[HN Gopher] What happens when you trigger a car's automated emer...
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What happens when you trigger a car's automated emergency stopping?
Author : rntn
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-01-20 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Interestingly, based on the title of this article, I thought this
| would be discussing automated emergency braking systems that are
| standard on most cars, not the "what happens when you stop paying
| attention with adaptive cruise control, and ignore all the
| warnings". Mercedes calling their call center seems a bit
| aggressive... since it doesn't sound like the journalist was
| actually in a collision.
| pinkgolem wrote:
| To be fair, when a person is not reacting after the sequence
| described a medical emergency seems likely & a checkup might be
| a good idea.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Sure, I'd agree, but the report is that they asked if they
| were in a collision. Seems like some better reporting to ask
| if they were ok (and not assume a collision) would be better.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| People in state of shock have reduced cognitive abilities.
| Makes sense to ask a series of simple yes/no questions to
| determine what happened. "Are you ok" is too generic.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly this. After a collision people will be walking
| around with half their guts spilling out and insist
| they're "ok".
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yeah. In the rush to board a train to my mother after
| hours of delays just before Christmas, I tripped and
| bashed my leg pretty hard against the step of the train,
| a woman asked if I was OK and I reflexively answered "I'm
| fine".
|
| Once seated I thought I ought to see exactly how "fine" I
| really was, rolled up the leg of my heavy black jeans and
| discovered I was now bleeding significantly. I thought
| about it, decided if I tell the train operator they're
| going to insist I go to hospital to have somebody check
| it, at hospital triage will (like me) conclude that I'm
| not in real danger and put me at the back of the queue
| and I won't get seen for hours, so likely I don't get a
| train until tomorrow, meanwhile I'm in the wrong city.
| So, no, I'm going to stick a Kleenex over this wound to
| keep it clean(ish) and stay on the train.
|
| It wasn't mortal, but it was a sizeable hole, a day later
| it was still bleeding so my mother drove me to an Urgent
| Care and a nurse practitioner glued it shut. Kind of
| wasting their skills, but it feels better to have someone
| overqualified do it than guess I can just use glue at
| home & never know if that was a good call.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Regular superglue can produce heat when applied to skin,
| to the point of thermal burn. Medical glue is safe in
| this regard.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Huh. Today I learned.
| pinkgolem wrote:
| Yeah, that seems like a minor improvement that could be
| implemented... But the call is the important thing, check
| if someone answers.. if not -> call emergency services.. if
| yes, discuss next steps
|
| Calls are also sometimes available when data is not/just
| plain faster
| solardev wrote:
| Yeah, I've wondered that too. I've triggered the audible alarm
| many times, but I'm still not sure what happens if it actually
| needs to emergency brake and cut engine power.
|
| How does it handle steering/skidding? Is it gonna cause the
| person behind me rear end me? I hope I never have to find out,
| but it'd be nice to know ahead of time...
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| I've been wondering this the whole time. Does it gently stop
| on the right shoulders so you can comfortably get out the
| vehicle to meet traffic from behind?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I thought the same, it's poorly titled IMO. "Automated
| emergency braking," to me, means the system that brakes if it
| thinks you're about to hit something. I would have never
| thought about the cruise-control hands-off-wheel behavior
| (which braking is only one piece of, anyway).
| dathinab wrote:
| consider that:
|
| > Mercedes calling their call center seems a bit aggressive
|
| through necessary: I mean, let's be honest under which "normal"
| conditions do you ignore the warning system _and continue to do
| so even after the car stopped_?
|
| Whatever it is if you are not a journalist testing something
| out there is a pretty high chance you need help one way or
| another.
|
| So they call you to then figure out if they need to call you an
| ambulance (e.g. imagine you had a heart attack, or passed out
| due to some circulatory mall function) or a technician (the
| warning system malfunctioned) or well if they can safely ignore
| it (you are a journalist trying things out).
|
| It's in a certain way just a natural extension of the existing
| emergency call system (common (required?) in the EU) where on
| detection a collisions/the airbag going off an emergency call
| is made. It just now detect a user seemingly becoming unable to
| interact with the system.
|
| It might feel aggressive but it shouldn't trigger under in any
| normal usage situation and even if there might be some harmless
| situations it likely will save lives.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| A lot of things can happen when you are out there on your own
| rolling coffin, a Heart attack, hypoglycaemia (from Greek
| "hypo-", meaning 'low'; "glyc-", 'sugar'; and "aemia",
| 'blood'), low sugar presence in blood.
|
| Now that diabetes has become a widespread problem for
| millions, having a dead man switch for a case of
| hypoglycaemia with a Big Bro phone call to check on you can
| save lives, I guess, by letting the subjects quickly reach
| the emergency room, where we are now
| donaldihunter wrote:
| It's an interesting experiment but knowing the behaviour in an
| evolving collision situation would be more valuable I think.
|
| My VW Caravelle (van) is quite aggressive when e.g. a car is
| braking to turn left and I start to run close. It applies the
| brakes hard, displays a crash warning and chimes. The chime is
| almost irrelevant because the ABS braking shudders the whole car.
