6 ms·

Xiaomi Car with Driver Assistance Crashes, Three Reported Dead

32 points by xqcgrek2 2y ago

spwa4 2y ago
Well, now we really know they take inspiration from Tesla. Anyone remember the Tesla beheading, with the car doing a victory lap afterwards?
jqpabc123 2y ago
"Full Self Driving" for the win --- but "please wait patiently". https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-forced-change-name-full-210953101.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-forced-change-name-full-210... https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-says-will-release-fsd-feature-china-after-software-approval-2025-03-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
slaw 2y ago
> , steering wheel turned 22.0625 degrees left, brake pedal pressed 31% The driver instead of braking tried to avoid obstacle and hit concrete barrier at 97 km/h. https://carnewschina.com/2025/04/01/first-fatal-accident-involving-xiaomi-su7-claims-three-lives-on-chinese-highway/ https://carnewschina.com/2025/04/01/first-fatal-accident-inv...
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  There was one second between the driver taking over and the collision, so it was likely a panic reaction to an imminent crash. Which is fundamentally the problem with self driving technologies. If it isn't 100%, it might just increase the danger: It lures the driver into distraction, because enough kilometres on straight roads and who is going to keep paying attention when a car drives itself...and then boom exception you have 1 second to focus and ingest the situation perfectly or you die.
  - nielsbot 2y ago
    not to defend shitty self-driving implementations, BUT if on average they crash less than humans, even if they’re not 100%, society might accept that.
    - ijidak 2y ago
      I don't know if humans are rational in that way. Isn't nuclear energy, one of the safest forms of energy overall? But I still can't shake the fear of it. And that fear across most of the population has hindered nuclear energy despite all its benefits. It is going to be interesting to watch how regulation unfolds.
      - aredox 2y ago
        There are two dimensions to "safe": -how often does it fail, -what are the consequences of a failure. When you plot those two and set what is the "acceptable" area, it is skewed. And it is perfectly normal. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/expert-insights/barrier-based-risk-management-knowledge-base/risk-matrices https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/ex...
    - foobarian 2y ago
      The problem is the accident distribution is really skewed, with a small fraction of drivers contributing most accidents. That means the majority drive a lot better than average, and would likely not put up with a regression in accident rates from what might be a "better than average" system but still not as good as human. I know I wouldn't, I pay attention, never had an accident in 30 years, tried a few FSD implementations including Tesla's and they scared the bejesus out of me.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >The problem is the accident distribution is really skewed, with a small fraction of drivers contributing most accidents. Even if you take this at face value: 1. such "dangerous" drivers still screw over "safe", by crashing into them. Unless you're willing to take them off the road entirely, you can't invoke "the majority drives better than average" and call it a day. At least in the US, doing this is a non-starter. 2. Driverless systems aren't slightly safer than the average driver, they're significantly safer. For instance waymo claims "81% fewer injury-causing crashes". This effect alone might swamp out the "majority drive a lot better than average" phenomena you talk about. Most drivers might be safer than average, but are they 5x safer than average?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Not that physical reality has ever gotten in the way of low effort internet comments but the driver isn't wrong, you can avoid an obstacle in much less forward distance by turning than braking. There were two seconds between the alert and the crash. I'm not sure why the driver didn't at least get the car out of the barrier lane, perhaps there was other traffic (though the brake pedal percentages don't seem to indicate they committed to braking, odd, but I wasn't there so IDK). Obviously paying attention beforehand would have been the better move from the get go.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- kasey_junk 2y ago
