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Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

arstechnica.com

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Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#121

Post by vkou »

JohnFen wrote: post #113
notatoad wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this seems like the sort of thing that would be better measured with actual numbers, not just anecdotes from people on the internet. the NHTSA is a pretty cautious organization, and they like numbers. if they've studied it and found that automatic braking will prevent 24000 crashes and 360 deaths per year, i'd be inclined to believe them. having the car brake for me when i'm not expecting it sounds kind of scary to m…

I agree. I also agree with this: > If the government wants to immediately improve car safety they should outlaw touchscreens instead.

It sounds like they should do both, then?

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#122

Post by ak217 »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

This almost got me into a serious accident, twice. Definitely would not recommend and I switched cars because of it. The last thing I need is buggy software with the capability of instantly changing the trajectory of my vehicle (slippery surfaces, cornering). A brand car as well (MB) so really, really disappointed, what should have been a safety feature actually was the opposite. Dealer said everything was fine so th…

I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles in cars of 3 makes (Mazda, Subaru, Nissan) with AEB systems and they never once had a false activation, while the feature did save me from several serious accidents. The Nissan is also nice enough to warn early so I can react before the AEB kicks in.

Properly implemented AEB is an essential safety feature that saves lives.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#123

Post by peteradio »

notatoad wrote: post #111
jacquesm wrote: post #6

This almost got me into a serious accident, twice. Definitely would not recommend and I switched cars because of it. The last thing I need is buggy software with the capability of instantly changing the trajectory of my vehicle (slippery surfaces, cornering). A brand car as well (MB) so really, really disappointed, what should have been a safety feature actually was the opposite. Dealer said everything was fine so th…

this seems like the sort of thing that would be better measured with actual numbers, not just anecdotes from people on the internet. the NHTSA is a pretty cautious organization, and they like numbers. if they've studied it and found that automatic braking will prevent 24000 crashes and 360 deaths per year, i'd be inclined to believe them. having the car brake for me when i'm not expecting it sounds kind of scary to m…

360 deaths is noise.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#124

Post by Tanoc »

ceejayoz wrote: post #95
dabluecaboose wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exclusively a "gearhead" opinion to not want a system in your car that can violently take control away from you unexpectedly Statistics are meaningless to the individual. Sure, emergency braking might be safer across the board, but that means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it.

> Statistics are meaningless to the individual. This is just blatantly untrue. > means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it Until emergency breaking stops a bad driver from T-boning you in an intersection as they run a red light. “I’ll just drive safely” was the argument against seatbelts, airbags, and antilock brakes. Motorcycle helmets, too.

Forward emergency braking systems don't detect such situations. You'd be hit regardless. They only have a 170 degree field of view at the best of times in their current implementations. Somebody two hundred feet away closing at sixty miles an hour will hit you in the side regardless of forward emergency braking simply because it's not designed to look for something moving that quickly that far away at that extreme of an angle.

That said there's also a balance in safety systems between personal responsibility and systems responsibility. Relying too much on systems responsibility actually causes more harm because the person becomes more careless or is entirely at the whim of the system responsible for their safety. We put railings on stairs in public places but don't require everyone to put on a safety harness and latch it onto the guide to climb stairs for example. There's an expectation that system safety has hit a reasonable limit and the safety harness is too costly in time, money, and attention to implement.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#125

Post by hnick »

pdonis wrote: post #94
ddalcino wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to elaborate on what went wrong? The other comments here make ‘automatic emergency braking’ sound like a really good idea, and it’s hard for me to imagine that this particular feature would be so problematic. If you’re talking about other automatic steering features, that’s very different, and your comment makes more sense to me.

> The other comments here make ‘automatic emergency braking’ sound like a really good idea That's because those other comments all assume that "automatic emergency braking" will only do exactly what it's supposed to do and will never make a mistake. But any sensible person knows that's not going to happen. These systems will make mistakes, and some of those mistakes will cause harm. So you can't just make a blanket c…

I think there is one other aspect to consider. Over here at least, generally if someone rear ends you it's always their fault. The law says they were not maintaining a safe following distance. So from the perspective of the manufacturer they would probably say such mistakes should not by themselves cause problems unless someone else is breaking the law, no different to a human tapping the brakes because they thought they saw a kid about to run on the road but it was just a jacket stuck on a tree.

