11 ms·

Drivers new to level 2 driving assistance had lower awareness of on-road events

76 points by alphabettsy 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gumby 6y ago
The title, while correct, is misleading. The actual results are: Drivers using Level 2 ADAS who are experienced with L2 ADAS have more situational awareness. The ones using it for the first time have the least, while regular drivers were in the middle. Presumably the ones used to ADAS relax more and look around. Is that good or bad? Unclear: does it make them more likely to note and deal with unexpected risks or not? The article guesses the answer though the actual paper may not have.
- gok 6y ago
  Right the headline implies that ADAS is worse for awareness than no ADAS, but that's not what was tested.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Similar semantics with aircraft and autopilot systems. It reduces operator workloads but you train or disable it and hand fly the aircraft for fun and to refresh your experience periodically. Someone who uses this technology because they dislike driving will always pose a danger. Those who enjoy driving will be more diligent.
  - aequitas 6y ago
    I think people who seek enjoyment in driving will actually pose a greater danger. If you need to get your enjoyment out of the driving itself you will start to exhibit more dangerous behaviour, accelerating faster, driving higher speeds, overtaking more. Nothing is more boring for me as a driver than staying between 2 white dotted lines on a 4 lane highway going 20 km/h under the speedlimit trailing a truck or other traffic, so I either start overtaking frequently or I get bored and distracted because of to little stimulus. But with ADAS I don't care, I just relax and let it do most of the work while I take in the scenery or an audiobook.
- bsder 6y ago
  I would argue that the people with the L2 ADAS system gained because they don't have to keep checking their dashboard for speed. "Adaptive cruise" is quite a nice thing.
- dmurray 6y ago
  Right, the general conclusion of this study is positive for driver assistance, albeit with a small sample size, but the headline crowbars a negative interpretation into it. And this is on the front page of HN because that headline reinforces the common worldview here: that partial self-driving is more dangerous than none at all, and full autonomy is further away than manufacturers like to suggest.
- mjevans 6y ago
  There's also an interesting secondary observation. "Drivers who missed every instance of the bear spent more time looking at various parts of the car's dashboard than any other group." I hypothesize that, while some of that was surely trying to navigate a radio or air-conditioning setup they were unfamiliar with, much was likely spent monitoring the speed of the vehicle. An simple HUD illumination reflection on the wind shield for the speed might help as a safety measure. Or possibly changing laws and enforcement so that police were focused on non-revenue generating actives and mostly about curbing any behavior that harms the safety of a steady and orderly traffic flow.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  If the result that experience with L2 seems to improve situational awareness is robust, then that raises the question of why that is so. Has experience taught them that they need to pay attention, in a way that is more effective than merely being told they need to? Are drivers new to L2 overconfident in its abilities, or perhaps merely unsettled by the unfamiliarity of the situation? Note that the article also mentions that other studies have found increasing complacency with experience. > Does it make them more likely to note and deal with unexpected risks or not? The article guesses the answer though the actual paper may not have. Given that noticing a problem is a prerequisite of dealing with it, this is not an unreasonable supposition, though one should also wonder if their reaction times are slower. Note that even if that is so, noticing more things, or noticing them sooner, could more than compensate for this.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  One common thread among Tesla owners; TM3 owner here; is that while the car will do the driving and such a good number of owners are actively looking for edge cases. Seems everyone wants to be a tester. Plus I figure the majority of Tesla owners are a bit more jaded than many expect. Many of us have had our cars for nearly three years and all we really have seen is party tricks. In my experience the software developer in me looks at every odd action or lack thereof in the frame of, why this and not that and how do I think it should have performed. Now there is a big claim out there we will all be able to opt into the new FSD beta and I truly want to give it a whirl.
rangibaby 6y ago
> Cars with Level 2 automation can perform key driving tasks like steering, acceleration and braking to keep a set distance from the car ahead, center the car in its lane and stay at a certain speed. Yet they can't handle every situation unmonitored and need the driver to pay attention to the road ahead in case they need to take over the wheel. Designing a system like that but blaming PEBKAC whenever something goes wrong is going to kill a lot of pedestrians. If you set impossible expectations and people don't meet them, there is a problem with your expectations. /edit I'm not against automated cars in general, but if Level 2 means a decrease in fender benders, but a higher level of kids running out in to the middle of the road getting killed because the driver is zoned out, then I think it should be skipped.
- nawgz 6y ago
  It truly doesn't make sense that regulators are not only allowing this, but allowing ridiculous overexaggerations in their monikers like Autopilot and Full Self Driving and shit. I guess that's not true, it makes perfect sense that regulators don't do anything anymore in this crony capitalist world, but I guess it's disappointing.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  >there is a problem with your expectations. The legal system needs to blame someone. If the system fails and it kills someone, whos fault is it? Currently its most likely the drivers fault because its their job to ensure everything is ok and brake manually if they see something.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    If something is known to be dangerous for any human driver, and is implemented anyways, then that seems like reason to have liability with the design of the system. If your brakes required solving a rubik's cube to activate, that would be poor design. This is no different. Humans cannot maintain attention on tasks that require sporadic but high-intensity attention.