  I was _taught_ to do this in driving school.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    I never went to driving school but isn't it obvious to both brake and steer away from the obstacle? Not that long ago I had some idiot driving the wrong direction, in my lane, and speeding, and was about to have a head on at about 200 km/h. I credit my survival to pulling hard to the right while slamming on the brakes, with the ABS allowing me to steer freely. It put as much space between me and the idiot as possible.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      You only have a certain amount of traction budget to accelerate. You can spend that budget on trying to stop, you can spend that budget on turning. Spending it on both can end up with you losing grip and having less traction overall to achieve your goal. A modern car's computer will assist with trying to keep traction on the road so can be good to try to do both if you're not 100% sure what to do. But also, turning often means you're going to enter another lane of traffic with potentially other cars/people/obstacles in there. So blindly swerving can sometimes end up with a much worse collision. I'm not going to say you should always do X or you should always do Y or always do X + Y. There's a lot of situational conditions on that. But only kind of turning and only kind of stopping is probably not going to work.
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        The biggest argument against swerving is that if someone else does something stupid and you hit them it's usually their fault, if you avoid them and hit something else it's your fault, unless it's on camera.
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    In Norway you are taught never to attempt avoiding action in a crisis. Just brake hard. Attempting avoiding action often puts more people at risk. Perhaps this is more applicable to our typical driving conditions where we have rain, ice, snow, or all three, on roads for substantial fractions of the year and a sudden change of direction will result in loss of control. Most of us do not practice the kind of precision high speed reactions necessary to control a car in such situations.
garrettjoecox 2y ago
Are there any useful statistics yet regarding accidents/deaths per million miles driven in “self driving” vehicles? It always comes off as click/rage bait to me when people report on these deaths when there are literally hundreds per day that don’t involve an autonomous vehicle.
- xnx 2y ago
  Yes. Waymo is safer than other drivers and makes the roads safer for everyone. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/safety-data-hub https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/safety-data-hub No other company is even close (i.e. 5-10 years behind) to where Waymo is on self driving maturity.
  - belter 2y ago
    "Lies, Damn Lies, and Waymo Statistics" - https://ojoyoshidareport.com/lies-damn-lies-and-waymo-statistics/ https://ojoyoshidareport.com/lies-damn-lies-and-waymo-statis...
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > No other company is even close (i.e. 5-10 years behind) to where Waymo is on self driving maturity. Not too hard when you stay inside like three or four cities with good weather, straight roads, &c.
    - xnx 2y ago
      Better to self drive in some places than no places.
    - jwagenet 2y ago
      > good weather I always see this argument but it seems like they did fine through the recent SF storms https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/waymo-robotaxis-storms-20067357.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/waymo-robotaxis-storm... Most of the US has non-freezing weather for most of the year, so aside from avoiding heavy rain, snow, and ice I’m not sure what more you want. > straight roads SF might have mostly straight roads, but it has complicated intersections, bed drivers, cyclists, double parked cars, etc. Waymo would do fine in any major city most of the year under most conditions.
diggan 2y ago
> Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars. How come these things are "scrutinized" afterwards instead of before? Governments are severely dragging their feet behind their backs and should clearly outlaw and force certification of these "smart" systems before they're deployed, not afterwards. Bananas how we're letting these companies use public roads with real humans as testing grounds for driver assistance software.
- bayarearefugee 2y ago
  Even ignoring the FSD aspects of these electric vehicles (which are problematic enough at their current level of technology) the fact that they are allowed to do things like hide away the mechanical release handles (required to get out if power is lost, which is very likely in a crash) in weird barely accessible spots inside the door well seems just absolutely fucking bonkers to me. And this is common, some of Tesla's are actually harder to locate than the ones in this Xiaomi
  - dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
    Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? My cheap car has electronic locks on all doors but the mechanical interior releases defeat them (but not on the rear doors). A neat feature I noticed the other day is that operating the release once won't let the door actually open, it only partially unlatches it and to open the door you have to hold the lever open and push the door. Great safety design.
    - qzw 2y ago
      You might have child safety locks engaged on the rear doors by default. If you don’t have small children, you might be able to find a switch or setting to turn that feature off.
      - vel0city 2y ago
lenerdenator 2y ago
