from the let-me-help-you-with-that-steering-wheel dept.
A SoylentNews contributor writes:
Emergency Steering Support (ESS) is a recent entry into the suite of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) technologies. Starting years ago with anti-lock brakes (ABS) and then stability control (ESC) these separate systems are proliferating in new cars. Here's a press release on ESS which also describes one system used to test and validate system operation, https://www.vehicledynamicsinternational.com/news/vehicle-testing/ess-test-method-developed-for-new-euro-ncap-protocol.html
For those unfamiliar with ESS, if a potential collision is detected, these systems can act much later than conventional Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB, which is limited to braking alone), whilst still avoiding a collision. This later intervention is beneficial because at higher speeds it is often more effective for a vehicle to steer around, rather than brake, to avoid a stationary or slow-moving hazard. The system must only intervene when there is intent from the driver to avoid the collision through the steering. Following the driver's initial input, the ESS system can then take over to rapidly steer the vehicle around the hazard.
Personally, I wish that the "driver's initial input" was also taken into account with ABS -- so that I could have control on deformable surfaces (snow, gravel) where ABS often fails. On these surfaces, locking the wheels to build a wedge of material in front of the tires is the quickest way to stop. You do need to release the brakes and let the tires roll if you need to do some steering...so there is some skill & practice required.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aafcac on Monday January 09, @06:44PM (12 children)
Considering that the current self-driving features will often times run over motorcyclists and drive into stationary vehicles on the shoulder, this seems like an incredibly dumb idea. The reason why you don't typically want to swerve to avoid things is only partially due to the limitations of driver input. It's also the result of not necessarily being able to see what's around or behind the obstacle that you're trying to avoid.
Having the driver initiate the swerve doesn't really help anything as drivers are often times dumb, and even if they're not dumb, they've already gotten themselves in over their heads and are needing to make decisions faster than they should. The ABS, ESC and AEB do make some degree of sense as they all focus on a pretty straightforward component of driving. They simply manage the brakes in a way that will keep the vehicle in its lane and from slamming into the object in its path. They don't require any knowledge other than what the brakes are doing, the speed of the vehicle and whatever is directly in the path of the vehicle to operate.
I do think that this will probably eventually be reasonable, but we're nowhere near that point.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday January 09, @08:03PM (5 children)
At first glance I had the same thought, but I'd have to see it in action.
The reason is that I was a driver in the Air Force. I'd been driving since I was 16 in 1968, and military training is a lot more intense than your high school driver's ed, going heavy on emergency situations. When I bought a car with ABS in 2005 I was skeptical, until I was forced to use it a few times; the idiot here will turn left from the right lane right in front of you. Were it not for its four sixteen inch disk brakes I would have hit the moron.
On ice, though, ABS works far better than my military training. The downside is you get used to it. The car I have now has two drum brakes and far smaller wheels, and no ABS. I almost hit some people one winter until my military training kicked in in the nick of time!
The speed of light is, after all, faster than the speed of any chemical reaction, making computers faster than meat.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday January 09, @08:50PM
It is, but by the same token if you have a car with the smarts to know that it's safe to swerve, you've got a car that's smart enough to not need to. Those other technologies were mostly introduced to help deal with the limitations of the driver. If we're going to let the computer handle the swerve, then it doesn't make much sense to have it swerve rather than just maintain enough distance to not need to swerve in the first place.
Obviously, there are exceptions of sorts like animals, but even in those cases, it's far smarter for the car to simply slow enough to have reaction time if needed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @08:52PM
> On ice, though, ABS works far better than my military training.
Totally depends on the ABS system and integration with each car. From a conversation with one of the ABS "tuners" some years back, the ABS computer software is tuned with roughly a thousand parameters (yes 1000) that are set by "guided experiments" on different roads and different weather conditions (wet, snow, ice,...). They also test with different vehicle loading, different tires and worn tires. Of those 1000, about half are generally fixed by the choice of car/suv/pickup and the other 500 need to be tuned for the specific car. With that many parameters, nothing could possibly be called "optimum"--a good tune is some reasonable compromise that works fairly well across the situations tested.