  - probably_wrong 6y ago
in_cahoots 6y ago
So the actual numbers are: 5/10 drivers on L2 cars with no L2 experience missed seeing the bear all three times, vs 2/10 drivers with no L2 experience driving a non-automated car. That’s hardly statistically significant. Furthermore, 6/10 drivers with L2 experience saw the bear all three times, as compared to 2/10 drivers using a non-automated car. So a stronger finding (again, ignoring the laughably small sample size) is that experienced L2 drivers driving automated cars are better than inexperienced L2 drivers driving normal cars. In other words, we should put everyone behind a L2 car but require additional training. This is what happens when you design experiments with 3 buckets, 3 tests, and tiny sample sizes. You can draw any conclusion you want.
- saas_sam 6y ago
  Not to mention there is no non-L2 driving control group to speak of... I have to wonder if there actually WAS a control group and it didn't reinforce the goal narrative so it was omitted from the results.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
aaron695 6y ago
The moonwalking bear/gorilla comes to mind for this. Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo / https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10694957/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10694957/ But I'm not sure what that means, is it good or bad to see the bear. You are driving not looking at pretty things. You want to reduce dimensions. It's a 1 tonne vehicle, color shouldn't matter.
- aeternum 6y ago
  I thought of this experiment also. It may be that the drivers missed the bear because they were more focused on driving and collision avoidance.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > It may be that the drivers missed the bear because they were more focused on driving and collision avoidance. Which would be great if not for the fact that the bear is attached to an overtaking car - one of the things they're supposed to be noticing. (You could make the case that they were focused on the car itself and thus the bear was an easily forgotten distraction to counter this.)
  - rolandog 6y ago
    Agreed; I don't like to jump in to be playing devil's advocate, but I usually don't pay much attention to things that don't pose much of a risk to me, while I'm driving. The only reason I would think about paying attention to the bear is because I sometimes am aware of the risks from other's carelessness: "what if one of the ropes holding it snaps, and it tumbles onto my lane?" But, in this case, if it's only people that are new to an autonomous system (like, new owners, or rental car users), then I can imagine that there may be some learning curve involved that distracts you from being really focused on the driving task, because you're learning to use your 'tool'.
  - astura 6y ago
    I don't know any studies, but I always thought overall situational awareness was a bit part of defensive/safe driving. Always being aware of other vehicles around you and other potential hazards. Not getting tunnel vision. I know I intuitively feel it is anyways. We need much better driver training.
lamontcg 6y ago
I don't even use cruise control due to this issue. These results are completely unsurprising.
ryandrake 6y ago
Ugh, it doesn't take automated assists and cruise control to distract drivers. They're distracting themselves enough as it is in conventional cars. Looks like from the article this just makes them even more distracted. I wonder if the same increase in distraction was seen when automatic transmissions and power steering were introduced. It seems with every new assistive technology, drivers become farther and farther removed from the fact that they're driving. When the pandemic is cleared, get someone to drive you down any US interstate highway as a passenger during rush hour and count the number of drivers playing with their phones and texting. I'm amazed the highways aren't even deadlier than they are, given how little attention people pay.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  The article suggests that it is only new users who had reduced situational awareness. Experienced users most often noticed the bear. So it doesn’t seem as simple as “more technology makes them farther removed”. From the article: “ ‘Our data suggest that Level 2 driving automation has the potential to improve a driver’s [situational awareness] once he or she is familiar with the technology, although it does not guarantee it,’ the report reads. Per the IIHS study's results, nearly all of the experienced users of Level 2 systems were able to notice the bear during their drive, and more drivers in this group were able to correctly note the number of times the bear drove past them than anyone else. Meanwhile, over twice as many of the drivers who weren't experienced with Level 2 automation but used it for the test didn't remember the bear at all compared to either of the other groups in the test.” One might conclude that we need to reduce this “learning period” with formal driver training for these systems, perhaps the way we certify people for drivers licenses or something.
- astura 6y ago
  >Looks like from the article this just makes them even more distracted. No, that's not at all what the article says! It says the opposite >"Our data suggest that Level 2 driving automation has the potential to improve a driver’s [situational awareness] once he or she is familiar with the technology, although it does not guarantee it," the report reads. Beyond that, even if nobody noticed the teddy bear, there were no controls who were driving with no assistance features, so you wouldn't be able to make that conclusion anyways.
Toutouxc 6y ago
The "first-time-L2-on" results are terrifying but unsurprising, it's exactly why I am very much against half-baked driver assists. Cars are not planes. Also call me an arrogant asshole, but I firmly believe that any driver who drove normally without the assist and missed the bear (even once) has no place operating a vehicle at highway speeds.
- aaronmdjones 6y ago