Now replace "Xiaomi" with "Apple" in that headline and you'll see why they dropped the car project.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Also manufacturing a car is vastly different from manufacturing small electronic devices (not that that competence lives entirely with in Apple but they're experienced in designing them for manufacture). If Apple wanted to do car manufacturing that's a completely different area of expertise they'd need to spend a decade or more building up to. Look at Tesla's journey, it took them years to get things like panel gaps even close to right on their cars and they're having massive problems with the Cybertruck's manufacturing (car washes can completely destroy their electronics, whole pieces of 'trim' falling off because they used the wrong glue, etc).
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  Apple never clearly decided whether it was building a full car (like Tesla)? A self-driving system (like Waymo)? A tech stack to license (like Mobileye). This lack of focus created internal turmoil and killed momentum. The car team reportedly had over half a dozen leadership changes. Apple lacked a tangible car ecosystem: no charging network, no manufacturing experience, and no clear place in the market for another premium EV. The project was burning $1B+/year without ROI. Ultimately, it chose to cut losses. Apple failed because it was indecisive, risk-averse, and out of its industrial depth—while Tesla, Waymo, and Xiaomi had clarity, speed, and alignment between ambition and execution.
  - toast0 2y ago
    Not knowing what they want to build is a big problem, much bigger than these. > Apple lacked a tangible car ecosystem: no charging network, no manufacturing experience, and no clear place in the market for another premium EV. It wouldn't make sense to develop a charging network until they at least figure out what their product is. Most car makers take about three years between showing a finalish prototype and retail sales. That's enough time to build a charging network, if you even need to. Tesla needed to build a charging network, but now that's opening up. VW needed to build a charging network as a condition of their release, and that's open. I'm not an EV driver and I don't charge my PHEV unless it's free, but I see a lot of chargers around, and I don't know if there's a need for another major chsrging network. If Apple only wanted to be part of a car, not the whole car, there would be no reason for them to be involved in charging. Apple does most (all?) of its manufacturing through contractors. Foxconn is building cars [1], and there are plenty of dedicated contract auto manufacturers. Again, not a big defect until we know what the product is. Market positioning also needs to wait for the product. Maybe there's an opening now that Tesla is losing sales. [1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/foxconn-gearing-up-to-build-four-new-evs-including-two-from-japanese-brands/ https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/foxconn-gearing-up-to-buil...
dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
Aren't we beyond the point where makers of these systems should be required to prominently state that these are level 2 driving systems? Playing word games ("Full Self Driving"!) is arguably killing people.
sleepyguy 2y ago
https://archive.ph/77nxC https://archive.ph/77nxC >According to Xiaomi’s initial report, the car’s advanced driver assistance function had been engaged less than 20 minutes before the crash. Alerts were issued because the driver apparently wasn’t holding on to the steering wheel. Seconds after another warning was sent about obstacles in the road and the driver then retook control of the wheel, the car crashed into concrete fencing on the side of the road. >According to the company’s marketing materials, Xiaomi’s Navigate on Autopilot function can change lanes, speed a car up or down, make turns or brake with minimal human input. However, the company advises drivers stay alert to traffic conditions and reminds them that “smart-driving” isn’t the same as “self-driving.” >It’s illegal in China for drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel, even if advanced driver assistance is engaged.
srmatto 2y ago
Car companies need to either sell feature complete auto-pilot model trims with LIDAR and sell a trim not equipped with auto-pilot at all. They should not sell middle-ground, budget trims with less-effective auto-pilot that compromise safety.
zozbot234 2y ago
You can complain about Xiaomi all you want, but at least they're not BYD - that even call their driver's assistance system "God's Eyes", just so that your insurance can get away with classing every crash it gets into as an "Act of God".
- gruez 2y ago
  >that even call their driver's assistance system "God's Eyes", just so that your insurance can get away with classing every crash it gets into as an "Act of God". Not sure if serious.
maxglute 2y ago
TIL frameless car doors have emergency / manual door release. I naively thought you can push hard enough to force door open even if it broke glass. Is this common knowledge?

