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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

#201

Post by jstarfish »

joe_the_user wrote: post #102
Phrodo_00 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would generally prefer smarter (more error prone) systems to be surrounded by dumber systems. So the break pedal overrides everything, then you'd have a run of the mill radar breaking system, regular lane following system, and only after that (and maybe even further back) the more advanced self driving-ish stuff. It's weird that it isn't designed that way, since that's the way automated systems in factories and the…

So the break pedal overrides everything, then you'd have a run of the mill radar breaking system, regular lane following system, and only after that (and maybe even further back) the more advanced self driving-ish stuff The problem the article points out is that there's no safe, dumb response to radar seeing something stopped right in front of a car going 70 mpg. If anything, the systems the article describes are a l…

Why does "in case of anomaly or ambiguity, slow the fuck down, gather more data and reassess" never seem to be part of the functional logic with these things?

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

#202

Post by jstarfish »

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.)

Lots of pictures, disclaimers, and coverage of every last optional feature your vehicle may or may not have been equipped with.

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

#203

Post by kuon »

I naively thought modern systems used a battery of lidar (with different wavelengths to provide redundancy, like visible+ir+uv) to create a precise 3d map of the objects around the car. Coupled with cameras for visual awareness this seems like the only sane system.

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

#204

Post by slfnflctd »

lscotte wrote: post #181
bartread wrote: post #144

A common situation, certainly on British motorways in relatively heavy traffic, is to be tooling along at 70mph, and then have to come to a halt - or drop to 20mph - fairly abruptly due to waves of slow moving traffic that move backwards along the carriageway. I wonder how well such systems would handle that kind of situation, where obstacles might not be stationary, but the speed difference is large?

In my experience - a car with both adaptive cruise and auto emergency braking: it handles the situation quite well, but the human driver (i.e. me) uses hints that the autonomous systems cannot, such as brake lights coming on ahead. The auto systems take a second or two longer to react.

I've driven a rental with those features as well, and in my experience at least the Prius version is almost a little oversensitive to brake lights. In adaptive cruise mode, I've had it kind of slam the car's brakes pretty hard just because another car not even in my lane tapped their brakes to make an exit.

Of course, I'm not going to test it against stationary objects at high speeds, but at low speeds it definitely gives escalating warnings before you hit the door or wall of a garage. As someone who dented a garage door once, I value this feature.

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

#205

Post by MBCook »

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #198

And it also creates a danger that the car behind won't stop in time, leading to a rear-end collision. Inattentive tailgaters shouldn't be accommodated. Sure, their problem becomes your problem when you brake hard, but I'd much rather be rear-ended (with head rests and the whole rear of the car as a crumple zone) than plow head on into a stationary object at high speed.

If the car in front of me doesn’t stop until it’s too late (or at all) it doesn’t matter how attentive I am, I probably can’t stop in time either.

Most of the time I can’t see past the car in front of me. It’s too tall, no windows (commercial truck), etc. so the ONLY way I know I’m in danger is how they’re acting.

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

#206

Post by mcguire »

rspeer wrote: post #194
mcguire wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://support.volvocars.com/hk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.as... "WARNING "When the adaptive cruise control is following another vehicle at speeds in excess ofca 30 km/h (20 mph) and the target is changed from a moving vehicle to a stationary vehicle, the adaptive cruise control will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead select the stored speed. "The driver must then intervene him/herself and brake."

Wow, that is some really unclear and weaselly wording. Do I understand correctly that it means "This system might decide to 'follow' a stopped car and crash into it, and then we'll say it's your fault"?

Yes.

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

#207

Post by jstarfish »

stephengillie wrote: post #19
Pyxl101 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that it's too difficult for the systems to accurately determine whether an upcoming object is actually in the lane. It's not uncommon to pass stationary vehicles parked on the side of the road. If you're approaching those vehicles along a curve, they might seem like they're in the road to a radar sensor even when they're not. I can see why it's a hard problem: attempting to detect these probably leads to to…

> Still, you would think that there would be some threshold where the car decides, "Hey, this stationary obstacle is right in front of me . I should slow down" From the article: > 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 distanc…

So...dont brake suddenly. Decelerate, buy some time to collect and analyze more data and if the end result still appears to be a collision, then brake hard.

If a human driver started hallucinating behind the wheel, we would expect them to do the same, not maintain speed (or accelerate!) through the supposed object in their path.

This tech was supposed to be safer and more convenient than human driving, not a simulation of the decision-making abilities of a 12-year-old playing Grand Theft Auto.

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

#208

Post by Someone »

Retric wrote: post #82
Someone wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things you’ll have to correct for: - Tesla’s cars are newer and more expensive than the average car on US roads (making them safer) - Tesla’s Autopilot mostly, if not only, gets used on roads that are safer than average. - Tesla drivers may have had to intervene a lot to prevent more deaths. - not all those Tesla’s ended up on US roads (probably not something with large impact)

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…

”the average driver is not going to improve any time soon while self driving cars will.”

I don’t see how that’s an argument in favor of letting today’s self driving cars loose on the road.

We don’t let people without any driving experience drive cars either because, if we let them, they “will improve soon”.

Or are you suggesting letting self-driving cars loose now is a necessary sacrifice we have to make to make progress?

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

#209

Post by Someone »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #154
Someone wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things you’ll have to correct for: - Tesla’s cars are newer and more expensive than the average car on US roads (making them safer) - Tesla’s Autopilot mostly, if not only, gets used on roads that are safer than average. - Tesla drivers may have had to intervene a lot to prevent more deaths. - not all those Tesla’s ended up on US roads (probably not something with large impact)

If you're measuring the raw efficiency of the self-driving mechanism, you have to correct for those. If you're measuring whether the actual experience of using autopilot meets the prevailing standards by which we judge "safe enough" as a country, you don't want to correct for those first three. Especially the "the cars are new and safe overall" factor. Correcting for that is like "correcting for" the fact that all th…

I replied to Retric’s claim about Autopilot ”I think these are already fairly close to human fatality rates”

If (and that’s likely) other features than Autopilot contribute to Teslas killing and injuring fewer people, we must compensate for them to judge whether Autopilot is a net benefit.

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

#210

Post by rhino369 »

simion314 wrote: post #75
pishpash wrote: post #50

Let's just come out and say it: Tesla Autopilot is shit. If it's not, I challenge anyone to trust it.

We can say is not autopilot where autopilot means what we think it means, because Tesla and the fanboys are pulling out some other definitions that mean something different, while marketing and Elon share/promote images and videos of people not using their hands when using autopilot.,

There also needs to be a question of what is the purpose of the so called Autopliot. You have to sit there with full attention and your hands on the wheel. How is that better than just steering yourself.
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