Self-driving vehicles can be tracked on the web

DETROIT — If you’ve ever seen one of those self-driving vehicles with strange equipment on the roof and wondered where it’s going, then there’s a website for you.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week launched its autonomous vehicle online tracking tool, a map that shows some of the places where the vehicles are being tested on public roads.

The map is a pilot program that shows testing in 17 cities across the nation, and the safety agency says it will grow as companies submit more information.

“The more information the public has about the on-road testing of automated driving systems, the more they will understand the development of this promising technology,” Deputy NHTSA Administrator James Owens said in a statement.

But critics say the map relies solely on information that’s voluntarily submitted by companies and has no requirements to show safety data.

Cities with data available on the map include Austin and Dallas, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Detroit and Milford, Michigan; Denver and Golden, Colorado; Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida; Phoenix; Pittsburgh; Salt Lake City, Park City, Lehi and St. George, Utah; San Francisco; and Washington, D.C.

So far 10 companies in nine states have signed up to be in the map pilot project. But at present, that’s only a fraction of the companies that are testing. In California alone, more than 60 companies have applied to test autonomous vehicles on public roads.

The agency said companies have flexibility in the type of information they disclose, prompting critics to say the companies could leave out critical data such as the number of crashes.