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Reading the facts of the accident central to this investigation, I imagine most meat bag driving systems would have also probably hit the car. It's not like the

Reading the facts of the accident central to this investigation, I imagine most meat bag driving systems would have also probably hit the car. It's not like the car ran into a stopped police car with flashing lights on.

toast0 3y ago
I don't know if we have enough facts in the Texas case to guess if a human in the same situation would have been able to handle the situation better. All the facts I've seen are there was a vehicle stopped in traffic lanes with its lights off. At least one human driver ahead of the accident car that avoided the stopped vehicle, but was close enough to observe the collision. There's lots of scenarios that fit these facts, some of which are hard for humans; all of which are hard for driver assistance software that ignores stationary objects. Even if an active human driver would be likely to still hit the other car, they may have begun braking sooner and reduce the energy involved in the collision. If the accident car was closing following the observer car, both in the same lane as the stopped car, and the observer car changed lanes to avoid the stopped car 'at the last second', yeah, that's hard for humans too when there's limited visibility ahead of the car in front (which is a good reason to avoid following so closely, but things happen). If it was just light traffic at high speeds and a stopped car, I'd expect an active driver to at least reduce speed significantly. Yes, it was at night and the stopped car had no lights; however, the accident car's headlights should illuminate the stopped car's reflectors if nothing else, and given the observer car had passed the accident car recently, there should have been some light cast from its headlights as well.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Sure sounds like the Ford was following the observer car, probably pretty closely for the given speed. Having reflectors on the stationary car isn't useful when the stationary car is completely obscured by the observer car. If the observer car missed it by only a couple of seconds, there was probably only five seconds or so for the Ford driver to see it, realize what was happening, and properly respond. And at those speeds and that kind of distance, braking probably wasn't an option especially if you've already burned a second and a half just realizing "oh shit that's a stopped car". I haven't heard either way if there was significant braking by the Ford or not, going on an open Texas highway typically means they were probably going >80mph as the posted speed was probably 80mph. I'm not sure exactly which stretch of I-10 they were on, but a lot of it around San Antonio (especially the unlit stretches) are posted 80. Even if they slammed on the brakes and managed to cut half their speed they're still slamming into a stationary, heavy object at 40ish mph. I imagine it pretty much is an instance of following too closely and going too fast for the lighting conditions for the possibility of suddenly encountering a completely stopped object in the road. I agree, its a bad limitation of "self driving" systems, but in the end I imagine the average human would have probably had a similar following distance and also be travelling at a similar speed. The Ford system does track attentiveness and will drop out of bluecruise mode and bring the car to a stop if the driver isn't paying attention. It does a lot of gaze tracking with IR lights and cameras. Its not like on some cars where attaching a little weight to the wheel is enough to fake attention. The driver was paying attention to the road, at least within the last few seconds. EDIT: Sounds like the stretch in question is a 70mph area. Still, I imagine on an open highway and how loads of Texans drive, they were probably going about 80mph. Also, it does appear this section of I-10 does have roadway lighting. FWIW, I've seen lots of cars slam into the back of a stopped car on a highway in bright daylight conditions without the assistance of driving aids. My old office had a pretty good view of a long stretch of a major 70mph highway; I saw a lot of collisions. Meatbag drivers are pretty terrible.