
New cars can stay in their lane–but might not stop for parked cars - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/08/new-cars-can-stay-in-their-lane-but-might-not-stop-for-parked-cars/
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toss1
The user eperience reported in these tests is that it's substantially more
nerve wracking than just ordinary driving.

And now we are getting to the analog of the 'uncanny valley' for automobile
self-driving systems -- the area where the assistance is pretty good, but will
still kill you, thus making driving actually harder vs unassisted driving.

With these systems, it is harder to maintain required levels of vigilance
(humans just aren't wired for low-demand/high-vigilance in any type of task),
and instantly take over control successfully in critical situations.

The problems of detecting objects partly in the road and reacting
appropriately is hard. Not only the detection failures, but false positives. I
see this a lot in my Mazda CX-5; a car can be well out of lane on the outside
of a curve or side street, but I'll get the flashing & squawking BRAKE!!!
alarm - if this actually did automatic braking, I'd very likely get rear-ended
for hard braking in ordinary traffic for no good reason.

I'm hoping the mfgrs can get it sorted before it causes general public
rejection and a "Self-Driving Winter" like the AI Winters.

~~~
KMnO4
I think the "uncanny valley" is the best place we can be right now.

I drive a Toyota with adaptive radar cruise control, pre-collision braking,
etc. I don't trust it 100%. Countless times I'll be cruising at 100km/hr when
a 10km/hr traffic jam emerges. The car will wait until it's beyond my comfort
zone before starting to brake. It's my natural instinct to take control of the
vehicle and manually bring it to a stop before that happens. Now, I _know_
that if I don't manually take over, the car will still safely slow itself down
or stop, but it's not something I'm comfortable relying on.

Soon we'll have systems that people will rely on 100%. They'll work quite
well, at least 9999/10000 times. But every once in a while we'll have a
serious/fatal crash because both the system and the driver failed to react
[0].

But for now, I'm happy that everyone knows these systems only work 95% of the
time and it's their responsibility to be alert and ready to take over in
dangerous situations. As a last resort, the car can take over and forcibly
brake.

[0]: [https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-
driver-...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/ntsb-driver-in-
fatal-crash-was-playing-video-game/2241566/)

~~~
vaidhy
Both my Subaru and Honda have this along with a setting to choose comfortable
following distance. I have set it to not follow too closely (and yes, I do get
annoyed at people who use that gap to squeeze in my lane). OTOH, I get scared
when there is a sharp curve and the car tries to accelerate through it because
the car in front is not visible anymore.

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bassrattle
Seems strange to not include a test on Tesla vehicles, when they're the
highest profile brand with these features.

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nomel
"it uses a user-facing camera to ensure drivers are paying attention."

What's the point? Who's the target market for something like this?