  > Cars are not planes. Yeah, but planes aren't generally any better at this either. In almost everything except jet aircraft and especially jet airliners, autopilot can be as crude as "maintain this heading and altitude"; i.e. you still need to manage your speed (the engine throttle lever) yourself, including in response to changes of wind direction or intensity. Then we get to airliners, which have flight management computers. You can give your flight plan to that, and they will even calculate optimal speeds along the way, which the autothrottle can maintain for you. This allows you to, for example, know when the optimum descent point from cruise is; too early and you need more fuel to maintain altitude when you get down to where you need to be, too late and you need to turn more to bleed off more altitude. The more advanced flight management computers are also loaded with a complete navigation database that includes e.g. speed and altitude restrictions at each waypoint, so they know, for example, that you shouldn't descend below 12,000 feet or be doing more than 260 KIAS at <waypoint x>. This is basically what's on your charts, but it's still up to you to verify that you're complying with the chart, even if you let the flight computer handle it. Then we get to the autopilot itself. The autopilot on a modern airliner doesn't mean the plane can "fly itself". They still need to be told what to do, and told correctly. If you take off from Paris and head south-east and tell it to maintain 8,000 feet, it /will/ fly you straight into the side of the Alps. The Ground Proximity Warning System will tell you that you're in imminent danger of smashing into a mountain, but the autopilot will not react to that. If you tell the autopilot to descend into the ground it will. If you tell the autothrottle to fly too fast you will damage your aircraft. If you're doing 280 KIAS in a 777 and you throw out flaps, the autothrottle will not slow the aircraft down, and you will damage them. If the autopilot is about to fly straight into another aircraft, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System will tell you that, but the autopilot will not react to that either. Note that some of this doesn't apply to Airbus aircraft, as Airbus thinks they know better. Whether that's a good thing is up for debate; it did result in, for example, Sullenberger not being able to make an optimal ditching approach into the Hudson, because the Airbus thought his nose-up input would stall the aircraft (which it would have eventually, but he was only a few feet above the river anyway, so that's inconsequential). Then there was Air France 447, where the usually fastidious Airbus flight management computer would usually prevent the pilots from making input that would cause a stall, but because their speed sensors were not working, the computer didn't do that. The first officer held that plane in a constant stall for their entire 38,000 feet descent into the ocean, probably because they were relying on the system to not let them do that. The ground proximity stuff also doesn't apply to some fighter jets, which won't let a pilot aim the aircraft at the ground (because it could be because the pilot has passed out during a high-G manoeuver). Still, the vast majority of it applies. The point is, these systems require the same kind of checks, instruction, and constant supervision that Level 2 autonomous driving systems do.
garmaine 6y ago
I wouldn’t have mentioned the bear because to me it’s not noteworthy. Am I weird?
- jusssi 6y ago
  I'll have to agree. For situational awareness, the vehicle is relevant. A toy bear attached to the rear bumper of that vehicle is not.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  No, you're not. I'm personally under-convinced this test is measuring anything more relevant than who in the sample group notices interesting-but-irrelevant details. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-eyes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-ey...
knorthfield 6y ago
These Assist systems need to be the car assisting the driver. Not the driver assisting the car.
- paulcole 6y ago
  Yes, but when the hype has been about the latter, it’s going to be tougher to get people to pay for the former.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
And then there are those of us who already have low awareness because we're ADD and have been in multiple accidents and Level 2 automation is making us far safer on the road.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
The headline for the same study on a different site: "Level 2 systems like Tesla Autopilot can improve drivers’ attentiveness: IIHS study" Both headlines are accurate, both are misleading. Great example of showing you can't trust headlines. I don't even think it's possible to get an accurate summary into the headline. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-level-2-adas-iihs-study-results/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-level-2-adas-iihs-...
enoch_r 6y ago
The headline and first few paragraphs are just an incredibly misleading framing of the study results. - drivers experienced with L2 assistance were the most aware of on-road events - drivers inexperienced with L2 assistance were the least aware of on-road events - drivers not using L2 assistance were in the middle This seems like a quite positive result for driver assistance features - they increase situational awareness but take a bit to get used to.
- martin_a 6y ago
  Day of the anecdotes for me, but I'd like to add, that I would approve this. I've got an electric car with level 2 assistance since last year and although I didn't drive as much as expected due to Covid-19 and lockdowns I feel how driving has changed. At first I was very "afraid" of the systems doing stupid things and probably killing me while doing that. I was very focussed on controlling the slight steering it does when getting near white lines (Germany here) or how it would brake when following another car. As that fear passed, I became much more concious of my surroundings, paying more attention to what other drivers might do (especially on the Autobahn) and how I could improve my "driving style" to create a better flow of traffic. Can't wait to experience higher levels of assistance systems. I'd LOVE to get into the car, position myself behind a truck with 90 km/h on the right lane and let the car do it's thing while I'm not watching what it does.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    My wife's car simply alerts her to nearby cars. That alone is enough to make her driving more dangerous. Every beep, every flashing light and she swerves (unnecessarily) to avoid imaginary conflict. E.g. a car coming up in the next lane left will trigger an alert, resulting in an involuntary swerve to the right. This is not improving her safety at all. You can say 'just learn to deal with it', but its been a year and no change.
    - martin_a 6y ago
      This seems somewhat "harsh", why does the system work like that? I got a Hyundai and it has a lane assistant which keeps you in your lane, but it doesn't freak out when somebody passes you. Braking, when you run up to a slower vehicle in front of you, is sometimes a bit stronger (depending on the speed difference), but it's not alarming either. I know of dead spot assistants which light up in your mirrors if you have a car in the dead spot, but those don't beep either. What kind of assistance system does your wife's car have? Just to avoid that... :-D
