This document provides safety-relevant guidance for on-road testing of vehicles being operated by prototype conditional, high, and full (Levels 3 to 5) ADS, as defined by SAE J3016. It does not include guidance for evaluating the performance of post-production ADS-equipped vehicles. Moreover, this guidance only addresses testing of ADS-operated vehicles as overseen by in-vehicle fallback test drivers (IFTD).

These guidelines do not address:

Remote driving, including remote fallback test driving of prototype ADS-operated test vehicles in driverless operation. (Note: The term "remote fallback test driver" is included as a defined term herein and is intended to be addressed in a future iteration of this document. However, at this time, too little is published or known about this type of testing to provide even preliminary guidance.)

Testing of driver support features (i.e., Levels 1 and 2), which rely on a human driver to perform part of the dynamic driving task (DDT) and to supervise the driving automation feature's performance in real time. (Refer to SAE J3016.)

Closed-course testing.

Simulation testing (except for training purposes).

Component-level testing.