
Six cars aced new pedestrian detection tests - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/six-cars-that-could-prevent-you-from-hitting-a-pedestrian/
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bryanlarsen
Virtually eliminating pedestrian fatalities could be quite simple, but we
don't do it because it would inconvenience people: Set a 30 km/h (18 mph)
speed limit everywhere but controlled-access freeways, and enforce it
strictly. At 30km/h a car-pedestrian collision is almost always non-fatal[1],
and at that speed cars can stop almost instantaneously.

1:
[https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...](https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf)

~~~
dragontamer
That means halving the bandwidth of all inner-city roads (that are
traditionally at 35mph+)

If a road used to carry 1000-cars per hour, it will only carry 500-cars per
hour if you drop the speed limit from 35 -> 18\. Effectively doubling the
length of time for congestion.

You can get around this by building twice as many roads I guess, but cities
don't really have any more room.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If there are 2 seconds of distance between cars at 36mph and 2 seconds of
distance between cars at 18mph then the road has exactly the same capacity at
both speeds.

Also, the constraint on street capacity is intersections in the vast majority
of cases. Until you remove intersections nothing else really else matters.

~~~
dragontamer
I don't think people are "timing" their cars, and are instead driving at "car-
lengths" worth of distance between the person in front of them

If you instead assume 1-car lengths worth of distance at both 36mph and 18mph,
the road capacity shrinks dramatically between the two speeds.

~~~
carlmr
If that is true, most congestion on my way to work is after an accident. Not
having that accident at 30kph is much more likely than not having it at twice
the speed, giving the same distance to react and brake.

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why-oh-why
I’m a fan of Tesla but when you see that their system is not a bit better than
the competition (they’re all failing in low light conditions), I don’t know
how they can claim autonomous driving “coming soon.” Especially after Uber’s
death you’d think that this specific condition would be given extremely high
priority.

~~~
raaaaraaaa2
They recognize much more objects on the road but major problem is to do not
cause a lot of false alarms. e.g. You don't really want to drive car which
decided that plastic bag on the highway is reason for emergency braking, on
the other hand is that really plastic bag or some drunk person who is sleeping
on the road...

I remember when Volvo introduced IntelliSafe technology few years ago that car
was totally "paranoid" and it was beeping all the time -> most of drivers
deactivated that system.

~~~
mellosouls
If it's confused between a plastic bag and a human, it _hasn 't_ recognised
it.

~~~
bryanlarsen
It didn't recognize a plastic bag as a human, it recognized a plastic bag as
an unknown object. A solid object the size of a plastic bag could cause a
major accident.

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jwr
> "in most cases avoided hitting the pedestrian"

I am not sure if this result merits the use of the word "aced" in the title.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I think it's fair to say that whether you hit the pedestrian is more or less
irrelevant to your score on a pedestrian _detection_ test.

~~~
coldtea
Well, it's not irrelevant to a " _timely_ pedestrian detection" test, which is
what actually matters in self-driving cars...

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djaychela
I think the interesting thing in that article is the stat that pedestrian
fatalities reached their lowest in 2009, and have been increasing since. Is it
really (as I've heard and read) that it's because people are on their phones
and walking out into the road? I've definitely seen people do this in front of
me, but I know that's merely anecdotal.

~~~
griffinheart
I remember reading an article on hn that the rise of SUV's and their design is
related to the increase of fatalities.

Like, compare a pedestrian collision where the car has a lower and more
aerodynamic front vs the wall that is a SUV's front.

~~~
benologist
SUVs are higher and hitting people in the head / chest -

[https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-
pedest...](https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedestrian-
dangers.html)

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raaaaraaaa2
Audi A4 and Subaru Outback aced 3 years ago in similar test (ADAC, Germany) :

[https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/tests/assistenzsysteme/fussg...](https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/tests/assistenzsysteme/fussgaengererkennung_2016/default.aspx?ComponentId=270750&SourcePageId=31956)

Audi A4 has single monochrome camera (+well tuned image recognition HW/SW) and
Eyesight system from Subaru has two cameras and it's already used for ~5
years.

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stunt
Basically none of them are good enough for a real world scenario in a busy
city. But they may save life on some scenarios which is good.

They can achieve a huge safety improvement by forcing speed limit. But somehow
car manufacturers don’t want to implement it.

~~~
donkeyd
> They can achieve a huge safety improvement by forcing speed limit. But
> somehow car manufacturers don’t want to implement it.

I've had multiple cars that show the current speed limit on the dash. Some
based on GPS, others based on visual recognition. None of them have been
correct 100% of the time. I wouldn't want my car to slow me down on a highway
because it misinterprets a sign or because their data isn't up-to-date, or
because the GPS is glitching and thinks I'm driving on a side road.

It's a really simple solution in theory, but in practice it doesn't seem
feasible yet.

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specialbat
How about a device that pedestrians could optionally carry that would
broadcast their presence to all vehicles

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pen2l
With the news about Uber and Tesla accidents, it’s been making me wonder: why
not equip these cars with one more sensor: an infrared camera. Combining
thermal information with extant information will be a great boon in making
intelligent decisions, no?

~~~
jcims
I 100% agree but I would bet the issue is unit cost for the hardware. Anything
with reasonable resolution is going to be in the four digit dollar range per
sensor.

~~~
darkerside
This seems totally reasonable for an actual damn autopilot

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jonplackett
Interesting that Tesla, with what I would have assumed to be a much more
sophisticated system didn’t do as well.

Anyone care to have a guess why?

~~~
davidgould
The pedestrian detection and automatic emergency braking systems are separate
from autopilot. They are always on, even if autopilot is not in use. As I
understand it, they are different code, more conventional and similar to the
systems in other cars, where autopilot is a grand research project/extended
beta. As with most things Tesla they are likely to improve over time with OTA
updates.

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cryptozeus
the Audi A4, BMW 3 series, Subaru Outback, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Nissan
Maxima, and Volvo S60.

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ryanlol
I have to turn the pedestrian detection off every time I drive past the local
school. Why? The kids figured out that it's really easy to make new cars
emergency brake by just pretending to walk onto the road.

People suck.

~~~
evancaine
people suck or kids will be kids?

~~~
ryanlol
Same thing I guess? It's humans sabotaging a safety feature intended to
protect them.

~~~
Tade0
Kids don't know any better yet.

That being said I would probably lose my temper as well when faced with such a
situation.

~~~
avar
When I'm dropping off my kids and other kids run in my way I usually just stop
to chat or play with them, but I'm doing this when walking or on a bicycle.

I guess if I wore a 2-ton suit of power armor I'd just be pissed off instead
:)

~~~
ryanlol
The main problem here is that the 2-ton suit of power armor doesn't really
care about what's behind it when it slams the brakes for a pedestrian, you
would probably be pretty upset if you were biking behind me when this happens.

I think it's a great thing that the car prioritizes pedestrian safety, but
it's very unfortunate that people would abuse this.

