NBC CT Responds Takes a Spin: New Colchester Track Tests Semi-Autonomous Vehicles

Colchester may be small, but even some locals don’t realize the town houses the world’s largest independent automobile testing center in the world.

The NBC CT Responds team was the first news organization to get to check out Consumer Reports (CR) new 1.5-mile, multi-lane test loop.

Here researchers for the testing and advocacy nonprofit will have even more miles of road to test all sorts of “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems” (ADAS) like blind spot detection and lane change assistance at higher speeds safely and they won’t endanger drivers on public roads.

Kelly Funkhouser, manager of vehicle technology for Consumer Reports, took us around the new testing loop which will help CR evaluate these systems to help educate consumers and advocate manufacturers for better safety features.

“The manufacturers pay a lot of attention to everything we say. It drives their sales, right?,” she said.

The loop, which meets local and federal roadway requirements, is the latest addition to CR’s more than 320-acre Auto Test Center which was once the site of a drag way.

CR employees anonymously purchase the vehicles they test like a consumer would.

The team tests just about everything you can think of on about 50 vehicles a year.

While safety drives their research, they also test out how user friendly and convenient technology is too.

Funkhouser showed us some of her concerns with steering-less driving firsthand, like when the car we were in wanted to go straight instead of bearing right, “even though there were dotted lines blocking it off, it saw that there was a road and it wanted to go there.”

Thus proving, she says “why you have to be fully engaged, paying attention at all times.”

And no question that was the biggest takeaway NBC CT Responds took from our time on the track.

Thursday, CR celebrated its new addition in a room full of dignitaries and Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“As tests conducted at this very facility reveal, not every manufacturer’s safety technology is created equal. The importance of your independent testing can’t be overstated,” Homendy said.

Whether you like it or not, buckle up.

“These technology on cars, they’re coming,” said Funkhouser, and CR wants to ensure drivers are educated and manufacturer’s have the proper safeguards in place.