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Aligns perfectly with my experience. As soon as my wife's car started alerting her to cars around her, she quit looking. Instead, when an alert sounds, she jerks the wheel at the sound and swerves involuntarily to avoid the imaginary conflict. Its harrowing to be a passenger. I drive myself everywhere now.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  My wife's car just has "Parking Assistant" which beeps if you're within 2 feet of an obstacle in any quadrant of the vehicle. Basically it scares the shit out of us when we're trying to park. So I can understand the harrowingness of that system. I think a better design than an audible alarm is to show the driver using quadrants or a diagram when an object is within the "close," "very close," or "near-collision" zone around a vehicle and beep once but only when the object passes into another zone to alert the driver to a change in state. The tones should change for each transition so you can learn the tone for "object moved from close to very close in right driver's-side zone" and distinguish that from "object moved from very close to close in right driver's-side zone." Having to constantly pay attention to an alarm tone is extremely nerve-wracking. In medical devices this will often result in "alarm fatigue" where you spend so much time dealing with false alarms that you miss a real alarm.
darkpicnic 6y ago
It's interesting reading articles about Level 2 and how it can adversely affect driver attention. I was concerned when I started driving a Tesla for the same reasons. Would I grow complacent? Stop paying attention? The opposite happened. I'm more focused on the road since I can relax and not multi-task. On long road trips, I'm not feeling that ache in the knee or the tension in the shoulders/back from constantly keeping the car aligned in the lane. In fact, I wish Tesla would just introduce a touch interface into the wheel so it knew your hands were on it, but not require constantly resisting the wheel to trigger the sensor. The conclusion I've come to: Level 2 can make good drivers safer and make bad drivers more dangerous. I don't look at my phone when I'm driving. I don't text at red lights. I don't constantly fiddle with the screen. If you do these things, you're a dangerous driver. If Level 2 increases this because you feel a false sense of safety, it'll make you more dangerous. People just need to take driving a 2 ton heap of metal 70mph seriously and we'd all be much safer.
- ec109685 6y ago
  That was the conclusion in the article too. The editor chose to highlight the less likely (in the real world) situation where the user is new to their L2 equipment.
  - darkpicnic 6y ago
    Yep, I was just highlighting the fact that most articles about Level 2 or, in general, < Level 4, are written with a concern for situational awareness. In my experience, it was the opposite: it improved it.
- sho_hn 6y ago
  > In fact, I wish Tesla would just introduce a touch interface into the wheel so it knew your hands were on it, but not require constantly resisting the wheel to trigger the sensor. We recently rolled out capacitive steering wheels in several Mercedes-Benz models for that reason. It's pleasant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
OliverJones 6y ago
Sorry to say, "n" is far too small in this study. n=31 spread over three arms of the study. Really? To make it useful for anything except pointing to possible future studies, n must be larger. Meantime, give those researchers a kewpie doll!
kawfey 6y ago
Anecdata: I have a 2019 Subaru Forester with Eyesight (lane keeping and adaptive cruise) and Driver Monitoring System (beeps whenever you look away from the road and automatically adjusts seat and mirror settings based on facial recognition). Compared to other systems it's far from perfect (it bounces between lane lines, it often looses track of the lanes even in good lighting), it doesn't always see the car in front of you especially if it's stopped or out of lane) but every time I drive it I find myself feeling safer to look around at my surroundings a lot more, especially my rear. I've saved my rear-end from two near misses, and countless reckless and speeding drivers because I look at my mirrors so much more frequently. At the same time I find myself looking out of the side windows at the scenery, until the driver monitoring system beeps at me to keep my eyes on the road. It has performed automatic emergency braking a few times because I wasn't keeping an eye on the car stopping in front of me.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  The one thing that really works for me is the speed/cruise control. I find that setting it takes my mind off watching the speed limit and gives me more time to look around for people who are crossing the street etc. When I recently bought a new car I eliminated some cars from consideration because they refuse to engage their speed controls at city speeds. I don't really understand why Toyota, as an example, refuses to engage the speed control below 45 km/h. My old VW would allow setting the speed control at any speed, even at a walking speed in 1st gear on a manual transmission.
- Cd00d 6y ago
  Huh. I have a 2021 Outback with Eyesight. I don't think it does any facial monitoring. The lane-keeping is more aggressive than the 2017 model I had previously, but beeps at me for not being hands-on enough. As far as I can tell, this definition of "hands-on" means slightly fighting with the steering wheel at regular intervals.
shadowgovt 6y ago
> So, they attached something to a passing vehicle that would be unmissable to anyone who doesn't live inside a permanent art car parade: one gigantic stuffed animal in a bright silly outfit. I think I'd find this study more compelling if we didn't have evidence that in general, human beings filter out state that is harmless but extremely discordant to the context. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-eyes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-ey... If the teddy bear on the back of the car isn't relevant to driver safety, why do we expect drivers to notice it at all?
austincheney 6y ago
I fear, as I get older, that younger people aren’t going to know how to drive anymore. People will have a lower attention span and not pay careful attention thereby increasing the risk to everyone only to blame car when they cause an accident.