My experience with a variety of ABS systems backs this up.
- Some of the early systems were hopeless on any kind of deformable surface -- gravel, slush-over-ice -- road conditions that are common where I live. More recent ones are somewhat better, but some people around here still pull the ABS fuse on slushy days and revert to non-ABS.
- One of the early ABS systems (on a Corvette) saved me from hitting a curb at low speed, while driving on a Jennite (sealed) surface that was much slipperier than I expected (due to invisible dew/moisture), so I'm not against ABS, it has its place.
* The design intent of ABS is to keep the wheels turning, so that you can still steer--on hard surfaces this works well. The faster the system cycles the brakes, the closer it can maintain the tire slip ratio near the peak available friction (5%-10% slip on hard, varies widely on other surfaces). The frequency of cycling depends on the system stiffness (like any closed loop system), so expansion of the flexible brake lines and flex in the calipers all figure into the cycle time.
* On deformable surfaces, the only way to get slowed down is to lock the wheels for some time and build up a wedge of material in front of the tires, or put in the terms above, 100% slip ratio. I'll guess that your military training probably featured pumping the brakes. On deformable surfaces pumping slower, with a longer "locked" time in the duty cycle is somewhere near optimum--the wheels are locked most of the time, but released "occasionally" so that you have a chance to steer and hold your intended path.
fyi, I learned to drive (off the road) at age 5, c.1960 and was taught pumping the brakes on snow shortly after that. There was also practice in skid recovery, my father in the passenger seat would pull on the hand brake to force a skid when I wasn't expecting it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday January 10, @12:30AM (2 children)
The speed of light is, after all, faster than the speed of any chemical reaction, making computers faster than meat.
which would you rather have with lettuce, tomato and cheese?
for some things, meat does better than computers.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @02:16AM (1 child)
> speed of light is, after all, faster than the speed of any chemical reaction,
When it comes to brains and truly massive parallel processing, I think computers have a long way to go, even if they do send bits around at lightspeed.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday January 10, @03:34PM
Despite the fact that computers have been called "electronic brains" since people heard of computers in the 1952 presidential election, no Turing computer was ever a brain, or ever will be.
See the sig?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @08:17PM (1 child)
All good points but note that these "nanny systems" that intervene in one aspect of driving are not typically considered as part of autonomy.
- ABS, ESC, blind spot monitoring (etc, etc) have been introduced piece-wise over the years, primarily by large, established car companies (and their suppliers.) The introductions have sometimes been well tested and accepted with little ado, other times there have been serious problems, recalls, or worse. The implementation of each discrete system is typically a "black box" of some sort that isn't particularly well integrated into the rest of the car systems (although sensor data may be shared between the different systems.) See extra note below.
- Autonomy, as pushed with much hype by big tech companies, Tesla and VCs, seems to have been the typical arrogant, "We're Silicon Valley, we'll do it our way," and this fiasco is (finally!) showing signs of less hype and more realistic engineering. The classic example is the Uber that killed a pedestrian--that dev car (Volvo, iirc) had some of the original systems turned off, including radar-AEB that might have saved the victim.
Integration -- here's a recent video from Toyota's research labs which discusses coordinating the different discrete systems, note that "MF" in this case is "Mobility Forun", a series of lectures hosted at MIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKGl18zBFt8&list=PL2YKNGvzfdh2sPZF39KH957FZ59H4oMH9&index=5 [youtube.com] This Toyota lab is working on sort of a "supervisor" that can very quickly decide which of the systems and what kind of "intervention" is appropriate in a given situation.
Another way to look at this might be "building autonomy from the bottom up", rather than the tech bros "top down" approach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @08:58PM
Crap, thought I proofed it
"Mobility Forun" --> "Mobility Forum"
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DannyB on Monday January 09, @09:22PM (3 children)
This is exactly why these systems that drive your car need to be in the cloud rather than in the vehicle.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday January 09, @10:20PM
in large amounts of the world, connectivity is via satellite only. Latency then becomes a massive problem with the thousands of inputs and response messages...
