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Meanwhile, France just decided that electric cars must be producing an artificial soud out of security.

by ecares 7y ago

RankingMember 7y ago
Noise makers are being added by law lots of places for good reason, but that's a bit off-topic isn't it?
- zaroth 7y ago
  It’s somewhat on topic as it reduces the desirability of an EV doesn’t it? IMO, they should require either a noise maker, or a sufficiently advanced pedestrian collision avoidance safety system. I would think that at the speed and in the scenarios a noise maker would help, a pedestrian safety system should be highly effective.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Systems designed to prevent cars hitting pedestrians are not designed for extremely low speed environments where these noise makers are most effective. Noise makers make no difference at highway speed, and in examples I've seen they aren't required at those speeds anyway. But they fix electric cars to not "sneak up" on pedestrians in these low speed environments. At 3mph your car can very easily knock me down and crush me if I don't hear it coming, but designing software to recognise that it's going to collide with me, and not pass harmlessly a few metres away (a routine event you don't want the AI to freak out over) is really hard. These low speeds are correlated with environments where it's much harder for a machine to intuit what's going on. Consider a typical open air car park next to a Walmart. A pedestrian is in view, then vanishes, the driver selects reverse - are we going to hit the pedestrian? Where did they go? The driver knows, because they have relevant experience, that the pedestrian is between two other parked cars, and won't be struck by reversing, but how can our AI figure that's where they went?
    - zaroth 7y ago
      Definitely this has nothing at all to do with highway speeds. We’re talking parking lots mainly. I don’t see the need for intuition. What’s the stopping distance at 3mph? Less than 1 foot with full pre-charged braking I’m sure. An effective system should be able to see a pedestrian 6-12” from the car in the direction of travel, and stop on a dime. At these speeds a false positive isn’t itself a safety risk, although of course you would seek to minimize them. It goes without saying the system will not be perfect. Neither are noise makers. I see no reason why such a system couldn’t be made that is more effective than fake engine noise.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Well given that Tesla's Autopilot and Lane Departure Avoidance are supposed to be the best in the industry and even they can't stop killing people maybe we should just stick to noise.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      Is this supposed to be sarcasm? They “can’t stop killing people” that aren’t bothering to look out the window while traveling 60mph+ on the highway? Low speed pedestrian avoidance in parking lots is an entirely different subsystem than highway autopilot. Arguably it would be significantly less controversial to forego LIDAR in the pedestrian case and rely purely on ultrasonic, radar, and cameras.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    I can't tell you how many times someone backed up out of their hidden driveway and almost hit my dog, who is small and can be easily missed by both collision detection systems and backup cameras. If the car was completely silent these incidents would have probably ended differently.
pi-rat 7y ago
I kinda like the space ship sound my EV makes while driving slow (under 20 km/h?). It's not very noticeable inside the vehicle. And makes way less noise than fossil cars on the outside. I can also disable it until next trip, but I guess future laws might change that.

Meanwhile, France just decided that electric cars must be producing an artificial soud out of security.

by ecares 7y ago

Meanwhile, France just decided that electric cars must be producing an artificial soud out of security.

RankingMember 7y ago

Noise makers are being added by law lots of places for good reason, but that's a bit off-topic isn't it?

zaroth 7y ago
It’s somewhat on topic as it reduces the desirability of an EV doesn’t it? IMO, they should require either a noise maker, or a sufficiently advanced pedestrian collision avoidance safety system. I would think that at the speed and in the scenarios a noise maker would help, a pedestrian safety system should be highly effective.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Systems designed to prevent cars hitting pedestrians are not designed for extremely low speed environments where these noise makers are most effective. Noise makers make no difference at highway speed, and in examples I've seen they aren't required at those speeds anyway. But they fix electric cars to not "sneak up" on pedestrians in these low speed environments. At 3mph your car can very easily knock me down and crush me if I don't hear it coming, but designing software to recognise that it's going to collide with me, and not pass harmlessly a few metres away (a routine event you don't want the AI to freak out over) is really hard. These low speeds are correlated with environments where it's much harder for a machine to intuit what's going on. Consider a typical open air car park next to a Walmart. A pedestrian is in view, then vanishes, the driver selects reverse - are we going to hit the pedestrian? Where did they go? The driver knows, because they have relevant experience, that the pedestrian is between two other parked cars, and won't be struck by reversing, but how can our AI figure that's where they went?
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Definitely this has nothing at all to do with highway speeds. We’re talking parking lots mainly. I don’t see the need for intuition. What’s the stopping distance at 3mph? Less than 1 foot with full pre-charged braking I’m sure. An effective system should be able to see a pedestrian 6-12” from the car in the direction of travel, and stop on a dime. At these speeds a false positive isn’t itself a safety risk, although of course you would seek to minimize them. It goes without saying the system will not be perfect. Neither are noise makers. I see no reason why such a system couldn’t be made that is more effective than fake engine noise.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Well given that Tesla's Autopilot and Lane Departure Avoidance are supposed to be the best in the industry and even they can't stop killing people maybe we should just stick to noise.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Is this supposed to be sarcasm? They “can’t stop killing people” that aren’t bothering to look out the window while traveling 60mph+ on the highway? Low speed pedestrian avoidance in parking lots is an entirely different subsystem than highway autopilot. Arguably it would be significantly less controversial to forego LIDAR in the pedestrian case and rely purely on ultrasonic, radar, and cameras.
- xenospn 7y ago
  I can't tell you how many times someone backed up out of their hidden driveway and almost hit my dog, who is small and can be easily missed by both collision detection systems and backup cameras. If the car was completely silent these incidents would have probably ended differently.

pi-rat 7y ago

I kinda like the space ship sound my EV makes while driving slow (under 20 km/h?). It's not very noticeable inside the vehicle. And makes way less noise than fossil cars on the outside. I can also disable it until next trip, but I guess future laws might change that.