76 points by alphabettsy 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

The title, while correct, is misleading. The actual results are: Drivers using Level 2 ADAS who are experienced with L2 ADAS have more situational awareness. The ones using it for the first time have the least, while regular drivers were in the middle. Presumably the ones used to ADAS relax more and look around. Is that good or bad? Unclear: does it make them more likely to note and deal with unexpected risks or not? The article guesses the answer though the actual paper may not have.

gok 6y ago
Right the headline implies that ADAS is worse for awareness than no ADAS, but that's not what was tested.
dkdk8283 6y ago
Similar semantics with aircraft and autopilot systems. It reduces operator workloads but you train or disable it and hand fly the aircraft for fun and to refresh your experience periodically. Someone who uses this technology because they dislike driving will always pose a danger. Those who enjoy driving will be more diligent.
- aequitas 6y ago
  I think people who seek enjoyment in driving will actually pose a greater danger. If you need to get your enjoyment out of the driving itself you will start to exhibit more dangerous behaviour, accelerating faster, driving higher speeds, overtaking more. Nothing is more boring for me as a driver than staying between 2 white dotted lines on a 4 lane highway going 20 km/h under the speedlimit trailing a truck or other traffic, so I either start overtaking frequently or I get bored and distracted because of to little stimulus. But with ADAS I don't care, I just relax and let it do most of the work while I take in the scenery or an audiobook.
bsder 6y ago
I would argue that the people with the L2 ADAS system gained because they don't have to keep checking their dashboard for speed. "Adaptive cruise" is quite a nice thing.
dmurray 6y ago
Right, the general conclusion of this study is positive for driver assistance, albeit with a small sample size, but the headline crowbars a negative interpretation into it. And this is on the front page of HN because that headline reinforces the common worldview here: that partial self-driving is more dangerous than none at all, and full autonomy is further away than manufacturers like to suggest.
mjevans 6y ago
There's also an interesting secondary observation. "Drivers who missed every instance of the bear spent more time looking at various parts of the car's dashboard than any other group." I hypothesize that, while some of that was surely trying to navigate a radio or air-conditioning setup they were unfamiliar with, much was likely spent monitoring the speed of the vehicle. An simple HUD illumination reflection on the wind shield for the speed might help as a safety measure. Or possibly changing laws and enforcement so that police were focused on non-revenue generating actives and mostly about curbing any behavior that harms the safety of a steady and orderly traffic flow.
mannykannot 6y ago
If the result that experience with L2 seems to improve situational awareness is robust, then that raises the question of why that is so. Has experience taught them that they need to pay attention, in a way that is more effective than merely being told they need to? Are drivers new to L2 overconfident in its abilities, or perhaps merely unsettled by the unfamiliarity of the situation? Note that the article also mentions that other studies have found increasing complacency with experience. > Does it make them more likely to note and deal with unexpected risks or not? The article guesses the answer though the actual paper may not have. Given that noticing a problem is a prerequisite of dealing with it, this is not an unreasonable supposition, though one should also wonder if their reaction times are slower. Note that even if that is so, noticing more things, or noticing them sooner, could more than compensate for this.
Shivetya 6y ago
One common thread among Tesla owners; TM3 owner here; is that while the car will do the driving and such a good number of owners are actively looking for edge cases. Seems everyone wants to be a tester. Plus I figure the majority of Tesla owners are a bit more jaded than many expect. Many of us have had our cars for nearly three years and all we really have seen is party tricks. In my experience the software developer in me looks at every odd action or lack thereof in the frame of, why this and not that and how do I think it should have performed. Now there is a big claim out there we will all be able to opt into the new FSD beta and I truly want to give it a whirl.

rangibaby 6y ago

> Cars with Level 2 automation can perform key driving tasks like steering, acceleration and braking to keep a set distance from the car ahead, center the car in its lane and stay at a certain speed. Yet they can't handle every situation unmonitored and need the driver to pay attention to the road ahead in case they need to take over the wheel. Designing a system like that but blaming PEBKAC whenever something goes wrong is going to kill a lot of pedestrians. If you set impossible expectations and people don't meet them, there is a problem with your expectations. /edit I'm not against automated cars in general, but if Level 2 means a decrease in fender benders, but a higher level of kids running out in to the middle of the road getting killed because the driver is zoned out, then I think it should be skipped.

nawgz 6y ago
It truly doesn't make sense that regulators are not only allowing this, but allowing ridiculous overexaggerations in their monikers like Autopilot and Full Self Driving and shit. I guess that's not true, it makes perfect sense that regulators don't do anything anymore in this crony capitalist world, but I guess it's disappointing.
SilverRed 6y ago
>there is a problem with your expectations. The legal system needs to blame someone. If the system fails and it kills someone, whos fault is it? Currently its most likely the drivers fault because its their job to ensure everything is ok and brake manually if they see something.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  If something is known to be dangerous for any human driver, and is implemented anyways, then that seems like reason to have liability with the design of the system. If your brakes required solving a rubik's cube to activate, that would be poor design. This is no different. Humans cannot maintain attention on tasks that require sporadic but high-intensity attention.
- probably_wrong 6y ago

in_cahoots 6y ago

So the actual numbers are: 5/10 drivers on L2 cars with no L2 experience missed seeing the bear all three times, vs 2/10 drivers with no L2 experience driving a non-automated car. That’s hardly statistically significant. Furthermore, 6/10 drivers with L2 experience saw the bear all three times, as compared to 2/10 drivers using a non-automated car. So a stronger finding (again, ignoring the laughably small sample size) is that experienced L2 drivers driving automated cars are better than inexperienced L2 drivers driving normal cars. In other words, we should put everyone behind a L2 car but require additional training. This is what happens when you design experiments with 3 buckets, 3 tests, and tiny sample sizes. You can draw any conclusion you want.

