Actually, the most frequently presented car tests are not entirely practical. The extremely possible acceleration is documented here. Well, as long as it is a sports car, that might be good. But not with a normal limousine or slightly larger vehicles. But where do you want to let off steam when you always have someone in front of you and in the best case the speed is limited to 100 km/h?

Here, on the country road, the steering and its back coupling are assessed. And how hard the car understeers or oversteers. This is particularly ridiculous when there are systems in the same car that occasionally take the steering wheel out of your hand or take control of the brake pedal.

Which brings us to the topic of assistance systems, limited here to adaptive cruise control and active lane keeping. One thing in advance: a vehicle that allows such capers as braking that surprises the driver and the drivers behind it or hardening of the steering when the driver makes corrections shouldn't be allowed in the first place.

And when the system is on the verge of being overwhelmed, it should report this as early as possible and withdraw. Therefore, there should be at least a kind of double check when recognizing traffic signs, in order to stop at the latest with the third false or non-reporting, e.g. in bad weather. If the system is so intelligent, it can compare its own plans with those of the driver, rule out eventualities and notice when it is superfluous.

The updated map data must be sent to the vehicles as quickly as possible. Also, there shouldn't just be BMWs or VWs talking, but an overall system is urgently needed. And just like with OBD, the most important reciprocating information would have to be encoded in such a way that it could be read out practically anywhere and used for research or to improve map data.

It would also be essential to ensure that vehicles driven by assistance are no longer noticeable in normal traffic, e.g. by waiting for an exaggeratedly long time behind someone who has long since left. Also, stepping out of line too early in an automated overtaking maneuver on the highway and rejoining too late would have to be proscribed.

Nevertheless, the driver should be given the option of specifying other settings here. After all, he/she is still in control of the car. The best thing would be to make the first use of the assistance dependent on a short time for various, very clearly to decide settings.

A typical shutdown, which should be made possible in any case, would then be the adaptive element on the cruise control. Too much constraint due to functions that can largely only be switched off together increase frustration and will do a disservice to possible further steps towards autonomous driving.

Actually, the most assistance systems you don't really notice the artificial intelligence that is supposed to be in them. As a rule, you can even understand why the system reacted incorrectly in this case. That is still far too undesirable. And published practical tests could be of great help here.