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An Anonymous Coward writes:
As predicted by many (including posts here on SN), extensive testing now shows that if the driver's workload is reduced to near zero they are in no position to intervene should the autonomous system get in trouble.
The Detroit-based company has tried many ways to keep its engineers alert during autonomous car test runs, employing everything from alarm bells and lights to even putting a second engineer in the vehicle to monitor their counterpart. "No matter — the smooth ride was just too lulling and engineers struggled to maintain 'situational awareness,'" said Ford product development chief, Raj Nair.
Ford's strategy of eventually removing the steering wheel and pedals from self-driving cars has ignited a debate between automakers on how to approach the development of Level 3 self-driving vehicles, or if Level 3 should even exist at all.
BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi will introduce semi-autonomous Level 3 vehicles next year that require human intervention within 10 seconds or the vehicle will slow to a stop in its lane. However, other automakers like Nissan and Honda have upcoming systems that give the driver 30 seconds to prepare and re-engage the vehicle or it will pull to the side of the road.
The article continues with quotes from other manufacturers and US DOT. As a reminder, levels from 0 (no automation) through 5 have been defined by SAE. Level 3 is "conditional automation" and it's starting to look like this level is not such a good idea.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:31AM
I agree that level 3 is much the same as aviation autopilots, the auto industry is now going where aviation went 40 or so years ago.
Somehow pilots in the same circumstances are usually able to keep paying attention, maintain situational awareness, and take over if necessary. The aviation standards are higher.
Drivers are trained (a bit) to drive, pilots are trained to fly and trained to monitor, particularly in commercial (usually 2 pilot) aviation where one pilot monitors the other or monitors the autopilot. Monitoring is emphatically not the same skillset as doing, and drivers are not currently trained to monitor at all.
Even so, there is still much concern in aviation about over-dependence on automation (e.g. google "children of the magenta line") and lack of situational awareness, and there are several notable accidents that are arguably a result of it (AF447 for one). Notably, however, aviation is still safer overall than it was in the "old days", there are plenty of old pilots now flying armchairs and bemoaning the new generation's lack of stick and rudder skills, but they do tend to forget that they themselves are a self-selecting sample of what was - the "old days" pilots with poor skills are not here anymore...
The real question is whether the car industry, and all road users, will have to learn again the painful lessons that aviation already learned (in some cases still is learning) about automation and automation dependency.