You should be safe and free to brake without deep introspective thought, without fear of causing an accident. The real world is not that simple but that's how the law is generally setup.

And as a further point they'd probably say that if that person following had such a system, there's also less chance they'd rear-end you in turn. I was wary of the systems in my own car, but after 6 months of driving they are far more reliable than I'd feared and I'm quite impressed.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#126

Post by vkou »

hedora wrote: post #104
lsaferite wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully understand that frustration, but I would point out that continuing through the departure zone like that at full speed is prone to accidents with another car entering the road in that blind spot and you should adjust accordingly. Additionally, following the car in front of you so close that you hit them if they brake suddenly is inherently dangerous and a bad habit as well. Interestingly enough, a universal AE…

Road throughput is inversely proportional to following distance, so if everyone doubles their following distance to account for / avoid spurious automatic emergency braking, then we’d need to double the number of lanes to keep road capacity constant, which would lead to more lane changes, and therefore accidents. If, instead, we kept the roads the same, then congestion would increase, and with it, accidents. There is…

If we care about reducing following distance, we should be lowering speed limits. A car doing 60 needs a much longer safer braking distance than one doing 45.

Also, if you are following at a distance where an AEB activation will cause you to rearend the vehicle in front of you, you are too close to safely follow any vehicle, regardless of whether it has an AEB.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#127

Post by toast0 »

taeric wrote: post #25

I confess that I find a dark humor in how many self professed "great drivers" find these features a nuisance. All the while so many people are completely unaware that they have these, as they have never activated. Hard for me to square those pegs in a favorable way. Which, yes, being a great driver means you may be pushing close to limits while still be completely under control a lot. I just don't have a strong prior…

I can't count the number of flowers AEB has prevented me from murdering. But at least in my equiped vehicle, the nuisance activations haven't been dangerous, and most of the events in traffic have been reasonable, if overly conservative. During parking, less so, but at least predictable.

Having AEB without being aware of it is probably not ideal. If it activates improperly and you didn't know it was there, that's twice the disorientation. It was really jarring the first couple times, and if it was on a wet bridge while turning in a narrow lane, that wouldn't be pretty as others have discussed.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#128

Post by IanCal »

jacquesm wrote: post #53
peter422 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every possible change to a car’s safety system will cause some deaths and save others… look at airbags. The aggregate stats are the most important things to look at, especially for something like AEB which has the ability to save pedestrians, which as of late are getting mowed down more and more frequently.

Agreed that overall it can be an improvement. But I've clocked up a good 40K km since I got rid of the car that was equipped with defunct EAB and I'm fairly sure (but of course can not prove it) that I would have been in an accident by now on account of it triggering falsely. Conversely, I've never had a problem with airbags deploying without cause and my seatbelt is on just to move the car 10 meters because it is de…

At the very least it sounds like people will benefit from actual tests and requirements about how the braking system must act.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#129

Post by IanCal »

ghostpepper wrote: post #84
peter422 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every possible change to a car’s safety system will cause some deaths and save others… look at airbags. The aggregate stats are the most important things to look at, especially for something like AEB which has the ability to save pedestrians, which as of late are getting mowed down more and more frequently.

There needs to be a tiered license then - if you pass the more rigorous exam you can drive cars without the extra "safety" features. Making AEB mandatory would increase the survival rate of poor drivers and punish people who actually pay attention on the road.

> and punish people who actually pay attention on the road.

It can benefit people who have reaction times slower than silicon.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#130

Post by ceejayoz »

Tanoc wrote: post #124
ceejayoz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Statistics are meaningless to the individual. This is just blatantly untrue. > means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it Until emergency breaking stops a bad driver from T-boning you in an intersection as they run a red light. “I’ll just drive safely” was the argument against seatbelts, airbags, and antilock brakes. Motorcycle helmets, too.

Forward emergency braking systems don't detect such situations. You'd be hit regardless. They only have a 170 degree field of view at the best of times in their current implementations. Somebody two hundred feet away closing at sixty miles an hour will hit you in the side regardless of forward emergency braking simply because it's not designed to look for something moving that quickly that far away at that extreme of…

The car doing the T-boning can see forward, and even slowing down by 10 mph can halve the lethality of the resulting crash. Full success isn’t necessary for benefits.

Or sub in a high speed rear-ending scenario.

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