32 points by xqcgrek2 2y ago

Well, now we really know they take inspiration from Tesla. Anyone remember the Tesla beheading, with the car doing a victory lap afterwards?

jqpabc123 2y ago

"Full Self Driving" for the win --- but "please wait patiently". https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-forced-change-name-full-210953101.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-forced-change-name-full-210... https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-says-will-release-fsd-feature-china-after-software-approval-2025-03-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

slaw 2y ago

> , steering wheel turned 22.0625 degrees left, brake pedal pressed 31% The driver instead of braking tried to avoid obstacle and hit concrete barrier at 97 km/h. https://carnewschina.com/2025/04/01/first-fatal-accident-involving-xiaomi-su7-claims-three-lives-on-chinese-highway/ https://carnewschina.com/2025/04/01/first-fatal-accident-inv...

llm_nerd 2y ago
There was one second between the driver taking over and the collision, so it was likely a panic reaction to an imminent crash. Which is fundamentally the problem with self driving technologies. If it isn't 100%, it might just increase the danger: It lures the driver into distraction, because enough kilometres on straight roads and who is going to keep paying attention when a car drives itself...and then boom exception you have 1 second to focus and ingest the situation perfectly or you die.
- nielsbot 2y ago
  not to defend shitty self-driving implementations, BUT if on average they crash less than humans, even if they’re not 100%, society might accept that.
  - ijidak 2y ago
    I don't know if humans are rational in that way. Isn't nuclear energy, one of the safest forms of energy overall? But I still can't shake the fear of it. And that fear across most of the population has hindered nuclear energy despite all its benefits. It is going to be interesting to watch how regulation unfolds.
    - aredox 2y ago
      There are two dimensions to "safe": -how often does it fail, -what are the consequences of a failure. When you plot those two and set what is the "acceptable" area, it is skewed. And it is perfectly normal. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/expert-insights/barrier-based-risk-management-knowledge-base/risk-matrices https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/ex...
  - foobarian 2y ago
    The problem is the accident distribution is really skewed, with a small fraction of drivers contributing most accidents. That means the majority drive a lot better than average, and would likely not put up with a regression in accident rates from what might be a "better than average" system but still not as good as human. I know I wouldn't, I pay attention, never had an accident in 30 years, tried a few FSD implementations including Tesla's and they scared the bejesus out of me.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >The problem is the accident distribution is really skewed, with a small fraction of drivers contributing most accidents. Even if you take this at face value: 1. such "dangerous" drivers still screw over "safe", by crashing into them. Unless you're willing to take them off the road entirely, you can't invoke "the majority drives better than average" and call it a day. At least in the US, doing this is a non-starter. 2. Driverless systems aren't slightly safer than the average driver, they're significantly safer. For instance waymo claims "81% fewer injury-causing crashes". This effect alone might swamp out the "majority drive a lot better than average" phenomena you talk about. Most drivers might be safer than average, but are they 5x safer than average?
potato3732842 2y ago
Not that physical reality has ever gotten in the way of low effort internet comments but the driver isn't wrong, you can avoid an obstacle in much less forward distance by turning than braking. There were two seconds between the alert and the crash. I'm not sure why the driver didn't at least get the car out of the barrier lane, perhaps there was other traffic (though the brake pedal percentages don't seem to indicate they committed to braking, odd, but I wasn't there so IDK). Obviously paying attention beforehand would have been the better move from the get go.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kasey_junk 2y ago
I was _taught_ to do this in driving school.
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  I never went to driving school but isn't it obvious to both brake and steer away from the obstacle? Not that long ago I had some idiot driving the wrong direction, in my lane, and speeding, and was about to have a head on at about 200 km/h. I credit my survival to pulling hard to the right while slamming on the brakes, with the ABS allowing me to steer freely. It put as much space between me and the idiot as possible.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    You only have a certain amount of traction budget to accelerate. You can spend that budget on trying to stop, you can spend that budget on turning. Spending it on both can end up with you losing grip and having less traction overall to achieve your goal. A modern car's computer will assist with trying to keep traction on the road so can be good to try to do both if you're not 100% sure what to do. But also, turning often means you're going to enter another lane of traffic with potentially other cars/people/obstacles in there. So blindly swerving can sometimes end up with a much worse collision. I'm not going to say you should always do X or you should always do Y or always do X + Y. There's a lot of situational conditions on that. But only kind of turning and only kind of stopping is probably not going to work.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      The biggest argument against swerving is that if someone else does something stupid and you hit them it's usually their fault, if you avoid them and hit something else it's your fault, unless it's on camera.
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  In Norway you are taught never to attempt avoiding action in a crisis. Just brake hard. Attempting avoiding action often puts more people at risk. Perhaps this is more applicable to our typical driving conditions where we have rain, ice, snow, or all three, on roads for substantial fractions of the year and a sudden change of direction will result in loss of control. Most of us do not practice the kind of precision high speed reactions necessary to control a car in such situations.