Also, unless you are a manager/CXO, "the cloud" is never the answer; sometimes a convenient way of building something, but outsourcing key infrastructure (or worse, leasing, rather than buying) only saves money for one or two quarters.
Risk of outsourced data has only been hand-waved by large tech companies - barely reduced (if at all), and certainly not removed.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @10:55PM
FTFY
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday January 10, @05:21PM
Some modder got wooshed. However, I have an even better suggestion. There should be an SD card with all the recordings that would be ejected on impact. As high, in fact, as to reach the clouds, so that it would be in a cloud without being in the cloud. Upon the forensic team arriving the card would have tumbled down falling right into the SD slot of the corresponding laptop.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Monday January 09, @06:47PM (10 children)
my personal experience; ymmv.
I'm over 50 and I started driving at 16 (learning) and 17 (license). I dont live in the city and so cars are what I use to commute to work and get around, with.
just 3 or 4 years ago, I was in a collision and sadly, I hit the car in front of me when she (we exchanged info, so I know it was a she) stopped short on a crowded highway.
I was very out of practice in terms of all the things you COULD do to avoid hitting. in my 30+ years of driving, I dont think I ever had a collision where I hit someone. I have a near perfect record. but I just didn't think in 2 dimensions, I was so locked into thinking that abs brakes are all I need and just slam on the brakes and let the cpu pulse it and do its stuff. looking back, that was completely insufficient and turns out I could have swerved left and pulled off the road into the median but NOT have hit the car in front of me.
what I'm saying is that it had been decades since I was 'trained' (in driving school, in high school) where all these tricks are recent in your mind. and I had not had any refreshers and so whatever evasive concepts we learned back then, if I'm not using it or practicing it (under stress) it just goes away. you fail to remember you had the option to swerve.
I'd like to see driving tests get reinstated, as in physical behind the wheel or simulators. people need to brush up when its been a long time since their learned all the concepts. what you use everyday is not all the tricks you need. I never need to swerve, but that one time in decades, I did need to, and didn't.
if we cant keep people trained and up to date (we cant), then having the car be smarter is really the only solution. if mine had smart swerve, there would have been no accident that day. computers never need refreshers on the tricks. people do.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday January 09, @07:38PM
I agree, and I see these innovations as a solid win for safety and just plain saving lives. No solution is perfect, but I expect this will yield a net positive in lives saved in the real world.
riding a motorcycle for a year in urban traffic is the best driving instructor. spending some time on a scooter or motorcycle is common all over the world, not in USA tho. It really shows in the urban driving.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @07:55PM
There are advanced driver training classes all over the USA (assuming similar in Europe and elsewhere?) These are often combined with race car driving schools but operate on a large paved area (parking lot) instead of the race track. I've been to several (in my case work related) and they are all excellent.
The maneuver that would have avoided your accident is normally part of the curriculum: Typically the instructors build up to it--first getting used to the full power of the brakes (you seem to have that part down), then practice rapid lane changes (both directions, without spinning out at high speeds!), finally putting the two together. The sequence may start with initial hard braking, then off the brakes (or stay on...with ABS) while aggressively moving over a lane, then back on the brakes.
The first "skid school" (the old name) that I attended was run by Liberty Mutual Insurance and was primarily for their fleet drivers (trucks, police, fire, etc) but they took me too. That was late 1970s, they had cars with an extra brake pedal for the instructor, which operated only on the rear wheels--for more fun the instructors could induce a skid...
Here's a sample, https://www.skipbarber.com/courses/driving-academy/ [skipbarber.com] The Skip Barber school has been around for a long time and the one I attended was excellent. I have no connection with Skip Barber, just a satisfied customer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday January 09, @09:09PM (3 children)
I'm about your age and it's also been decades since I've had a very serious panic stop. In the days when we drove large American sedans from the 70s. There was no anti-lock and I learned about something called "cadence braking". It's been a long time since I've looked in to that because anti-lock has either taken it away or made it a lot harder to pull off. Once my Dad was in the car with me when I had just a few years of driving experience. I had to panic stop, did the cadence braking and literally took his breath away from the force of the seat belt tightening up on him and pulling him back. There was no collision, because I stopped with plenty of room to spare. I've heard some people say you can even damage your suspension and/or belt-bruise your passengers with a well done cadence brake on dry pavement with bald tires (don't let your tires go bald, I'm just saying it can happen).
