safer, and research shows they could be less safe if the systems don’t make sure drivers are engaged, Harkey said.

“There are studies that go back probably 80 years that show humans are pretty bad about just watching automation happen,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Centre. “It’s just too easy to get bored and let your attention wander.”

Currently, the partially automated systems aren’t widely used. Harkey said the systems are a “single digit” percentage of the roughly 280 million vehicles on US roadways. But they’re being offered on a growing number of vehicles. Consumer Reports found last fall that they’re available on about half of all new models.

At present, no driver monitoring systems meet the standards set by IIHS, Harkey said. To earn a coveted “good” rating, the systems have to have multiple types of alerts reminding a driver to look at the road. They also have to make a driver place hands on the steering wheel if they’ve looked away. If a driver fails to respond, the systems should slow the vehicles to a crawl or stop, IIHS said.

“We’re hoping and we think that the automakers will respond and they’ll start to add more robust features into their vehicles that have these systems,” Harkey said.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States (US) Federal Reserve on Thursday released a highly anticipated report on central bank digital currencies that suggested it is leaning toward having banks and other financial firms, rather than the Fed itself, manage digital accounts for customers.

A central bank digital currency would differ in some key ways from the online and digital payments that millions of Americans already conduct. Those transactions are funneled through banks, which wouldn’t be necessary with a digital dollar.

The Fed’s paper stressed that no final decisions about a digital currency have been reached.

But it suggested that a digital currency that “would best serve the needs” of the nation would follow an “intermediated model” under which banks or payment firms would create accounts or digital wallets.

The Fed characterised the potential introduction of a digital currency as a step that could have far-reaching consequences for banks and other financial firms as well as for the central bank itself.

“The introduction of a (central bank digital currency) would represent a highly significant innovation in American money,” the study said. The Fed said it “could fundamentally change the structure of the US financial system, altering the roles and responsibilities of the private sector and the central bank.”

The report comes at a time when digital money is proliferating in a variety of forms. Millions of people own cryptocurrencies, though they are often used more as investments than as forms of payment. But so-called stablecoins, which are often pegged to the dollar, have also soared in use in the past year, mostly for cryptocurrency transactions.

And most central banks around the world are studying government-backed digital currencies.

China’s central bank has already tested a digital version of the yuan. The European Central Bank began exploring a digital euro in October and said its “investigation period” would last two years. Some Caribbean nations have already issued digital currencies.

China’s action and the explosion of stablecoins, which can be used in place of dollars in international transactions, have raised pressure on the Fed to consider a digital currency. Last March, Chair Jerome Powell said that while the Fed needed to keep pace with financial innovations, it would proceed cautiously.

“As the world’s principal reserve currency…we have an obligation to be on the cutting edge of understanding the technological challenges,” Powell said then. “But…we don’t need to rush this project. We don’t need to be first to market.”

The Fed is likely years away from actually issuing a digital currency, if it decides to do so. The paper released on Thursday kicks off a 120-day comment period, during which the Fed will seek input from the public. The Fed also said it would proceed only with support from Congress, “ideally in the form of a specific authorising law”.

And officials at the central bank aren’t all in agreement about whether a central bank digital currency is needed. Lael Brainard, who serves on the Fed’s Board of Governors and has been nominated by US President Joe Biden to be vice chair, has, for example, expressed support for the concept, while Christopher Waller, another board member, has been skeptical.

A digital dollar could bring a host of benefits as well as risks. It would be a safer form of digital payment, because the Fed, unlike a bank or the companies issuing stablecoins, can’t go bankrupt. It could be easier and less expensive to access for people without bank accounts.

At the same time, a digital currency could pose privacy risks because it would be issued by the government. The Fed’s paper suggests, though, that banks and other third-party firms would shield consumer data from the Fed while also implementing existing rules against money-laundering and other illicit activity.

Such a government-issued digital dollar could also have major consequences for commercial banks because many Americans might prefer to hold such currency in a “wallet” issued by a payment provider like PayPal or Venmo, potentially cutting into bank deposits.

The Fed could even seek to influence the economy through a digital currency, as it now does by controlling interest rates. It could pay interest on a digital dollar, for example, or even have it decline in value, as a form of a negative interest rate. An interest payment could make a digital dollar more attractive than money in a bank.

“This substitution effect could reduce the aggregate amount of deposits in the banking system,” the Fed report said.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by banks. The Bank Policy Institute, a lobbying group, asserted in a blog post last June that the Fed doesn’t have legal authority to pay interest on a digital dollar.