5 ms·

Important to point out that the Volvo hitting the men in the video didn't have the optional collision avoidance installed: http://fusion.net/story/139703/self-p

Important to point out that the Volvo hitting the men in the video didn't have the optional collision avoidance installed: http://fusion.net/story/139703/self-parking-car-accident-no-pedestrian-detection/ http://fusion.net/story/139703/self-parking-car-accident-no-...

onion2k 11y ago
As the article points out, a user doesn't yet know what to expect when it comes to the interface of an autonomous car. I doubt I could tell if a car I was driving had this feature because I wouldn't expect to 'see' anything - the definitely doesn't need to be an "on" button for it. If there's a logo somewhere (like an airbag) I wouldn't know to look for it. When you drive an unfamiliar car you need an UX that makes sure this sort of thing is effectively impossible. At the moment I imagine that means that the car needs to tell you what possible features it doesn't have as much as what it does have.
- awalton 11y ago
  > a user doesn't yet know what to expect when it comes to the interface of an autonomous car. I don't think this is a good enough excuse, honestly. Both the law and common sense say the same thing about operating a vehicle: the ultimate responsibility of that vehicle and what it does lies on who is sitting behind the wheel. Until we have truly automatic driverless cars (enter an address in the Maps app and let the car take you there - no pedals, no brakes, no turn signals), human beings need to still be aware that they are still driving the car, regardless of assistant technologies that help them along the way. Any person who knowingly takes their hands off the wheel of a moving car they are piloting is going to ultimately be at fault when it plows into a pedestrian or into oncoming traffic, regardless if the computer tried to prevent it from happening. The only User Experience problem here is that the users have No Experience with the new technologies available in these cars. If anything, that alone should ask for more caution before engaging these features, not less. The biggest outcome I'd expect in the short term is more bleeping and bonging from car speakers if the user does something completely insane like take their hands off the wheel while the car is moving above a certain speed to film themselves performing a Darwin Award attempt for YouTube.
  - bicubic 11y ago
    >the ultimate responsibility of that vehicle and what it does lies on who is sitting behind the wheel While the law may still hold that position, reality is starting to disagree. When you have a car laden with 'assistive' technologies which are able to take control of brakes, throttle, and even steering - sometimes without human input, things start to get complicated. We have plenty of precedent already. Toyota's billion dollar unintended acceleration criminal liability case, the 'remote control' Jeep Cherokee case, the recent FBI advisory regarding security and safety of connected vehicles.. I find it very hard to agree with a blanket statement that the driver is responsible for everything a modern car does.
ams6110 11y ago
The notion of performing such a test with a real human target is about as idiotic as testing the safety mechanism on a loaded gun by pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger.
dogma1138 11y ago
That's exactly the root of the problem, if your car runs over your dog because you didn't had firmware 3.17.4b installed or because your license has expired isn't really something any user should be dealing with. I see Autonomous driving like iOS vs Android when you buy an Apple device you know what to expect (or atleast used to before they decided to fragment their SKU's to hell) each device comes with the same features and the software works exactly the same. The Android ecosystem on the other hand is fragmented to hell and each devices comes with completely different features, software and user experience. This can easily kill autonomous driving because it unlike poor app performance self driving cars can actually kill people if the self driving experience I get on a BMW is drastically different than what i on a Honda or a Volvo I won't be confident in using any of those, not to mention that at the moment you can't even get reliable experience on the same make and model and it's a feature not a bug in most cases because car manufacturers want to monetize self driving so for every (even basic) feature you'll have to pay extra. Self driving cars need to get a standardization and they need it fast a fixed set of features that all cars have to properly support to be able to market their self driving cars in the US and Europe and this has to be a dichotic standard you either support everything in that standard to a satisfactory level or you don't get to turn any of those features on. The last god damn thing I want to worry about is if my car's pedestrian avoidance app was reactivated or not after the weekly firmware update, but sadly enough i foresee some one getting run over because the driver of a "smart" car did not accept the new EULA that was pushed over the weekend before the industry gets any shred of sense.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  The only thing necessary to make self driving tech highly valuable if that it be significantly safer than human driving.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    People are notoriously bad at statistics and will do what they can to interpret this in any way that serves them. "Human killed by robot car" will definitely be lapped up and even if statistically it may be better than "Human killed by human driver" the one is the exception, the other the rule and so the one will get airtime. Marketing this kind of thing properly is going to be extremely hard once the casualties start mounting (and they will, no matter how good the software is).
jacquesm 11y ago
That article contains some pretty worrysome language from the Volvo rep: "But even if it did have the feature, Larsson says the driver would have interfered with it by the way they were driving and “accelerating heavily towards the people in the video.” “The pedestrian detection would likely have been inactivated due to the driver inactivating it by intentionally and actively accelerating,” said Larsson. “Hence, the auto braking function is overrided by the driver and deactivated.”" I interpret that as 'this feature will likely not work when you need it most, even if you've paid for it'.
- im3w1l 11y ago
  If you read their description[1], it is filled with warnings and caveats. It does not sound like something you should rely on, but something which reduces chance of an accident by a few percent. [1] http://support.volvocars.com/en-CA/cars/Pages/owners-manual.aspx?mc=y286&my=2016&sw=15w17&article=d3d274ecedf1c586c0a801e8004927e7 http://support.volvocars.com/en-CA/cars/Pages/owners-manual....

