
Pedestrian detection systems don’t work well, AAA finds - lelf
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/aaa-finds-your-new-car-probably-wont-stop-you-from-hitting-pedestrians/
======
tom_
Once I'd had it pointed out to me that these articles go out of their way
_never_ to refer to people on foot as actual people, I just can't unsee it.

The only thing referred to as human here is the driver, and the only person
whose safety is discussed is the driver. Clearly at some point during the
composition process the writer got bored of using the term "pedestrian",
because it looks like he hit up the thesaurus, discovered the term "biped",
and decided that would be a good term to use. (But I bet you a fiver these
cars won't stop for kangaroos or ostriches other than as part of some generic
collision avoidance system.)

In the writer's defence, the sentence about the driver's safety is a mite
ambiguous - but it could have been more explicit, so I'm going to be
uncharitable here. And I do give him points for sneaking the term "run people
over" in the last sentence, because he could so easily have referred to it as
an accidental unavoidable pedestrian collision incident or something.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Kind of like how they go out of their way to refer to people operating cars as
drivers instead of actual people?

This kind of language is par for the course because these articles basically
use a less terse version of whatever language the study or official report
uses and those kinds of documents tend to shy away from things like "people
driving cars" and "people walking".

You are finding meaning where there is none.

~~~
hello_friendos
No, this is actually a real thing that happens when the news covers driver
pedestrian interactions.

[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/03/28/how-coverage-of-
pedes...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/03/28/how-coverage-of-pedestrian-
fatalities-dehumanizes-victims-and-absolves-drivers/)

~~~
tom_
Yes. Thank you for this post - this was exactly the sort of thing my comment
was referring to.

------
parsimo2010
Just because they aren't perfect doesn't mean they don't make your car safer.
The writing here almost sounds like the author would prefer not having it.
Having AEB on your car can't make it more dangerous unless the AEB system
accelerates into pedestrians. You have two options-

1\. A car that only brakes when you react

2\. A car that brakes when you react, and also sometimes when you don't.

The only way that AEB might conceivably make you less safe is if you pick up
bad driving habits because you expect the all-knowing robot to keep you safe.
This certainly applies to some people, but that's the person's fault, not the
manufacturers fault for rolling out systems that are better than nothing, even
if they aren't perfect.

Edit: I'll acknowledge that unexpected braking events might mean that AEB
equipped cars have a higher risk of being rear-ended, but this test was about
pedestrian safety. I'm including this edit just because I know someone will
bring it up thinking it proves that they are smart even if it wasn't the point
of the study.

~~~
pmoriarty
Abrupt, unexpected breaking could cause a rear-end collision, which could
conceivably kill quite a few more people than if the breaking had not
occurred. Imagine a car breaking hard directly in front of 16-wheel semi-
trailer. That could lead to a pile-up and quite a few people dead.

~~~
sitharus
A rear-end collision is caused by the following driver being too close. A car
in front could at any time, for any reason, use full breaking force and you
have to plan your following distance appropriately.

That said, a good way to get an angry rant from a truck driver is to talk
about cars cutting in front so they no longer have an appropriate stopping
distance.

~~~
Alex3917
> That said, a good way to get an angry rant from a truck driver is to talk
> about cars cutting in front so they no longer have an appropriate stopping
> distance.

If you do that then I'd imagine that the trucker is going to be more likely to
just steamroll you rather than risking jackknifing.

~~~
jschwartzi
If you hit a pedestrian because you don't want a 16-wheeler up your backside,
you're as much at fault for murdering that person as the trucker who murders
you by following too closely.

~~~
leetcrew
seriously? I get it, drivers in general are not cautious enough of pedestrians
and cyclists. but if a 16-wheeler is following so closely that the other
driver is at risk of getting rear-ended when they stop, the pedestrian is
probably toast anyway. the semi is just going to push the car straight through
the pedestrian. now instead of one person dead there's 10 tons of mass
careening through the street out of control, putting a lot more lives at risk.

------
surfmike
Actual studies show it decreases rear end collisions around 40% and pedestrian
insurance claims 35% [http://bestride.com/news/new-study-by-iihs-shows-
automatic-e...](http://bestride.com/news/new-study-by-iihs-shows-automatic-
emergency-braking-dramatically-reduces-accidents-with-injuries-in-gm-vehicles)

------
Alex3917
It's weird that they didn't include Subaru's eyesight system, given that it
generally performs much better than Tesla.

[https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-
featu...](https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-features-
automatic-braking-system-tested-explained/)

~~~
kbos87
Agree completely - Eyesight impresses me on a regular basis on the complexity
of scenarios it seems to be able to react to, both when it comes to collision
alerts / automatic breaking and when used for assisted cruise control.

I haven’t had any experiences with pedestrians at speed in front of the
vehicle, but the rear automatic breaking in my Subaru is very aware of /
sensitive to people walking behind it.

------
jaimex2
NCAP footage seems to show the opposite.

[https://youtu.be/cMiZa3HgRVE?t=125](https://youtu.be/cMiZa3HgRVE?t=125)

The systems work as described and don't claim to work in every scenario.