garrettjoecox 2y ago

Are there any useful statistics yet regarding accidents/deaths per million miles driven in “self driving” vehicles? It always comes off as click/rage bait to me when people report on these deaths when there are literally hundreds per day that don’t involve an autonomous vehicle.

xnx 2y ago
Yes. Waymo is safer than other drivers and makes the roads safer for everyone. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/safety-data-hub https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/safety-data-hub No other company is even close (i.e. 5-10 years behind) to where Waymo is on self driving maturity.
- belter 2y ago
  "Lies, Damn Lies, and Waymo Statistics" - https://ojoyoshidareport.com/lies-damn-lies-and-waymo-statistics/ https://ojoyoshidareport.com/lies-damn-lies-and-waymo-statis...
- lm28469 2y ago
  > No other company is even close (i.e. 5-10 years behind) to where Waymo is on self driving maturity. Not too hard when you stay inside like three or four cities with good weather, straight roads, &c.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Better to self drive in some places than no places.
  - jwagenet 2y ago
    > good weather I always see this argument but it seems like they did fine through the recent SF storms https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/waymo-robotaxis-storms-20067357.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/waymo-robotaxis-storm... Most of the US has non-freezing weather for most of the year, so aside from avoiding heavy rain, snow, and ice I’m not sure what more you want. > straight roads SF might have mostly straight roads, but it has complicated intersections, bed drivers, cyclists, double parked cars, etc. Waymo would do fine in any major city most of the year under most conditions.

diggan 2y ago

> Local media reported that three people died in the incident that’s likely to spark scrutiny over the smart driving software deployed in many of today’s cars. How come these things are "scrutinized" afterwards instead of before? Governments are severely dragging their feet behind their backs and should clearly outlaw and force certification of these "smart" systems before they're deployed, not afterwards. Bananas how we're letting these companies use public roads with real humans as testing grounds for driver assistance software.

bayarearefugee 2y ago
Even ignoring the FSD aspects of these electric vehicles (which are problematic enough at their current level of technology) the fact that they are allowed to do things like hide away the mechanical release handles (required to get out if power is lost, which is very likely in a crash) in weird barely accessible spots inside the door well seems just absolutely fucking bonkers to me. And this is common, some of Tesla's are actually harder to locate than the ones in this Xiaomi
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  Or just ban non-mechanical interior releases? Whats the justification for electronic releases? My cheap car has electronic locks on all doors but the mechanical interior releases defeat them (but not on the rear doors). A neat feature I noticed the other day is that operating the release once won't let the door actually open, it only partially unlatches it and to open the door you have to hold the lever open and push the door. Great safety design.
  - qzw 2y ago
    You might have child safety locks engaged on the rear doors by default. If you don’t have small children, you might be able to find a switch or setting to turn that feature off.
    - vel0city 2y ago

lenerdenator 2y ago

Now replace "Xiaomi" with "Apple" in that headline and you'll see why they dropped the car project.