|
| The rental I am driving today (a Kia) responded to emergency
| braking traffic in front of me. I was already braking but the car
| decided to apply more aggressive brakes, switch on the hazards,
| sound an alarm and cut the audio entertainment.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You should reflect on the possibility that you might be
| tailgating.
| cosmotic wrote:
| In some jurisdictions tailgating is essential. Most drivers
| are super aggressive and cut in, making the people behind you
| angry and you get nowhere.
| antiframe wrote:
| Unless you stop at 0kph you are not getting nowhere.
| Keeping enough buffer between cars improves traffic instead
| as it is abrupt stopping which backpropogates through
| traffic. If there is enough space for cars to change lanes
| safely the entire mass can go at a constant speed. That
| might seem slower but it provides better throughput.
|
| The trouble is that individual drivers optimize for
| perception, leading to a tragedy of the commons situation.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If you leave as much space as you would like to, other
| drivers change into your lane to use the space to
| advance, and now there isn't enough space, so you would
| have to slow down. You are now traveling slower than the
| adjacent lane, so more drivers move to the other lane to
| get around you and fill the space you're trying to leave
| again, preventing you from resuming parity with the speed
| other traffic is moving. As long as the space is there
| they'll continue to do this, which is a massive hazard
| because you're inducing a speed differential and a large
| number of lane change maneuvers.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| It's not your responsibility to make people behind you
| happy.
|
| It is your responsibility to maintain a safe distance
| between you and other vehicles.
|
| I'd be surprised if traffic regulations in your area don't
| talk about minimum safe distances. Not maintaining those to
| 1) get somewhere faster and 2) avoiding being honked at by
| some psycho, kinda sounds risky.
| wharvle wrote:
| The main trouble in my city is certain snarley interchanges
| in which you'll never make it to the lane you need for your
| exit if you aren't, much of the time, way too close to the
| car in front of you.
| donaldihunter wrote:
| Oh, I do. Tailgating vs efficiency.
| strombofulous wrote:
| Assuming you don't get in front of the car in front of you,
| wouldn't the maximum efficiency gain be one car length?
| cosmotic wrote:
| My vw has a setting to for how aggressive it breaks in those
| situations.
| oivey wrote:
| Echoing another commenter: I've never activated the emergency
| braking function in 6 years of driving my Honda. A warning
| chime rarely, but never the brakes. Never in various rentals,
| either. You may be driving badly.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I think this also depends where you live. Driving in NYC is
| very different from driving in Montana.
| smeej wrote:
| I read that headline to ask about a _cat 's_ emergency stopping
| at first and that sounded like a much funnier article.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I wonder how many people will be injured or killed because of
| errors in these systems.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| I wonder how many will be saved.
| bombcar wrote:
| Now I'm imagining a scene from _Fight Club 2: More
| Fightening_ :
|
| "Now see, there's a calculus. If our emergency systems save
| ten thousand lives a year, those are customers for life. And
| we look at those as currency to be spent - we have some lives
| we can waste elsewhere, especially in areas that are
| indicative of non-repeat customers. Customer who normally
| doesn't drink, we detect as drunk? Probably lost his job or
| got a divorce, we disable the emergency systems."
| advisedwang wrote:
| Given news coverage of collisions with self-driving cars, I
| suspect we'd see any such crashes in the press. So it seems to
| be pretty dang low.
| netsharc wrote:
| I hope the people getting calls from these cars are trained to
| deal talking to hurt people, but I suppose the agency the
| manufacturers have outsourced this service to can recruit 911
| operators for a little better pay. They can say on the phone
| "This is X from Mercedes help center" but I'm speculating that
| X's work console displayed "Connecting you with a car in need of
| assistance. Car brand: Mercedes" a few seconds before.
|
| I wonder if the more expensive car brands can jump the queue of
| getting help after an incident.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I recently backed into a parked car -- not a big deal, just left
| it in Reverse while waiting for someone and then forgot. Bumped
| the car parked 12 inches behind me the entire time. If my car
| can't figure out to "not do that", then I have zero faith in any
| emergency braking.
| darkr wrote:
| There was no danger to life in this scenario. It's not for the
| car to figure out how to "not do this", it's for you.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| replace "parked car" with "child". Would it have stopped
| then?
| bfdm wrote:
| In cars with parking sensors, it would likely have beeped
| at you aggressively unless you disabled that.
|
| It doesn't auto-brake but does do a good job of avoiding
| such impacts by alerting to objects nearby you might not
| see, including cross-traffic detection when backing out of
| parking spaces.
| beejiu wrote:
| The level of automation in cars today is designed to
| _assist_ the driver, not replace the driver or absolve them
| of responsibility for their vehicle.
| darkr wrote:
| I have no idea what car you're driving or what safety
| features it has.. but more importantly, your response to a
| crash caused by your own carelessness is to be morally
| indignant... towards your car?
| Aachen wrote:
| Not sure how your backing into another vehicle gives you "zero"
| confidence in emergency breaking systems meant for entirely
| different situations
|
| And keep in mind that it doesn't have to be 100% accurate to
| save more than zero lives
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| How is your negligence relevant to the topic of AEB in a
| highway setting?
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| My cruise speed control system effectively turns my car into a
| kamikaze rocket if I ever lose attention.
|
| It needs a dead man button like this one
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(page generated 2024-01-20 23:01 UTC)