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> I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one. I
by technothrasher 5y ago
> I had to drive 'erratic' a moment ago not because I am drunk or fell asleep, but because a kid ran into a street and I had to do an evasive maneuver" one.
I kept getting warnings of 'erratic' driving from my VW and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I finally figured it out. The car was seeing asphalt repair patches on the road, which are by their nature wiggly lines. It clearly figures the line is straight and the car is swerving all over the place.
It also wants to hit the brakes any time the car in front is braking and my foot is on the throttle. Ok, but this fails constantly in two situations. First is if the car in front is turning left and I'm moving around it on the right. Second is if I'm far enough back that I'm ok with light throttle even though the car in front is braking.
So, yes, I have less than full confidence that a drunk driving detection system won't fail. The question really becomes whether the net benefit outweighs the potential failures. With the VW applying the brakes, I accepted the annoyances the first time it saved me from plowing into the car in front of me when they unexpectedly hit the brakes on a highway on-ramp and I was watching the traffic on the highway instead of the car in front.
- mustyoshi 5y agoHave you (are you even able to) reported these issues to VW to improve their models?
- jtdev 5y agoYah, it’s the consumers responsibility to chase around a multi billion dollar, multi national corporations QC problems…
- MerelyMortal 5y agoThat sounds like the wrong direction to go. That normalizes that it's okay to push bad safety programming as long as the onus is on the user to search for and attempt a conveluded way to contact the manufacturer, at which point the manufacturer will most likely ignore it anyway. I doubt VW has a hotline for reporting this kind of thing, and if so, I bet it's not posted on the car anywhere.
- oneplane 5y agoSo telling them that the thing they did is wrong is the wrong way to tell them that the thing they did is the wrong thing? How else is a manufacturer supposed to get feedback?
- jcgoette 5y agoThe user has to QA the product?
- NullPrefix 5y agoMove fast break things
- oneplane 5y agoFeedback != QA
- MerelyMortal 5y agoI'm all for giving feedback, and I've made a niche suggestion to Google once, which they've implemented, so I know it does happen sometimes, but I've made many more suggestions to other companies including to Toyota and Dodge which have just been ignored.
- denton-scratch 5y agoThe manufacturer must carry out comprehensive safety testing of their automobiles before putting them into production - that's how other safety-critical tech is deployed. That is: their test results should be providing them with all the feedback they need. We're not talking about a broken UI on a shopping website. Broken "smarts" in a car is like broken brakes; it's not OK to just wait for users to find out for you. If they "did the wrong thing" with car safety, then they shoun't be allowed to sell cars until the problem is fixed.
- oneplane 5y agoDesigning, testing and QA can be seen as forms of internal feedback but I was writing about external feedback in response to a suggestion that external feedback is wrong to give.
- DonHopkins 5y agoMaybe if you can make your VW think that you're testing its exhaust emissions, it will disable all those annoying safety features. ;)