There have been a few times when I've come close to a panic stop with anti-lock and it's always unnerving because I feel like I've lost braking power, which I have--that's the point; to give you less braking but more control. Thing is, I wasn't trained to swerve as an impulse and I don't think I'd want to re-train that way because swerving brings on very serious problems of its own. If a deer jumps out in front of me, I'm braking hard and taking come what may. Last time that happened, a truck was coming the opposite way. Me and the truck driver shared several milliseconds of awestruck panic as the stupid critter bounded across the highway. A swerve would have put me in to a ditch and flipped me, or made me a hood ornament on that truck.
Anyway, I don't want a swerve, and I definitely don't want a smart one. More crap to break, more dollars to fix, and no record yet to tell if it's really good practice. If it's going to take the wheel when you initiate some panic, it'd better be full self-driving in the first place because it needs to be smart enough not to swerve you in to worse problems. Boom! Possibly off a cliff if it's not FSD, and FSD is a long way away.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @09:24PM (2 children)
> it's also been decades since I've had a very serious panic stop.
I strongly recommend practice, even if just by yourself on an empty parking lot. I do this every fall after the first snow, so I feel like I'm tuned up for driving on slippery surfaces.
For an even better result, see the earlier post about advanced driver training.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday January 09, @10:05PM
That's not a bad idea, and I know of some empty lots around here. Hopefully the cops and/or some busy-body doesn't call it in though. This is California. They might think I'm practicing for "side shows". Skid school costs money that's just not in the budget--or even available here at all since this is a rural county. Maybe, maybe, just a few discreet stops in said parking lot might be OK though.
I'm probably paranoid about the police and the neighbors though. So much sketchy stuff happens and people get away with it; but you just know it'd be my luck to get busted for doing something that's actually not dangerous.
You have to be quite flagrant to get caught. We had a young man around here doing wheelies on his motorcycle down the highway. I saw him twice, so he must have been doing it quite often. Squid style--helmet but not much other gear. Destined to be road pizza. The cops did get him though, and I was lucky enough to see it (that was the 2nd time I saw). They sent him home, and it turned out to be just a few blocks from here--I never knew we had a young idiot badass on our hands, LOL.
I do hope that was a lesson he took to heart.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Monday January 09, @11:11PM
thing is - you dont realize you are out of practice and decades of non-incidents reinforce that feeling.
the longer you go between trainings or refreshers, the more you forget things.
by having the computer at least try to steer you away, its never going to have a 'lesson fade' event like humans do.
(back in the dot com days, some companies in the bay area took their groups out to driving schools; real proper ones on tracks, as rewards. I've asked for that time and time again but no one wants to take my group out, no matter what company I'm in, big small or otherwise. 'budget is not there' and so those cool perks of 20 years ago seem long gone.)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 09, @11:23PM (1 child)
>turns out I could have swerved left and pulled off the road into the median but NOT have hit the car in front of me.
If you had a LOT of clear space in that direction, yes you could have done that.