saas_sam 6y ago
Not to mention there is no non-L2 driving control group to speak of... I have to wonder if there actually WAS a control group and it didn't reinforce the goal narrative so it was omitted from the results.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aaron695 6y ago

The moonwalking bear/gorilla comes to mind for this. Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo / https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10694957/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10694957/ But I'm not sure what that means, is it good or bad to see the bear. You are driving not looking at pretty things. You want to reduce dimensions. It's a 1 tonne vehicle, color shouldn't matter.

aeternum 6y ago
I thought of this experiment also. It may be that the drivers missed the bear because they were more focused on driving and collision avoidance.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > It may be that the drivers missed the bear because they were more focused on driving and collision avoidance. Which would be great if not for the fact that the bear is attached to an overtaking car - one of the things they're supposed to be noticing. (You could make the case that they were focused on the car itself and thus the bear was an easily forgotten distraction to counter this.)
- rolandog 6y ago
  Agreed; I don't like to jump in to be playing devil's advocate, but I usually don't pay much attention to things that don't pose much of a risk to me, while I'm driving. The only reason I would think about paying attention to the bear is because I sometimes am aware of the risks from other's carelessness: "what if one of the ropes holding it snaps, and it tumbles onto my lane?" But, in this case, if it's only people that are new to an autonomous system (like, new owners, or rental car users), then I can imagine that there may be some learning curve involved that distracts you from being really focused on the driving task, because you're learning to use your 'tool'.
- astura 6y ago
  I don't know any studies, but I always thought overall situational awareness was a bit part of defensive/safe driving. Always being aware of other vehicles around you and other potential hazards. Not getting tunnel vision. I know I intuitively feel it is anyways. We need much better driver training.

lamontcg 6y ago

I don't even use cruise control due to this issue. These results are completely unsurprising.

ryandrake 6y ago

Ugh, it doesn't take automated assists and cruise control to distract drivers. They're distracting themselves enough as it is in conventional cars. Looks like from the article this just makes them even more distracted. I wonder if the same increase in distraction was seen when automatic transmissions and power steering were introduced. It seems with every new assistive technology, drivers become farther and farther removed from the fact that they're driving. When the pandemic is cleared, get someone to drive you down any US interstate highway as a passenger during rush hour and count the number of drivers playing with their phones and texting. I'm amazed the highways aren't even deadlier than they are, given how little attention people pay.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
The article suggests that it is only new users who had reduced situational awareness. Experienced users most often noticed the bear. So it doesn’t seem as simple as “more technology makes them farther removed”. From the article: “ ‘Our data suggest that Level 2 driving automation has the potential to improve a driver’s [situational awareness] once he or she is familiar with the technology, although it does not guarantee it,’ the report reads. Per the IIHS study's results, nearly all of the experienced users of Level 2 systems were able to notice the bear during their drive, and more drivers in this group were able to correctly note the number of times the bear drove past them than anyone else. Meanwhile, over twice as many of the drivers who weren't experienced with Level 2 automation but used it for the test didn't remember the bear at all compared to either of the other groups in the test.” One might conclude that we need to reduce this “learning period” with formal driver training for these systems, perhaps the way we certify people for drivers licenses or something.
astura 6y ago
>Looks like from the article this just makes them even more distracted. No, that's not at all what the article says! It says the opposite >"Our data suggest that Level 2 driving automation has the potential to improve a driver’s [situational awareness] once he or she is familiar with the technology, although it does not guarantee it," the report reads. Beyond that, even if nobody noticed the teddy bear, there were no controls who were driving with no assistance features, so you wouldn't be able to make that conclusion anyways.

Toutouxc 6y ago

The "first-time-L2-on" results are terrifying but unsurprising, it's exactly why I am very much against half-baked driver assists. Cars are not planes. Also call me an arrogant asshole, but I firmly believe that any driver who drove normally without the assist and missed the bear (even once) has no place operating a vehicle at highway speeds.