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    > Sure sounds like the Ford was following the observer car, probably pretty closely for the given speed. Having reflectors on the stationary car isn't useful when the stationary car is completely obscured by the observer car. If the observer car missed it by only a couple of seconds, there was probably only five seconds or so for the Ford driver to see it, realize what was happening, and properly respond. Sounds like the Ford wasn't maintaining a safe following distance.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      I agree. Maybe these driving aids should force better following distances and max speeds when its dark outside, especially if it ultimately relies on human vision to properly detect and react to a stopped object. I'd still say a human would probably have also had an unsafe following distance and speed in this scenario.
      - BobaFloutist 3y ago
        A human would have likely driven unsafely too, but human behaviors don't scale as predictably, so I think it's appropriate to hold them to a lower bar. If a self driving car (or driving aid at least) behaves unsafely in some consistent way, that could cause far more accidents than the "typical human driver" typically behaving in that unsafe way. It's frankly outrageous to me that it's literally possible for automated or assisted driving to fail such a common-sense, basic rule of road safety as following distance. And that's my real concern with self-driving cars (apart from considering them a competitor to the public transit I'd rather see), that it doesn't feel like there's a sufficient baseline level of caution for their bread-and-butter behaviors.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      At 80 mph there should be about 100 m distance between vehicles to maintain the recommended 3 seconds separation. 80 mph is 36 m/s. I drive with traffic aware cruise control always on maximum separation (Tesla S), but hardly anyone else abides by the recommendation. Even 1 second separation is 7 car lengths at that speed.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  It's worth noting that we can make assumptions about how a human would have handled the situation, because BlueCruise is not full-self-driving. There was a human at the wheel. So the answer in both cases is definitely "There was a human operating the vehicle, they saw the vehicle running headlong into stopped traffic, and they failed to use the brake in time." They may, perhaps, have trusted the semi-automation too much, but that's no more excuse for rear-ending a stopped car than setting your regular cruise control to 55 and failing to disengage when you see traffic stopped ahead is. We want the technology to do better than human, but (unless NHTSA turns up something truly bizarre and awful, like "Driver tried to brake and BlueCruise overrode the command to disable braking," which should be impossible) the situation in both these cases is people died because the car was being driven by a human and the human made a bad call.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    This is an important take for this system. BlueCruise does a lot to check for attentiveness with its gaze-tracking. The driver would have been looking at the road at least a few seconds before the accident. As someone who has done several hundred miles on BlueCruise, it can be pretty touchy about you paying attention. Even taking a drink from a cup a little too long will get it to start alerting you and eventually kick you out of it.
jefftk 3y ago
Link?
- vel0city 3y ago
  https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY24FH006.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY24FH006.aspx
  - jefftk 3y ago
    Thanks! Nightime, 70mph highway, stopped car with its lights off. It has: The witness changed lanes to the right to avoid striking the vehicle and later, in her rearview mirror, saw another vehicle strike the stopped Honda. If that interval was very short, then I could imagine the witness car blocking the Ford's view of the Honda until there wasn't much time to react?
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Yeah, that's definitely the big variable of if this was something that most human drivers would have also collided or not. Given how the observer car still seems to have good visibility of the car and the whole accident I'd guess they probably passed the car just a few seconds before the Mach E collided. I imagine most people's sense of time in that scenario is pretty unreliable, we'd pretty much need some kind of video recording to know exactly how much time the Mach E realistically had to react.