I got my learner's permit at 15 and a half, full license on my 16th birthday, and 2 years later I'm hanging my (7 year old) 1980 Honda Civic on a long (blind) sweeper corner at 50mph. It's a route I regularly drove around the University and I knew that the limits of traction were right around 48-49 mph when my tires were new because I had skidded there several times in the not too recent past, but since the front tires were getting worn down a bit, not quite out of tread but much less than when new, I decided to push for that extra 1.5mph and see how it would handle at the limit with less tread squirm... it was tracking nicely on the inside of the curve, just a hint of tire squeal... and around that blind corner were not one, but two garbage trucks side by side blocking all the asphalt. There was a wide grass shoulder, on the inside of the corner where I hadn't a chance in hell of getting to while cornering at the limit... and for bonus points, there were often joggers in that grass... I applied the brakes firmly but not too firmly and began to slow, also began to slide to the outside of the asphalt on the corner what with being at the limits of traction and all... continued slowing down through 45... 40... garbage trucks getting uncomfortably close now, garbage men standing between me and the trucks are staring at me with big wide open eyes... can't see much about what's on the outside of the corner past the garbage trucks, but there's lots of landscaping, mailboxes, garbage cans, maybe more garbage men over there.... seems like if I continue on the brakes I'm going to slam into the front of the outside garbage truck somewhere between 25 and 30mph, all the garbage men I see between me and the truck clearly are seeing me, they'll probably jump out of the way in time... so around 35-40 mph I let off the brakes, tighten my line to the inside of the curve, into the grass, bump over a huge elevated metal manhole cover, ah now I can see clearly: no joggers here this morning... not much directional control in the grass... can't really slow down, either, probably best to stay off the brakes and not leave huge ruts... past the garbage trucks now, doing just a bit over 30mph (in a 30mph zone - on the asphalt - no posted speed limits for the grass....) bump back onto the asphalt, and continue driving along as if my heart isn't pounding 185bpm in my chest with a massive adrenaline surge, car seems none the worse for wear - didn't even screw up the alignment on that manhole cover... pay no attention to the sweaty pale man in the white car, nothing to see here, move along... I doubt they were quick enough to get my plate number...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @02:32AM
> on a long (blind) sweeper corner at 50mph.
Where I come from, most people don't like to tell the world what an idiot they used to be...and doing anything near the limit near a blind corner, is really dumb. Thanks for outing yourself.
I've spent a fair bit of time on the limit on empty public roads, with no blind corners, but a lot more on closed test tracks. If you don't have test track access, a nice way to explore the limit is on a big empty traffic circle. There's one not too far away on the access road to a beach (on a big lake). Late fall through early spring that circle and the surrounding roads are completely empty. One car (a little wagon) was very near neutral steer, +/- 2 psi tire pressures could change it from understeer to oversteer, fun to explore that on that circle.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday January 10, @01:14AM (1 child)
Unless your situational awareness was in peak shape at the moment of the incident -- and one would argue that it wasn't or you wouldn't have been riding her too close to stop in time in the first place, then a swerve could have taken a bad situation and made it far worse. Crumple zones, airbags, ABS brakes, everything is optimized for that collision with the vehicle in front of you - sure the car might take some damage but you should be ok.
Emergency swerving though? You probably don't have time to make a proper mirror and shoulder check, what if you sideswipe someone. Swerve left into oncoming traffic? Swerve right into someone in your blind spot, or a soft gravel shoulder, clip a cyclist, or potentially spin out and flip or have an off angle impact with someone that's far more likely to injure you or others. In the driver education courses I took we were actively told not to 'emergency swerve' for wildlife or even to avoid a 'fender bender', because the risks of swerving were so great.
Lastly, in a lot of cases swerving to avoid an accident that isn't your fault (e.g. someone making an illegal turn for example) can swap a simple and clear liability situation where they cause an accident and you are not at fault, to a much uglier situation, where you caused an accident by swerving, even if its a lessor accident than the one you would have had, especially if you manage to avoid them entirely and they just drive off. Now that parked car you sideswiped, or that no parking sign you knocked over to avoid them, and all the damage to your vehicle and others is 100% on you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @02:53AM
> Unless your situational awareness was in peak shape at the moment of the incident
It seems that my situational awareness was good enough. Before all this happened I knew that there was no one around me.
Winter on a clear major US state 2-lane road, posted 55 mph, going about 60 (~100 kph) through a rural area. From a side road a very slow moving car starts to cross (ignoring their stop sign) from left to right in front of me. They must have not looked right (toward me) at all, they just kept on coming. I moved to the right about a lane-width using the shoulder and then the width of the intersection. Must have crossed in front of their front bumper by a few feet. If I hadn't "changed lanes" to the right I would have t-boned them in their right door. Then, trying to complete my "double lane change" there must have been a patch of ice at the far side of the intersection and I spun a full 360. Wound up on the left side of the main road but quickly got back into my right lane. In the mirror I could just see that car clearing the intersection and headed along their same path.
