Self-driving cars crash, too, but figuring out what it means requires much better data

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This week, for the first time ever, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on crashes involving cars equipped with advanced driver-assist systems and automated driving technology. A lot of headlines - including The Verge's - focused on the number of Tesla vehicles that crashed, which is understandable because Tesla had a lot of crashes.

But the numbers themselves don't tell us the whole story. In fact, they don't really tell us much of any story at all. Not yet.

That's because we're still missing a lot of key details, like the number of vehicle miles driven or the prominence of advanced driver-assist technology in each manufacturer's fleet. NHTSA receives the data through varying sources, including customer...

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