[https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_3_owners_man...](https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/model_3_owners_manual_north_america_en.pdf#page=93)

~~~
zaroth
I’ve seen that NCAP video and was really impressed by it at the time. It
doesn’t jive with the results in TFA at all - where it sounds like the Tesla
(and most of the other cars they tested) hit the dummy every time, and often
never even slowed down.

I wonder how to explain the disparity. Could the video you linked have been
taken with AutoPilot enabled maybe?

~~~
ummonk
From reading the description it seems like AAA used tests where there was a
bend in the road and / or the pedestrian was moving across so they weren't
actually in the path of the vehicle until a couple seconds before impact.
These systems are going to be conservative in classifying potential obstacles
as in need of emergency braking, as they should be - you don't for example
want your car slamming the brakes because it sees a pedestrian on the sidewalk
next to the lane you're driving on.

That said, it should be noted that the Honda Accord actually did quite well in
these tests.

------
kgwxd
Touchscreen dash; training people to expect their car will do stuff for them
(beep if something is behind, alert if someones in the next lane, break if
something is in the way, drive); cellphones (both drivers and pedestrians);
pedestrian crosswalks in the middle of busy roads with new signaling most
drivers have never been formally trained on; motorcycle lanes between car
lanes; bike lanes on the side of the road, sometimes second lane from the
side, sometimes on thruways. The list goes on and it's getting worse everyday.
Keep it simple stupid.

------
m0zg
FYI, worth reiterating, a deep learning vision system will not necessarily
recognize a dummy as a human. Particularly if it operates in both visible and
IR spectrum.

~~~
drabiega
That's a fair point which also occurred to me while reading the article. It
is, I think, indicative of a deeper issue with using ML in these sorts of
safety contexts. If the only way to really test your safety system is to
actually put people in danger your whole concept may be problematic.

~~~
m0zg
That's why Tesla's approach is pretty brilliant IMO. It's easy to collect
samples where there was hard braking and there was a real, actual human
visible in the path of the car while the car is under human control. No
dummies are needed, and AI was not in control of the car, so there's no ethics
issue either. Your Tesla will upload such samples automatically if Tesla deep
learning system wants them.

------
Robotbeat
So one good thing about the (perhaps unfair? perhaps disproportionate?) media
attention that failures of semi-autonomous systems get, over the long term I'm
pretty sure it helps focus the teams to make the tech better.

It's how aviation got insanely safe. Every passenger airplane crash is
scrutinized. The very distortion in thinking that makes people think flying in
airplanes is more dangerous than cars is what motivates every crash to be
scrutinized.

~~~
tremon
_It 's how aviation got insanely safe_

Not by media attention though; it took an authoritative, hard-line government
body to reach that level.

------
w_t_payne
I have former colleagues working on some of these systems, and they tell me
some pretty scary horror stories of the simple and obvious ways in which they
fail. Some of the stories that I have heard just blow my mind - and seem all-
too-reminiscent of the VW emissions-test defeat-device scandal.

------
vegardx
There's so much talk about false-positives in this thread, but I have yet to
experience that on my own car, even when people cut me off dangerously close.
Not once has AEB mistakenly been activated by the car.

~~~
hermitdev
My car doesn't have AEB, but it does have the front collision warning sensors.
I get plenty of false alarms, particularly with an S-turn (quick right then
left turn). On the final turn, there's a guard rail which sets off the FCW
about 25% of the time I drive through there.

------
unsignedchar
Last time this was discussed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21151117)

------
jimrandomh
Looking at the methodology here, I don't think this test is likely to be
representative. There are two important differences between a test dummy and a
pedestrian. First: pedestrians glow in infrared; and second, pedestrians move,
even if it's only shifting in place. Both of these features of pedestrians are
_extremely_ useful for a sensor that needs to find them, so I expect using a
still, cold dummy to make them perform worse than they would in the real
world.

~~~
05
> ..pedestrians glow in infrared; ..

> ..using a still, cold dummy..

The kind of infrared you're thinking of is probably not the kind the sensor
can detect. Only thermal imaging cameras can detect far infrared range - the
one that can help distinguish hot objects from cold ones. 'Normal' IR cameras
only capture near infrared - which tells you nothing about the temperature.

~~~
chronic71819
> The kind of infrared you're thinking of is probably not the kind the sensor
> can detect. Only thermal imaging cameras

Parent is talking about far-infrared (ie, thermal) sensors. Many car models
have high-resolution thermal sensors.

~~~
05
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_night_vision#Automo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_night_vision#Automobiles)

Tested cars unlikely to have the feature

------
davinic
What is the reasoning for the vehicle not also sounding its horn while it's
braking?

~~~
chickenpotpie
Probably because it's only legal to use the horn if it's to avoid an accident,
but it's almost always legal to use the brakes.

------
mister_hn
welcome to real-world, where out-of-labs conditions are far harder than
expected.

------
HeraldEmbar
Now let's put a person talking on the phone and texting at the same time and
have that person do the same exercise that AAA conducted..

------
sunstone
These systems would work better if people were made out of metal.

------
mindfulplay
It's a bit scary that the Tesla Model 3 doesn't fare well at all.. and this is
the same company shipping live metal torpedoes in parking lots via the Summon
feature.

Scary.

~~~
jabedude
I think this is a little over the top. Vehicles being summoned have a top
speed of 5 MPH, hardly a "torpedo".