aaronmdjones 6y ago
> Cars are not planes. Yeah, but planes aren't generally any better at this either. In almost everything except jet aircraft and especially jet airliners, autopilot can be as crude as "maintain this heading and altitude"; i.e. you still need to manage your speed (the engine throttle lever) yourself, including in response to changes of wind direction or intensity. Then we get to airliners, which have flight management computers. You can give your flight plan to that, and they will even calculate optimal speeds along the way, which the autothrottle can maintain for you. This allows you to, for example, know when the optimum descent point from cruise is; too early and you need more fuel to maintain altitude when you get down to where you need to be, too late and you need to turn more to bleed off more altitude. The more advanced flight management computers are also loaded with a complete navigation database that includes e.g. speed and altitude restrictions at each waypoint, so they know, for example, that you shouldn't descend below 12,000 feet or be doing more than 260 KIAS at <waypoint x>. This is basically what's on your charts, but it's still up to you to verify that you're complying with the chart, even if you let the flight computer handle it. Then we get to the autopilot itself. The autopilot on a modern airliner doesn't mean the plane can "fly itself". They still need to be told what to do, and told correctly. If you take off from Paris and head south-east and tell it to maintain 8,000 feet, it /will/ fly you straight into the side of the Alps. The Ground Proximity Warning System will tell you that you're in imminent danger of smashing into a mountain, but the autopilot will not react to that. If you tell the autopilot to descend into the ground it will. If you tell the autothrottle to fly too fast you will damage your aircraft. If you're doing 280 KIAS in a 777 and you throw out flaps, the autothrottle will not slow the aircraft down, and you will damage them. If the autopilot is about to fly straight into another aircraft, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System will tell you that, but the autopilot will not react to that either. Note that some of this doesn't apply to Airbus aircraft, as Airbus thinks they know better. Whether that's a good thing is up for debate; it did result in, for example, Sullenberger not being able to make an optimal ditching approach into the Hudson, because the Airbus thought his nose-up input would stall the aircraft (which it would have eventually, but he was only a few feet above the river anyway, so that's inconsequential). Then there was Air France 447, where the usually fastidious Airbus flight management computer would usually prevent the pilots from making input that would cause a stall, but because their speed sensors were not working, the computer didn't do that. The first officer held that plane in a constant stall for their entire 38,000 feet descent into the ocean, probably because they were relying on the system to not let them do that. The ground proximity stuff also doesn't apply to some fighter jets, which won't let a pilot aim the aircraft at the ground (because it could be because the pilot has passed out during a high-G manoeuver). Still, the vast majority of it applies. The point is, these systems require the same kind of checks, instruction, and constant supervision that Level 2 autonomous driving systems do.

garmaine 6y ago

I wouldn’t have mentioned the bear because to me it’s not noteworthy. Am I weird?

jusssi 6y ago
I'll have to agree. For situational awareness, the vehicle is relevant. A toy bear attached to the rear bumper of that vehicle is not.
shadowgovt 6y ago
No, you're not. I'm personally under-convinced this test is measuring anything more relevant than who in the sample group notices interesting-but-irrelevant details. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-eyes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-ey...

knorthfield 6y ago

These Assist systems need to be the car assisting the driver. Not the driver assisting the car.

paulcole 6y ago
Yes, but when the hype has been about the latter, it’s going to be tougher to get people to pay for the former.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

And then there are those of us who already have low awareness because we're ADD and have been in multiple accidents and Level 2 automation is making us far safer on the road.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

The headline for the same study on a different site: "Level 2 systems like Tesla Autopilot can improve drivers’ attentiveness: IIHS study" Both headlines are accurate, both are misleading. Great example of showing you can't trust headlines. I don't even think it's possible to get an accurate summary into the headline. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-level-2-adas-iihs-study-results/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-autopilot-level-2-adas-iihs-...

enoch_r 6y ago

The headline and first few paragraphs are just an incredibly misleading framing of the study results. - drivers experienced with L2 assistance were the most aware of on-road events - drivers inexperienced with L2 assistance were the least aware of on-road events - drivers not using L2 assistance were in the middle This seems like a quite positive result for driver assistance features - they increase situational awareness but take a bit to get used to.

martin_a 6y ago
Day of the anecdotes for me, but I'd like to add, that I would approve this. I've got an electric car with level 2 assistance since last year and although I didn't drive as much as expected due to Covid-19 and lockdowns I feel how driving has changed. At first I was very "afraid" of the systems doing stupid things and probably killing me while doing that. I was very focussed on controlling the slight steering it does when getting near white lines (Germany here) or how it would brake when following another car. As that fear passed, I became much more concious of my surroundings, paying more attention to what other drivers might do (especially on the Autobahn) and how I could improve my "driving style" to create a better flow of traffic. Can't wait to experience higher levels of assistance systems. I'd LOVE to get into the car, position myself behind a truck with 90 km/h on the right lane and let the car do it's thing while I'm not watching what it does.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  My wife's car simply alerts her to nearby cars. That alone is enough to make her driving more dangerous. Every beep, every flashing light and she swerves (unnecessarily) to avoid imaginary conflict. E.g. a car coming up in the next lane left will trigger an alert, resulting in an involuntary swerve to the right. This is not improving her safety at all. You can say 'just learn to deal with it', but its been a year and no change.
  - martin_a 6y ago
    This seems somewhat "harsh", why does the system work like that? I got a Hyundai and it has a lane assistant which keeps you in your lane, but it doesn't freak out when somebody passes you. Braking, when you run up to a slower vehicle in front of you, is sometimes a bit stronger (depending on the speed difference), but it's not alarming either. I know of dead spot assistants which light up in your mirrors if you have a car in the dead spot, but those don't beep either. What kind of assistance system does your wife's car have? Just to avoid that... :-D

