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Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#161

Post by PeterisP »

stephengillie wrote: post #7

The cost of false positives at freeway speeds is part of the reason: > When a car is moving at low speeds, slamming on the brakes isn't a big risk. A car traveling at 20mph can afford to wait until an object is quite close before slamming on the brakes, making unnecessary stops unlikely. Short stopping distances also mean that a car slamming on the brakes at 20mph is unlikely to get rear-ended. But the calculation ch…

Steering around obstacles is not trivial to do safely. Indeed, when training new human drivers, they're taught not to steer around minor obstacles (e.g. not-large animals) at freeway speeds - to slow down and accept the impact if it happens, instead of swerving into opposite lane or a ditch on the other side, which has a lot of potential to kill people. Similarly, for many kinds of debris and garbage on the road, if you can't safely change the lane (or it's a single-lane road, where you can't go around at all if there's oncoming traffic), the safest approach is to just drive through the obstacle; possibly even if you could stop before it, which isn't always the case.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#162

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #112
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong they very well may be significantly less safe than an attentive human driver in good conditions on good roads. However, they are reasonably close and the average driver is not going to improve any time soon while self driving cars will. The trend of things machines can do better than people really only goes in one direction. Further people are vastly worse at driving than they think, over 1.25 mill…

In the U.S., people drive 3.22 trillion miles per year. At about 40,000 deaths per year, that's one death per 80 million miles driven.

~2.7 milllion people die in the US each year. 40,000 vechile deaths means a little more than 1 in 70 deaths is from cars.

And every single one of them is a preventable tragedy.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#163

Post by Retric »

rootusrootus wrote: post #88
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get me wrong they very well may be significantly less safe than an attentive human driver in good conditions on good roads. However, they are reasonably close and the average driver is not going to improve any time soon while self driving cars will. The trend of things machines can do better than people really only goes in one direction. Further people are vastly worse at driving than they think, over 1.25 mill…

I don't think 'insane' is accurate. What you're really showing is just how many people there are on the planet. You have to drive about 100,000,000 miles before your odds of being involved in a fatal accident approach 1. Or put another way, about 7500 years. On top of that, when you factor in the utility of driving a car, the risk/reward ratio looks stellar. Humans are better drivers than given credit for, and it wil…

Yea no. ~55.3 million people die each year worldwide and ~1.3 million of them are from cars so that's 1 in 43 deaths are from cars.

That's one of the top killers anyway you slice it and every single one of those deaths is preventable.

PS: Truckers drive up to 3,000 miles per week * 48 weeks per year * 47 years (65-18) that's ~6.7 million miles. US death rate is ~1:88 million miles on average. So if they where as dangerous as average that's ~1 death per 13 truckers. However, they are safer than this and average less miles. Still, it's one of the most dangerous US jobs.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#164

Post by ghaff »

beefield wrote: post #129
atomical wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People smell better in Europe? When people trot out their arguments against public transportation they always refer to the inefficiencies and completely ignore the human element. No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day.

> No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day. I take 15 minutes crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers over one hour of solitude in a small metal box with windows any day. Nobody has managed to explain me how self driving cars reduces congestion. It is space that is the limiting factor, and I do not understand how autonomous cars reduce the need for that. Vice versa, r…

>"Nobody has managed to explain me how self driving cars reduces congestion. It is space that is the limiting factor, and I do not understand how autonomous cars reduce the need for that."

Even if it works for just highway driving in good weather--which, in spite of overall skepticism about timeframes seems relatively close--it's hard to see how it doesn't put a lot more cars on the roads. I can't believe I'm unique in saying that I'd go into the city after work or head into the mountains for a hike more frequently if someone/something else were driving me.

Operating costs are still a constraint And those are higher than a lot of people assume if they don't really think about it. But easier driving will absolutely put more cars on the road.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#165

Post by ghaff »

userbinator wrote: post #117
Merad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents bought a new 2018 Camry a few weeks ago that came with a manual roughly an inch thick. Expecting anyone to read it is bordering on delusional. I say this as someone who often does read manuals (because I’m a nerd).