toast0 3y ago

I don't know if we have enough facts in the Texas case to guess if a human in the same situation would have been able to handle the situation better. All the facts I've seen are there was a vehicle stopped in traffic lanes with its lights off. At least one human driver ahead of the accident car that avoided the stopped vehicle, but was close enough to observe the collision. There's lots of scenarios that fit these facts, some of which are hard for humans; all of which are hard for driver assistance software that ignores stationary objects. Even if an active human driver would be likely to still hit the other car, they may have begun braking sooner and reduce the energy involved in the collision. If the accident car was closing following the observer car, both in the same lane as the stopped car, and the observer car changed lanes to avoid the stopped car 'at the last second', yeah, that's hard for humans too when there's limited visibility ahead of the car in front (which is a good reason to avoid following so closely, but things happen). If it was just light traffic at high speeds and a stopped car, I'd expect an active driver to at least reduce speed significantly. Yes, it was at night and the stopped car had no lights; however, the accident car's headlights should illuminate the stopped car's reflectors if nothing else, and given the observer car had passed the accident car recently, there should have been some light cast from its headlights as well.

vel0city 3y ago
Sure sounds like the Ford was following the observer car, probably pretty closely for the given speed. Having reflectors on the stationary car isn't useful when the stationary car is completely obscured by the observer car. If the observer car missed it by only a couple of seconds, there was probably only five seconds or so for the Ford driver to see it, realize what was happening, and properly respond. And at those speeds and that kind of distance, braking probably wasn't an option especially if you've already burned a second and a half just realizing "oh shit that's a stopped car". I haven't heard either way if there was significant braking by the Ford or not, going on an open Texas highway typically means they were probably going >80mph as the posted speed was probably 80mph. I'm not sure exactly which stretch of I-10 they were on, but a lot of it around San Antonio (especially the unlit stretches) are posted 80. Even if they slammed on the brakes and managed to cut half their speed they're still slamming into a stationary, heavy object at 40ish mph. I imagine it pretty much is an instance of following too closely and going too fast for the lighting conditions for the possibility of suddenly encountering a completely stopped object in the road. I agree, its a bad limitation of "self driving" systems, but in the end I imagine the average human would have probably had a similar following distance and also be travelling at a similar speed. The Ford system does track attentiveness and will drop out of bluecruise mode and bring the car to a stop if the driver isn't paying attention. It does a lot of gaze tracking with IR lights and cameras. Its not like on some cars where attaching a little weight to the wheel is enough to fake attention. The driver was paying attention to the road, at least within the last few seconds. EDIT: Sounds like the stretch in question is a 70mph area. Still, I imagine on an open highway and how loads of Texans drive, they were probably going about 80mph. Also, it does appear this section of I-10 does have roadway lighting. FWIW, I've seen lots of cars slam into the back of a stopped car on a highway in bright daylight conditions without the assistance of driving aids. My old office had a pretty good view of a long stretch of a major 70mph highway; I saw a lot of collisions. Meatbag drivers are pretty terrible.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  > Sure sounds like the Ford was following the observer car, probably pretty closely for the given speed. Having reflectors on the stationary car isn't useful when the stationary car is completely obscured by the observer car. If the observer car missed it by only a couple of seconds, there was probably only five seconds or so for the Ford driver to see it, realize what was happening, and properly respond. Sounds like the Ford wasn't maintaining a safe following distance.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I agree. Maybe these driving aids should force better following distances and max speeds when its dark outside, especially if it ultimately relies on human vision to properly detect and react to a stopped object. I'd still say a human would probably have also had an unsafe following distance and speed in this scenario.
    - BobaFloutist 3y ago
      A human would have likely driven unsafely too, but human behaviors don't scale as predictably, so I think it's appropriate to hold them to a lower bar. If a self driving car (or driving aid at least) behaves unsafely in some consistent way, that could cause far more accidents than the "typical human driver" typically behaving in that unsafe way. It's frankly outrageous to me that it's literally possible for automated or assisted driving to fail such a common-sense, basic rule of road safety as following distance. And that's my real concern with self-driving cars (apart from considering them a competitor to the public transit I'd rather see), that it doesn't feel like there's a sufficient baseline level of caution for their bread-and-butter behaviors.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    At 80 mph there should be about 100 m distance between vehicles to maintain the recommended 3 seconds separation. 80 mph is 36 m/s. I drive with traffic aware cruise control always on maximum separation (Tesla S), but hardly anyone else abides by the recommendation. Even 1 second separation is 7 car lengths at that speed.
shadowgovt 3y ago
It's worth noting that we can make assumptions about how a human would have handled the situation, because BlueCruise is not full-self-driving. There was a human at the wheel. So the answer in both cases is definitely "There was a human operating the vehicle, they saw the vehicle running headlong into stopped traffic, and they failed to use the brake in time." They may, perhaps, have trusted the semi-automation too much, but that's no more excuse for rear-ending a stopped car than setting your regular cruise control to 55 and failing to disengage when you see traffic stopped ahead is. We want the technology to do better than human, but (unless NHTSA turns up something truly bizarre and awful, like "Driver tried to brake and BlueCruise overrode the command to disable braking," which should be impossible) the situation in both these cases is people died because the car was being driven by a human and the human made a bad call.
- vel0city 3y ago
  This is an important take for this system. BlueCruise does a lot to check for attentiveness with its gaze-tracking. The driver would have been looking at the road at least a few seconds before the accident. As someone who has done several hundred miles on BlueCruise, it can be pretty touchy about you paying attention. Even taking a drink from a cup a little too long will get it to start alerting you and eventually kick you out of it.

jefftk 3y ago

Link?

vel0city 3y ago
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY24FH006.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/HWY24FH006.aspx
- jefftk 3y ago
  Thanks! Nightime, 70mph highway, stopped car with its lights off. It has: The witness changed lanes to the right to avoid striking the vehicle and later, in her rearview mirror, saw another vehicle strike the stopped Honda. If that interval was very short, then I could imagine the witness car blocking the Ford's view of the Honda until there wasn't much time to react?
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Yeah, that's definitely the big variable of if this was something that most human drivers would have also collided or not. Given how the observer car still seems to have good visibility of the car and the whole accident I'd guess they probably passed the car just a few seconds before the Mach E collided. I imagine most people's sense of time in that scenario is pretty unreliable, we'd pretty much need some kind of video recording to know exactly how much time the Mach E realistically had to react.