My passenger and I compared notes, everything agreed except we had different memories of the color of that car...
I'm glad I had practice making double lane changes and wasn't afraid to use that skill.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Monday January 09, @08:36PM (6 children)
I've had self steering turn me into the point of a barricade. On a gentle curve on the highway at night, the steering mistook the left hand white stripe of the exit for the right hand white stripe of the freeway and mistook the right white stripe of the highway for the left stripe. That path is straight into the divider barricade at the exit.
When I corrected steering, the car actually fought me for control. Terrifying. I could have hit a concrete point at highway speeds.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09, @09:00PM (2 children)
Please, tell us what car (make/model/year) this was?
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Tuesday January 10, @11:40AM (1 child)
2021 Explorer. I've since applied a firmware update that greatly improved shifting and the auto-follow cruise control, but I'm leaving the steering feature disabled. I do. not. trust. the. fuckers. that. released. it. (not with that flaw... I'm not interested in beta testing this version with my life, thankyouverymuch)
To be clear, the car wasn't in it's auto steer mode. This was the 'collision avoidance' turning on to steer me into a barricade without warning while driving home at night.
I can only imagine if I were only normally alert (reading a traffic sign, check mirrors or something), it were raining, I was on a nearby 70mph freeway vs the 55mph area where this happened...
To be clear, not in self steer mode, the car took the wheel and turned into the barricade as I was exiting; when I corrected the car again took the wheel more forcefully and got us to the edge of the lane as I wrestled with it trying to figure out how hard I needed to counter steer. (if it let go suddenly - which it did - and I were simply pulling the wheel hard the other way we'd have just headed for the barrier on the other side - so I braced instead)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @06:22PM
> .so I braced instead
Bravo!! Good for you and thanks for reporting this.
You've identified another flaw that needs to get back to the developers (I don't know how, but if I work that out I'll pass along). To wit: When the system decides to let the human have control back, it should never be abrupt, but instead some kind of ramp back to zero-applied torque.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Unixnut on Tuesday January 10, @11:17AM (2 children)
Pray tell, was this a Toyota by any chance?
My newest car is from 2006, and they get older from there on. None of my cars have anything more than ABS and traction control (some don't even have those), but for my partners birthday we went on a holiday, and rented out a nearly new 2021 Toyota Hybrid estate (had less than 20k on the clock).
First we found the self steering quite cool, but on the motorway, we experienced exactly what you say. At 70mph the car would get confused on gentle curves and slip/exit roads, and would drive straight towards the divider barrier. Problem is the self steering works fine, you relax and not pay much attention to the road, and then notice you are heading for solid concrete. You have to suddenly react, jerk the car back into the road, and actually fight the steering to do so.
First time it happened was terrifying, but perhaps it was a one off and I give the tech a chance. Second time was yet another shock, and third time I realised that this was just a danger to myself, my passengers and the general public, and I turned it off and just drove the car myself completely.
Having to force a rapid change of direction at 70mph is very uncomfortable, especially in anything other than a sports car, the first time I had to do that the car ended up sliding sideways a bit.
And in my case, it was not at night. It happened three times during a single road trip, across a few motorways, during the day, with clear blue skies, decent light and easily visible road markings.
Second feature was the "self parking". You align the car up to a spot, put the car in reverse, take your hands off the wheel and just operate the brake to control how fast the car parks. It does the rest. Again, fun in a show-off gimmick kind of way the first few times, but by the third time, I found it faster to parallel park the car myself, than to make sure it is properly aligned that the computer can park it on the first go.
Indeed by the 5th day of the rental, I found almost all the gadgetry annoying and nothing more than a distraction, and wished I could get rid of it all, especially the touch screen. I was happy to be back with my own cars.
The problem with these advanced driver aids is that they are good enough to make someone complacent, but not good enough to replace the driver completely. So if you use the self steering on the motorway, you can't relax and be a passenger, but have to be just as attentive as if you are driving directly.
