

Cars That Avoid Crashes by Talking to Each Other - sew
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/06/08/us/politics/ap-us-talking-cars.html?_r=1&hp

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philip1209
My parents spent the better part of the last year contracting on this project.
They traveled with car company engineers, DOT people, and test cars equipped
with the system around the country to various race tracks to test the system
with normal drivers.

On the race tracks they would put normal people in these V2V-equipped cars
with (I believe) a professional driver/racer riding shotgun. Then, they would
run people through scenarios that would set off the system - i.e. they would
send two cars barreling towards a t-bone collision, and the testers would be
instructed to not stop until the buzzer/light went off - at which point they
were to slam on the brakes as hard as they could. My dad said that this test
was the scariest and he chickened out while in the driver's seat. The system
is great for blind corners where you cannot see the oncoming car, but on an
open race track it is scary to see the other car on a collision course with
you.

After the race track test, my parents would debrief and interview the
participants.

Here are some scenarios I remember them testing:

* The peek-a-boo: Three cars are driving down the road. The first car slams on the brakes. The middle car veers to avoid it. You are in the third car and suddenly there is a stopped car that you are barreling towards. The system would have alerted you as soon as the first car panic-braked.

* Oncoming car - you are on a country road, about to pass a car. You start to pull into the oncoming lane to overtake the car, but the system senses an oncoming car that you did not see and sends an alert to you.

Also, I recall a problem with testers who were former policemen. Apparently
they are taught to drive with two feet - one on the brake and one on the gas,
for quickest reaction time. I think this fooled with the system because the
alert was disabled as soon as you put your foot on the brake, and having a
foot on the brake at all times caused problems.

One final tidbit: If you are ever looking to rent a race track in the USA,
apparently the Disney/Richard Petty track has the best catering for the least
money, compared to all the other tracks!

~~~
gdubs
Regarding the two-foot driving police: I thought the purpose of using one foot
to brake and accelerate was all about removing the mental process that occurs
when having to choose which foot to use. I was always taught that removing
that decision was the reason for using one foot. The point of heel-toe
pedaling is that your foot can reach both pedals simply by pivoting, which
theoretically makes both pedals equally quick to access. I learned on stick,
which clearly dictates that style. But, I'd be interested in hearing what
others think.

Regarding the stories from your parents: pretty cool info!

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datagramm
Warnings, yes please. Allowing my brakes to be controlled wirelessly by anyone
clever enough to spoof the right data, no thank you!

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derwildemomo
For the curious, there is a system built-in to every modern aircraft called
TCAS (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sys...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system)
), Traffic Collision Avoidance System, that does something similar for
airplanes.

~~~
artmageddon
TCAS is definitely useful but it's not be-all end-all in collision avoidance,
and unfortunately I think that translates well to automobiles as well. There's
always the possibility of failure with the devices or perhaps sending
erroneous(perhaps malicious) data that could screw with the system in other
people's cares.

That said, I do like seeing these kinds of innovations!

~~~
derwildemomo
Yes, a very tragic example that happened quite close to where I live was a mid
air collision between a freighter and a regular airliner (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-
air_co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-
air_collision) ), with 71 fatalities.

------
loppette
Combine this approach with Google's driverless cars and allow pedestrians to
participate via their cellphones and the future looks brighter, safer and
hopefully quieter

------
culturestate
I worry about the potential for reliance on this system - 30 years from now
(the time the article stated it would take for mass adoption), will we have
head-on collissions around corners because one of the cars was malfunctioning
and neither driver bothered to look "because the computer said it was OK?"

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> I worry about the potential for reliance on this system

People also worried that drivers using ABS would be less competent than
drivers not using ABS. Before that, we worried that drivers wearing seat belts
would be less careful than drivers not wearing seat belts.

Risk homeostasis is a real problem (witness the number of SUVs lining the
highway ditch during a snowstorm) but the sheer benefits to engineering-for-
safety more than offset the risk of encouraging cavalier behaviour.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Re. ABS, one study seemed to indicate that when drivers have ABS they tend to
adjust their risk taking upward

"Among a total of 747 accidents incurred by the company's taxis during that
period, the involvement rate of the ABS vehicles was not lower, but slightly
higher, although not significantly so in a statistical sense. These vehicles
were somewhat under-represented in the sub-category of accidents in which the
cab driver was judged to be culpable, but clearly over-represented in
accidents in which the driver was not at fault. Accident severity was
independent of the presence or absence of ABS."

<http://psyc.queensu.ca/target/chapter07.html>

------
CurtHagenlocher
Can you really trust what other cars are telling yours? This sounds like an
interesting security problem.

------
maeon3
In Orlando FL, (one of the car-crash capitals of the world), the devices would
be issuing warnings every 15 minutes (causing warning fatigue). I have to deal
with these situations:

1\. I am cruising on a road 45 mph. A perpendicular street intersecting the
road has a stop sign. They are accelerating toward their stop sign. If they
don't brake, there will be a collision. I often brake a little and prepare to
brake hard if they don't brake at the last possible millisecond. A collision
system would warn me in that situation.

2\. People behind you accelerate up to you to 5 feet behind your bumper to
"make a statement" that they didn't approve you pulling in front of them.
Ethics aside, the system would think the person behind is out of control,
causing a warning.

3\. On the interstate going 75mph, cars pull in front of you with about 5 feet
to spare. Cars coming into near contact with each other. A crash detection
system would issue a warning.

So it means these crash detection systems need a "Tolerance" dial, that the
idiot drivers are going to set as close to zero as possible because of warning
fatigue. Also, this system will embolden the idiot drivers to drive even more
dangerously. A system like this must account for warning fatigue in places
where people drive like in Grand Theft Auto and would be confused if a system
told them that what they are doing is dangerous.