rtkwe 2y ago
Also manufacturing a car is vastly different from manufacturing small electronic devices (not that that competence lives entirely with in Apple but they're experienced in designing them for manufacture). If Apple wanted to do car manufacturing that's a completely different area of expertise they'd need to spend a decade or more building up to. Look at Tesla's journey, it took them years to get things like panel gaps even close to right on their cars and they're having massive problems with the Cybertruck's manufacturing (car washes can completely destroy their electronics, whole pieces of 'trim' falling off because they used the wrong glue, etc).
PeterStuer 2y ago
Apple never clearly decided whether it was building a full car (like Tesla)? A self-driving system (like Waymo)? A tech stack to license (like Mobileye). This lack of focus created internal turmoil and killed momentum. The car team reportedly had over half a dozen leadership changes. Apple lacked a tangible car ecosystem: no charging network, no manufacturing experience, and no clear place in the market for another premium EV. The project was burning $1B+/year without ROI. Ultimately, it chose to cut losses. Apple failed because it was indecisive, risk-averse, and out of its industrial depth—while Tesla, Waymo, and Xiaomi had clarity, speed, and alignment between ambition and execution.
- toast0 2y ago
  Not knowing what they want to build is a big problem, much bigger than these. > Apple lacked a tangible car ecosystem: no charging network, no manufacturing experience, and no clear place in the market for another premium EV. It wouldn't make sense to develop a charging network until they at least figure out what their product is. Most car makers take about three years between showing a finalish prototype and retail sales. That's enough time to build a charging network, if you even need to. Tesla needed to build a charging network, but now that's opening up. VW needed to build a charging network as a condition of their release, and that's open. I'm not an EV driver and I don't charge my PHEV unless it's free, but I see a lot of chargers around, and I don't know if there's a need for another major chsrging network. If Apple only wanted to be part of a car, not the whole car, there would be no reason for them to be involved in charging. Apple does most (all?) of its manufacturing through contractors. Foxconn is building cars [1], and there are plenty of dedicated contract auto manufacturers. Again, not a big defect until we know what the product is. Market positioning also needs to wait for the product. Maybe there's an opening now that Tesla is losing sales. [1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/foxconn-gearing-up-to-build-four-new-evs-including-two-from-japanese-brands/ https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/foxconn-gearing-up-to-buil...

dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago

Aren't we beyond the point where makers of these systems should be required to prominently state that these are level 2 driving systems? Playing word games ("Full Self Driving"!) is arguably killing people.

sleepyguy 2y ago

https://archive.ph/77nxC https://archive.ph/77nxC >According to Xiaomi’s initial report, the car’s advanced driver assistance function had been engaged less than 20 minutes before the crash. Alerts were issued because the driver apparently wasn’t holding on to the steering wheel. Seconds after another warning was sent about obstacles in the road and the driver then retook control of the wheel, the car crashed into concrete fencing on the side of the road. >According to the company’s marketing materials, Xiaomi’s Navigate on Autopilot function can change lanes, speed a car up or down, make turns or brake with minimal human input. However, the company advises drivers stay alert to traffic conditions and reminds them that “smart-driving” isn’t the same as “self-driving.” >It’s illegal in China for drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel, even if advanced driver assistance is engaged.

srmatto 2y ago

Car companies need to either sell feature complete auto-pilot model trims with LIDAR and sell a trim not equipped with auto-pilot at all. They should not sell middle-ground, budget trims with less-effective auto-pilot that compromise safety.

zozbot234 2y ago

You can complain about Xiaomi all you want, but at least they're not BYD - that even call their driver's assistance system "God's Eyes", just so that your insurance can get away with classing every crash it gets into as an "Act of God".

gruez 2y ago
>that even call their driver's assistance system "God's Eyes", just so that your insurance can get away with classing every crash it gets into as an "Act of God". Not sure if serious.

maxglute 2y ago

TIL frameless car doors have emergency / manual door release. I naively thought you can push hard enough to force door open even if it broke glass. Is this common knowledge?