Problem is, the only thing more boring than driving on a motorway, is having to concentrate as if you are driving, but not actually doing anything. Staring out of the windscreen, hands fully on the wheel prepared to intervene at a moments notice, all while double checking what the computer is doing is boring as hell, it is more interesting and engaging to just drive the car yourself at that point, which is what I did.
Funny thing is, during my general motorway travels, I would occasionally see modern cars look like they are about to turn off into the exit, only to violently be jerked back onto the motorway. I also saw accidents where cars slammed straight into the exit point barricades. I always attributed this to general "idiots at the wheel", and lamented the reduction in driving competence, but after the rental car, I realised that perhaps these were people who trusted too much in the tech, or got too complacent, and in some cases could not correct the computer's error fast enough to avoid a collision.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Tuesday January 10, @11:50AM
For me this was a 2021 Explorer. It wasn't supposed to be steering. This was exactly the accident avoidance feature type of thing being talked about.
I've found the steering to kinda work on a clean, straight freeway during the day from a middle lane with fresh stripe. Nowhere else and it'll 'bing' disconnected an you're drifting without warning. Meanwhile, if it's on and your traveling and drive well - then it'll disconnect 'because you let go of the wheel'. You literally have to shake the wheel every so often. Meanwhile, the thing drifts back and forth in the lane... I wonder how many folks have been charged with DUI because their car was driving.
There are two features I do like. If set on the furthest distance mode, the auto-follow in cruise control is nice especially in slower traffic.
I've got injured ankles. The auto-break at a light feature surprised me. I love it. As soon as I've stopped a light comes on and I can release the brake. I'm hurting far less after a drive - love that feature. (prior car - was using hand brake or park at every light)
Gave it a try and it's not so bad feature: The 'turn car off at idle' thing - after the firmware update the car restarts faster and for more events. In practice, with some small adjustments it doesn't get it my way so I left that on. (adjustments - release brake 1 sec before I want to start - engine starts on brake release - I've internalized the delay so now the engine is on just as I hit the gas every time, I don't notice anymore)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @06:42PM
> The problem with these advanced driver aids is that they are good enough to make someone complacent, but not good enough to replace the driver completely.
Yes, exactly this. In some auto engineering (private) forums I've posted about banning SAE Level 3 of autonomy -- where the car mostly drives itself, but somehow the human is meant to stay alert and situation-aware to intervene on short notice (or instantly) when needed. This just can't work.
Level 4 could be OK, if the car was "smart" enough to know well in advance that a hand-off to the human was needed. If the car announced, "In one minute we will be in an area where you (human) will have to take control," I could probably accept that.
ps. Our newest car is 2014, it does have ESC (stability control) which will kick in occasionally on snow or other slippery surfaces. Often my steering correction is faster than the system correction with asymmetric braking, so there might be a moment of confusion, but it's never been serious. Mostly it just takes the fun out of sliding around on parking lots--start a practice skid and the car yanks itself back.
pps. I'm going to start watching for damaged barriers at exit/entrance ramps. I think you may be correct that this is getting more common and it may be some system acting up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 10, @06:04AM (7 children)
OK, everybody thinks they are a good driver. That said, I really detest ABS. It only kicks in when the road surface is dicey - snow, ice, gravel - and it *interferes* with what I, the driver, am trying to do in those circumstances. Bloody dangerous.
I reckon these other systems will be the same...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Tuesday January 10, @11:39AM (5 children)
Well, ABS is supposed to interfere. A lot of people mistakenly believe ABS is supposed to improve braking. This is not its primary purpose (although it helps with untrained people who just slam the on the brakes in a panic, lock up the wheels and skid into things). Its primarily purpose to to allow the car to be steered while braking, usually with the downside of longer braking distances.
A car with locked up wheels can't be steered, so you have to remember to either not lock up the wheels (by tempering the force you place on the brake pedal), or using cadence braking.
ABS does cadence braking for the driver. This interferes with drivers who are trained how to handle the vehicle and know that in some cases cadence braking is not the correct thing to do. However the ABS can't tell, it works every time it detects wheel slippage.