An inch thick? That's roughly the size I'd expect a service manual to be, but I struggle to think of why the operator's manual would need to have so much content. (Unless it's because they decided to print the same thing in 200 different languages. I've seen that with some other equipment --- surprisingly thick manual, but a tiny fraction of it is actually in English.)

That's extremely normal. My 4Runner's user manual is about that thick and it's all in English. It's a relatively small format, has lots of diagrams. But modern cars have a lot of systems, buttons, indicators, etc.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#166

Post by chiph »

rayiner wrote: post #31

What this shows is that Tesla isn’t even on the path to self-driving technology. It sounds like “Autopilot” has no world model (or an extremely basic one)—it ignores stationary objects because it can’t tell whether it’s approaching something on the side of a road that curves away versus an obstacle in the lane. It can’t tell because it doesn’t know what the car is going to do and what the lane is going to do. That’s…

When I test-drove a Tesla last year, the system gave the impression of reacting to the outside environment instead of predicting it. It was always later in applying a correction than I would have been.

It would drift towards the next lane, and while not at the exact last moment - it would steer back slightly after what I would have done. Not confidence inspiring. If it had been an option, I would not have paid for it.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#167

Post by ghaff »

forapurpose wrote: post #58
newnewpdro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even bothering to flip through a meager 1" thick manual for a newly acquired automobile strikes me as negligent. At least review the sections covering features you've never had in a vehicle before, geez.

> Not even bothering to flip through a meager 1" thick manual for a newly acquired automobile strikes me as negligent. Perhaps, but then almost everyone is negligent. The car designers (and the whole world) know that well, so to depend on people reading the manual is disingenuous and dangerous.

The idea that someone is going to spend an hour studying a user manual when they pickup a rental car at the airport is just silly.

I actually find it something of an issue with rental cars these days. Obviously the foot pedals, turn signals, etc. are well enough standardized that it takes very little to accustomize yourself with them. But environmental/entertainment controls? And then there's the fact that things like backup sensors may or may not be available in a given car even though you tend to start depending on them a bit if you have them.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#168

Post by rsynnott »

atomical wrote: post #61
danso wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like something that will be most enjoyed post-retirement, a godsend for American seniors who don't live in cities with good mass-transit.

I'm sure all the seniors love riding public transit.

In places with decent public transport, why not? In many countries, it’s free for people over whatever age to use public transport, and it’s obviously more practical for many elderly people than driving.

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#169

Post by [deleted] »

atomical wrote: post #86
mattnewport wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very much depends on where you live. It's generally a lot better in Europe for a variety of reasons: historical, political and geographical. I use public transit quite a bit here in Vancouver but my limited experience of it in SF gives me some appreciation why people might not want to use it there.

People smell better in Europe? When people trot out their arguments against public transportation they always refer to the inefficiencies and completely ignore the human element. No one wants to be crammed in a small space with a bunch of strangers every day.

[deleted]

Re: Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

#170

Post by ghaff »

PeterisP wrote: post #161
stephengillie wrote: post #7

The cost of false positives at freeway speeds is part of the reason: > When a car is moving at low speeds, slamming on the brakes isn't a big risk. A car traveling at 20mph can afford to wait until an object is quite close before slamming on the brakes, making unnecessary stops unlikely. Short stopping distances also mean that a car slamming on the brakes at 20mph is unlikely to get rear-ended. But the calculation ch…

Steering around obstacles is not trivial to do safely. Indeed, when training new human drivers, they're taught not to steer around minor obstacles (e.g. not-large animals) at freeway speeds - to slow down and accept the impact if it happens, instead of swerving into opposite lane or a ditch on the other side, which has a lot of potential to kill people. Similarly, for many kinds of debris and garbage on the road, if…

This is probably one of the more complicated freeway cases--which otherwise are likely mostly easier environments than urban ones. It's not rare to have debris of various types in and around the roadway. The right action from braking to swerving/steering (or some combination thereof) depends on a whole lot of factors.
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