~~~
sneak
> A system like this must account for warning fatigue in places where people
> drive like in Grand Theft Auto and would be confused if a system told them
> that what they are doing is dangerous.

No, it doesn't. In that case, people will just disable it or ignore the
warnings, and continue their existing unsafe practices. People who drive like
that aren't going to improve because of a box beeping at them.

I don't think that widespread reckless driving is a problem that can be solved
with technology, short of full automation (driverless cars).

I'm not saying this isn't useful - but for those drivers, feedback that what
they're doing is dangerous isn't going to change their behavior. Deploy it
anyway, for the rest of us. It at least won't make reckless drivers any worse.

~~~
slug
it would be interesting to have those warnings go directly to the car black
box, even when disabled, it might help in case of collision. Or have it send
the "log" every month to the DMV and remove points from the driver's license,
and revoke it when it reaches zero, but this sounds too Orwellian to many
people.

~~~
vyrotek
There's a device called Snapshot from Progressive that seems to do this. In
fact, they set your car insurance rates based on the logs. You plug it in
right under your dash.

~~~
excuse-me
The problem is that it's based on YOUR sudden braking

So some idiot cuts you up and you brake to give them a safety zone - you are
penalized, if you blindly drive at top speed causing total chaos the box gives
you a gold star

------
adventureful
Fascinating to consider that within a few decades that annual 32,000 fatality
rate could be reduced by some radical amount (95%?) with software. That's an
incredible amount of lives waiting to be saved by some good programming; 300k
per decade is a staggering number of people.

I'm not aware of too many other private sector problems that you can go to
work on that can have such an impact (with programming), outside of
biotechnology perhaps.

~~~
wazoox
In several European countries, fatality rate was reduced by a dramatic amount
by being stricter on speed limits, alcohol, reckless driving, etc and building
(much) better cars. See the statistics:

[http://www.securite-
routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statint...](http://www.securite-
routiere.org/Fiches/statistiques/statinter.htm)

In fact, USA are about the only developed country which didn't make any
significant progress in the past 20 years.

~~~
Retric
_only developed country_ Sorry, but the numbers don't support your argument.

Grèce 1502 1511 1699 1737 1790 1995 2008 2076 1993 2068 2000 2182 2116 2037
1880 1654 1605 1619 1658

USA 46390 47087 45582 44599 44508 39250 40150 40716 41817 42065 42013 41501
41717 41945 42116 42815 42884 42636 43443

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...](http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:GRC&dl=en&hl=en&q=population+greece)

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&#...</a><p>So,
both countries has reasonable population growth and the rate of fatalities
dropped by a similar amount relative to their populations. What's different is
the absolute number peaked in Grece in 1990's and dipped in the US in the
1990's.

~~~
Wilya
To expand on that:

The second table on wazoox's link give the number of fatalities scaled to the
population (in death per million) for European countries. It doesn't include
the USA for some reason, but you can estimate it from Retric's info.

    
    
      - 1990: 186.3
      - 2005: 147.2
    

So, improvement there has been.

~~~
wazoox
It still is much worse than most of Europe except Greece which just qualified
in the last decade as a developed country for road infrastructure.

From my personal experience, the average American driver seems to have a
frighteningly low driving ability coupled with a surprising self-confidence;
and I've seen more road rage in 6 weeks in the US than in 40 years in Europe
(apparently tendency to reckless driving is proportional to distance from the
Ocean, too; Californians seem reasonable enough). There are probably lots of
progress to be made in teaching and punishing there.

