4 ms·
I wonder if the driver thought the autopilot was on. A few times I've thought I'd enabled it, and only discovered that I hadn't, when I noticed the car starting
by osteele 10y ago
I wonder if the driver thought the autopilot was on. A few times I've thought I'd enabled it, and only discovered that I hadn't, when I noticed the car starting to drift to the edge of the lane. It's especially easy to make this mistake when traffic-aware cruise control is on, providing some degree of automation but less than you think.
If you're using the autopilot to provide smoother control, and as a second set of eyes on the road, then thinking it's on when it's off isn't of much consequence. There's been speculation that the May fatality involved using autopilot as a replacement for real-time human oversight. Whether this driver had the autopilot on or off, the root cause – thinking that the presence of the autopilot makes it safe to ignore the road – was the same. If the autopilot was off and the driver thought it was on, though, then one of the suggested solutions – requiring hands on the wheel – might not have addressed this case. Or maybe any cases: I imagine someone who thinks the autopilot relieves them of responsibility is just going to rest a hand on the wheel while they zone out anyway.
- niftich 10y ago> If you're using the autopilot to provide smoother control, and as a second set of eyes on the road, then thinking it's on when it's off isn't of much consequence I understand the sentiment behind this statement, but I'm not sure I agree. Compare with simple cruise control -- ordinarily, the driver needs to provide constant gas pedal input to overcome inertia at highway speeds. If for a moment the driver thinks that cruise control is on but it's actually off, the car will begin to appreciably coast, making it clear that it's off. The 'failure mode' of this scenario is rarely surprising or dangerous to the driver or others, and easy to recover from. Whereas features like automatic lanekeeping, blind-spot warning, pre-collision emergency breaking... those are features that need to work unless explicitly disabled, because the failure modes all end in a potential accident.
- foxyv 10y agoThere is more than one failure mode for cruise control. EG: * Cruise control leaves throttle full open. * Cruise control fails to disengage. * Cruise control compression brakes on ice causing skidding. * Cruise control activates without driver's knowledge. For an example see here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-16/driver-recalls-freeway-cruise-control-horror/1180688 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-16/driver-recalls-freeway...