It interferes and irritates the people who know how to brake properly. The issue is that I would say less than 20% of drivers fall into that category. So it benefits the 80%+ who have no clue. This is very much the case of a law/regulation for an aid that benefits the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also proper handling in low grip conditions, and things like cadence braking, are not even taught anymore (outside of places like Finland, who have really high standards to get a drivers licence), so at this point in time, it would be more dangerous to provide cars without aids like traction control and ABS.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 10, @02:37PM (1 child)
So what you're saying is that ABS likely made the driver hit me, when I was stopped at a stop sign on a short+steep hill, while it was raining cats and dogs one night. They might could have swerved into the other lane to miss me, but uh I wouldn't have swerved in those conditions.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday January 10, @07:03PM
ABS always increases the distance versus threshold braking, but the difference have gotten extremely small to the point of being practically non-existent with well implemented systems. The maximum braking happens right before they brakes lock, do you can get closer and changed in surface are less likely to cause s loss if traction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @06:53PM (2 children)
> This is very much the case of a law/regulation for an aid that benefits the majority at the expense of the minority.
Around here, I've heard that some people simply pull the ABS fuse when they know they will be driving in conditions (snow, etc) where they are smarter than the ABS.
It's worth practicing with the ABS system on any car you drive because (as noted well up-thread) these systems are tuned with 500-1000 parameters and are far from "optimum" for most conditions. Some are much better than others, a lot may depend on the team of engineers and techs that did the tuning. Our first car with ABS (late 1990s, Chrysler) was completely hopeless on deep slush (from salt-melted ice), it pulsed its way completely across an intersection at roughly 10 mph, barely slowing at all.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 11, @04:39PM (1 child)
Alas the days of "Pulling out the ABS fuse" to disable ABS are long gone. On my 1997 car, the ABS is fully self contained with its own ECU, and pulling the fuse disables it. On my 2006 model (already considered an "old" car), the ABS is handled by the main ECU, with no way of disabling it on its own. You pull the main ECU fuse the car won't run at all.
So you are stuck with it, no matter whether it is good or not. Traction control is going the same way, I think the EU mandated that cars no longer can have a button to turn off traction control, so new cars have removed that option as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @03:13AM
> ..So you are stuck with it...
Interesting.
My 2009 Toyota has some kind of intermittent fault, if I let it sit for about 3-4 days without running, four different yellow warning lights turn on, these include ABS and ESC. When I connect my cheap OBD II reader it does not show any error codes. When the lights are on, the ABS and ESC are disabled, the car runs normally otherwise (I'm used to testing ABS/ESC on snow/ice). After I drive for 20-30 miles, the lights go off again and every thing is normal. This has been a recurring problem, repeated more than a dozen times over the last 5 years.
So, it seems that there is some possibility for disabling ABS, but I have no clue where the problems is. First thing I did was unplug/re-plug all the connectors I could find around the computer and also clean up all the ground connections around the battery. None of that made any difference. The car isn't really worth an expensive trip to the dealer to solve the problem, so I just keep using it...
I have to make sure the lights are off (by doing some driving) before I take the car in for the annual state inspection (won't pass with these warning lights on).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10, @07:04PM
> I really detest ABS. It only kicks in when the road surface is dicey - snow, ice, gravel
I don't always like ABS, but your statement is not true. I suggest that you get to a parking lot (dry, reasonably smooth) and explore the limits of braking starting at 20 or 30 mph. The ABS will also work on hard, dry roads, it's just that you haven't braked hard enough. Keep repeating with higher pedal force until you feel the pedal pulsing and/or hear the noise of the ABS pump.
Once you acclimate to really hard braking, then the next step is to practice steering at the same time. If the ABS is working correctly you should be able to make a lane change while hard on the brake pedal.
Don't take a passenger, it's very hard to explain to people just how hard they will be thrown forward by true hard braking. I've even tried it with a countdown (3, 2, 1, NOW) discussed in advance, and they are still upset after the event.