onion2k 11y ago

As the article points out, a user doesn't yet know what to expect when it comes to the interface of an autonomous car. I doubt I could tell if a car I was driving had this feature because I wouldn't expect to 'see' anything - the definitely doesn't need to be an "on" button for it. If there's a logo somewhere (like an airbag) I wouldn't know to look for it. When you drive an unfamiliar car you need an UX that makes sure this sort of thing is effectively impossible. At the moment I imagine that means that the car needs to tell you what possible features it doesn't have as much as what it does have.

awalton 11y ago
> a user doesn't yet know what to expect when it comes to the interface of an autonomous car. I don't think this is a good enough excuse, honestly. Both the law and common sense say the same thing about operating a vehicle: the ultimate responsibility of that vehicle and what it does lies on who is sitting behind the wheel. Until we have truly automatic driverless cars (enter an address in the Maps app and let the car take you there - no pedals, no brakes, no turn signals), human beings need to still be aware that they are still driving the car, regardless of assistant technologies that help them along the way. Any person who knowingly takes their hands off the wheel of a moving car they are piloting is going to ultimately be at fault when it plows into a pedestrian or into oncoming traffic, regardless if the computer tried to prevent it from happening. The only User Experience problem here is that the users have No Experience with the new technologies available in these cars. If anything, that alone should ask for more caution before engaging these features, not less. The biggest outcome I'd expect in the short term is more bleeping and bonging from car speakers if the user does something completely insane like take their hands off the wheel while the car is moving above a certain speed to film themselves performing a Darwin Award attempt for YouTube.
- bicubic 11y ago
  >the ultimate responsibility of that vehicle and what it does lies on who is sitting behind the wheel While the law may still hold that position, reality is starting to disagree. When you have a car laden with 'assistive' technologies which are able to take control of brakes, throttle, and even steering - sometimes without human input, things start to get complicated. We have plenty of precedent already. Toyota's billion dollar unintended acceleration criminal liability case, the 'remote control' Jeep Cherokee case, the recent FBI advisory regarding security and safety of connected vehicles.. I find it very hard to agree with a blanket statement that the driver is responsible for everything a modern car does.

ams6110 11y ago

The notion of performing such a test with a real human target is about as idiotic as testing the safety mechanism on a loaded gun by pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger.

dogma1138 11y ago

That's exactly the root of the problem, if your car runs over your dog because you didn't had firmware 3.17.4b installed or because your license has expired isn't really something any user should be dealing with. I see Autonomous driving like iOS vs Android when you buy an Apple device you know what to expect (or atleast used to before they decided to fragment their SKU's to hell) each device comes with the same features and the software works exactly the same. The Android ecosystem on the other hand is fragmented to hell and each devices comes with completely different features, software and user experience. This can easily kill autonomous driving because it unlike poor app performance self driving cars can actually kill people if the self driving experience I get on a BMW is drastically different than what i on a Honda or a Volvo I won't be confident in using any of those, not to mention that at the moment you can't even get reliable experience on the same make and model and it's a feature not a bug in most cases because car manufacturers want to monetize self driving so for every (even basic) feature you'll have to pay extra. Self driving cars need to get a standardization and they need it fast a fixed set of features that all cars have to properly support to be able to market their self driving cars in the US and Europe and this has to be a dichotic standard you either support everything in that standard to a satisfactory level or you don't get to turn any of those features on. The last god damn thing I want to worry about is if my car's pedestrian avoidance app was reactivated or not after the weekly firmware update, but sadly enough i foresee some one getting run over because the driver of a "smart" car did not accept the new EULA that was pushed over the weekend before the industry gets any shred of sense.

Zigurd 11y ago
The only thing necessary to make self driving tech highly valuable if that it be significantly safer than human driving.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  People are notoriously bad at statistics and will do what they can to interpret this in any way that serves them. "Human killed by robot car" will definitely be lapped up and even if statistically it may be better than "Human killed by human driver" the one is the exception, the other the rule and so the one will get airtime. Marketing this kind of thing properly is going to be extremely hard once the casualties start mounting (and they will, no matter how good the software is).

jacquesm 11y ago

That article contains some pretty worrysome language from the Volvo rep: "But even if it did have the feature, Larsson says the driver would have interfered with it by the way they were driving and “accelerating heavily towards the people in the video.” “The pedestrian detection would likely have been inactivated due to the driver inactivating it by intentionally and actively accelerating,” said Larsson. “Hence, the auto braking function is overrided by the driver and deactivated.”" I interpret that as 'this feature will likely not work when you need it most, even if you've paid for it'.

im3w1l 11y ago
If you read their description[1], it is filled with warnings and caveats. It does not sound like something you should rely on, but something which reduces chance of an accident by a few percent. [1] http://support.volvocars.com/en-CA/cars/Pages/owners-manual.aspx?mc=y286&my=2016&sw=15w17&article=d3d274ecedf1c586c0a801e8004927e7 http://support.volvocars.com/en-CA/cars/Pages/owners-manual....