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The user eperience reported in these tests is that it's substantially more nerve wracking than just ordinary driving. And now we are getting to the analog of t

by toss1 6y ago

The user eperience reported in these tests is that it's substantially more nerve wracking than just ordinary driving. And now we are getting to the analog of the 'uncanny valley' for automobile self-driving systems -- the area where the assistance is pretty good, but will still kill you, thus making driving actually harder vs unassisted driving. With these systems, it is harder to maintain required levels of vigilance (humans just aren't wired for low-demand/high-vigilance in any type of task), and instantly take over control successfully in critical situations. The problems of detecting objects partly in the road and reacting appropriately is hard. Not only the detection failures, but false positives. I see this a lot in my Mazda CX-5; a car can be well out of lane on the outside of a curve or side street, but I'll get the flashing & squawking BRAKE!!! alarm - if this actually did automatic braking, I'd very likely get rear-ended for hard braking in ordinary traffic for no good reason. I'm hoping the mfgrs can get it sorted before it causes general public rejection and a "Self-Driving Winter" like the AI Winters.

KMnO4 6y ago
I think the "uncanny valley" is the best place we can be right now. I drive a Toyota with adaptive radar cruise control, pre-collision braking, etc. I don't trust it 100%. Countless times I'll be cruising at 100km/hr when a 10km/hr traffic jam emerges. The car will wait until it's beyond my comfort zone before starting to brake. It's my natural instinct to take control of the vehicle and manually bring it to a stop before that happens. Now, I know that if I don't manually take over, the car will still safely slow itself down or stop, but it's not something I'm comfortable relying on. Soon we'll have systems that people will rely on 100%. They'll work quite well, at least 9999/10000 times. But every once in a while we'll have a serious/fatal crash because both the system and the driver failed to react [0]. But for now, I'm happy that everyone knows these systems only work 95% of the time and it's their responsibility to be alert and ready to take over in dangerous situations. As a last resort, the car can take over and forcibly brake. [0]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-driver-in-fatal-crash-was-playing-video-game/2241566/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-driver-...
- vaidhy 6y ago
  Both my Subaru and Honda have this along with a setting to choose comfortable following distance. I have set it to not follow too closely (and yes, I do get annoyed at people who use that gap to squeeze in my lane). OTOH, I get scared when there is a sharp curve and the car tries to accelerate through it because the car in front is not visible anymore.
- barryrandall 6y ago
  I try not to rely on the pre-collision braking too much, but it's saved me from hitting more than one car with faulty brake lights.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  We have a BMW i3. Being electric it has quite the acceleration. When we first got it, my gf was trying out the adaptive cruise control, our first time with such fancy stuff. It was following the car in front of us nicely at 30-40 kph (20-25 mph) and it was overall quite a nice experience. That is until we got to a rather tight roundabout (inner turn radius of just 2m or so). The car in front slowed down and entered, but as it drove around the roundabout, our car suddenly accelerated aggressively. My gf panicked but fortunately managed to avoid an accident. Turned out she had forgotten to adjust down the adaptive cruise control when we had entered the slower streets as we had had a car in front all the time, so it was still set to 60 kph (40 mph). As the car in front turned in the roundabout, our car no longer detected the obstacle that had slowed it down and tried to reach set speed. I guess since the delta between current speed and set speed was so large, the acceleration was rather aggressive compared to earlier.

by toss1 6y ago

KMnO4 6y ago

I think the "uncanny valley" is the best place we can be right now. I drive a Toyota with adaptive radar cruise control, pre-collision braking, etc. I don't trust it 100%. Countless times I'll be cruising at 100km/hr when a 10km/hr traffic jam emerges. The car will wait until it's beyond my comfort zone before starting to brake. It's my natural instinct to take control of the vehicle and manually bring it to a stop before that happens. Now, I know that if I don't manually take over, the car will still safely slow itself down or stop, but it's not something I'm comfortable relying on. Soon we'll have systems that people will rely on 100%. They'll work quite well, at least 9999/10000 times. But every once in a while we'll have a serious/fatal crash because both the system and the driver failed to react [0]. But for now, I'm happy that everyone knows these systems only work 95% of the time and it's their responsibility to be alert and ready to take over in dangerous situations. As a last resort, the car can take over and forcibly brake. [0]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-driver-in-fatal-crash-was-playing-video-game/2241566/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-driver-...

vaidhy 6y ago
Both my Subaru and Honda have this along with a setting to choose comfortable following distance. I have set it to not follow too closely (and yes, I do get annoyed at people who use that gap to squeeze in my lane). OTOH, I get scared when there is a sharp curve and the car tries to accelerate through it because the car in front is not visible anymore.
barryrandall 6y ago
I try not to rely on the pre-collision braking too much, but it's saved me from hitting more than one car with faulty brake lights.
magicalhippo 6y ago
We have a BMW i3. Being electric it has quite the acceleration. When we first got it, my gf was trying out the adaptive cruise control, our first time with such fancy stuff. It was following the car in front of us nicely at 30-40 kph (20-25 mph) and it was overall quite a nice experience. That is until we got to a rather tight roundabout (inner turn radius of just 2m or so). The car in front slowed down and entered, but as it drove around the roundabout, our car suddenly accelerated aggressively. My gf panicked but fortunately managed to avoid an accident. Turned out she had forgotten to adjust down the adaptive cruise control when we had entered the slower streets as we had had a car in front all the time, so it was still set to 60 kph (40 mph). As the car in front turned in the roundabout, our car no longer detected the obstacle that had slowed it down and tried to reach set speed. I guess since the delta between current speed and set speed was so large, the acceleration was rather aggressive compared to earlier.