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Aligns perfectly with my experience. As soon as my wife's car started alerting her to cars around her, she quit looking. Instead, when an alert sounds, she jerks the wheel at the sound and swerves involuntarily to avoid the imaginary conflict. Its harrowing to be a passenger. I drive myself everywhere now.

jschwartzi 6y ago
My wife's car just has "Parking Assistant" which beeps if you're within 2 feet of an obstacle in any quadrant of the vehicle. Basically it scares the shit out of us when we're trying to park. So I can understand the harrowingness of that system. I think a better design than an audible alarm is to show the driver using quadrants or a diagram when an object is within the "close," "very close," or "near-collision" zone around a vehicle and beep once but only when the object passes into another zone to alert the driver to a change in state. The tones should change for each transition so you can learn the tone for "object moved from close to very close in right driver's-side zone" and distinguish that from "object moved from very close to close in right driver's-side zone." Having to constantly pay attention to an alarm tone is extremely nerve-wracking. In medical devices this will often result in "alarm fatigue" where you spend so much time dealing with false alarms that you miss a real alarm.

darkpicnic 6y ago

It's interesting reading articles about Level 2 and how it can adversely affect driver attention. I was concerned when I started driving a Tesla for the same reasons. Would I grow complacent? Stop paying attention? The opposite happened. I'm more focused on the road since I can relax and not multi-task. On long road trips, I'm not feeling that ache in the knee or the tension in the shoulders/back from constantly keeping the car aligned in the lane. In fact, I wish Tesla would just introduce a touch interface into the wheel so it knew your hands were on it, but not require constantly resisting the wheel to trigger the sensor. The conclusion I've come to: Level 2 can make good drivers safer and make bad drivers more dangerous. I don't look at my phone when I'm driving. I don't text at red lights. I don't constantly fiddle with the screen. If you do these things, you're a dangerous driver. If Level 2 increases this because you feel a false sense of safety, it'll make you more dangerous. People just need to take driving a 2 ton heap of metal 70mph seriously and we'd all be much safer.

ec109685 6y ago
That was the conclusion in the article too. The editor chose to highlight the less likely (in the real world) situation where the user is new to their L2 equipment.
- darkpicnic 6y ago
  Yep, I was just highlighting the fact that most articles about Level 2 or, in general, < Level 4, are written with a concern for situational awareness. In my experience, it was the opposite: it improved it.
sho_hn 6y ago
> In fact, I wish Tesla would just introduce a touch interface into the wheel so it knew your hands were on it, but not require constantly resisting the wheel to trigger the sensor. We recently rolled out capacitive steering wheels in several Mercedes-Benz models for that reason. It's pleasant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

OliverJones 6y ago

Sorry to say, "n" is far too small in this study. n=31 spread over three arms of the study. Really? To make it useful for anything except pointing to possible future studies, n must be larger. Meantime, give those researchers a kewpie doll!

kawfey 6y ago

Anecdata: I have a 2019 Subaru Forester with Eyesight (lane keeping and adaptive cruise) and Driver Monitoring System (beeps whenever you look away from the road and automatically adjusts seat and mirror settings based on facial recognition). Compared to other systems it's far from perfect (it bounces between lane lines, it often looses track of the lanes even in good lighting), it doesn't always see the car in front of you especially if it's stopped or out of lane) but every time I drive it I find myself feeling safer to look around at my surroundings a lot more, especially my rear. I've saved my rear-end from two near misses, and countless reckless and speeding drivers because I look at my mirrors so much more frequently. At the same time I find myself looking out of the side windows at the scenery, until the driver monitoring system beeps at me to keep my eyes on the road. It has performed automatic emergency braking a few times because I wasn't keeping an eye on the car stopping in front of me.

jeffbee 6y ago
The one thing that really works for me is the speed/cruise control. I find that setting it takes my mind off watching the speed limit and gives me more time to look around for people who are crossing the street etc. When I recently bought a new car I eliminated some cars from consideration because they refuse to engage their speed controls at city speeds. I don't really understand why Toyota, as an example, refuses to engage the speed control below 45 km/h. My old VW would allow setting the speed control at any speed, even at a walking speed in 1st gear on a manual transmission.
Cd00d 6y ago
Huh. I have a 2021 Outback with Eyesight. I don't think it does any facial monitoring. The lane-keeping is more aggressive than the 2017 model I had previously, but beeps at me for not being hands-on enough. As far as I can tell, this definition of "hands-on" means slightly fighting with the steering wheel at regular intervals.

shadowgovt 6y ago

> So, they attached something to a passing vehicle that would be unmissable to anyone who doesn't live inside a permanent art car parade: one gigantic stuffed animal in a bright silly outfit. I think I'd find this study more compelling if we didn't have evidence that in general, human beings filter out state that is harmless but extremely discordant to the context. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-eyes.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-gorilla-dont-front-ey... If the teddy bear on the back of the car isn't relevant to driver safety, why do we expect drivers to notice it at all?

austincheney 6y ago

I fear, as I get older, that younger people aren’t going to know how to drive anymore. People will have a lower attention span and not pay careful attention thereby increasing the risk to everyone only to blame car when they cause an accident.