> When a car is moving at low speeds, slamming on the brakes isn't a big risk. A car traveling at 20mph can afford to wait until an object is quite close before slamming on the brakes, making unnecessary stops unlikely. Short stopping distances also mean that a car slamming on the brakes at 20mph is unlikely to get rear-ended.
But the calculation changes for a car traveling at 70mph. In this case, preventing a crash requires slamming on the brakes while the car is still far away from a potential obstacle. That makes it more likely that the car will misunderstand the situation—for example, wrongly interpreting an object that's merely near the road as being in the road. Sudden braking at high speed can startle the driver, leading to erratic driving behavior. And it also creates a danger that the car behind won't stop in time, leading to a rear-end collision.
So instead of "startling the driver", who's supposed to be paying careful attention to what's going on, the algorithm chooses to plow into the stationary object?
I suspect _that_ might _also_ "startle the driver"...
The algorithm has been designed to ignore stationary objects because the algorithm and associated hardware is incapable of determining which stationary objects are actually in the path of the vehicle. Regardless of whether the car slammed on the brakes or blared a klaxon there are so many false positives that to do otherwise would make it useless.
So of course the only sensible thing to do is release a product that happily accelerates into the back of a bright red emergency vehicle with flashing lights. Or into a stationary concrete barrier. Or into the side of a massive tractor-trailer.
Thanks for the link. I remembered the article, but didn't manage to find it.
In the Thatcham Research video, however, swerving would have been far more workable than braking. But then, we don't want too much autonomous lane hopping, either.
> When a car is moving at low speeds, slamming on the brakes isn't a big risk. A car traveling at 20mph can afford to wait until an object is quite close before slamming on the brakes, making unnecessary stops unlikely. Short stopping distances also mean that a car slamming on the brakes at 20mph is unlikely to get rear-ended.
But the calculation changes for a car traveling at 70mph. In this case, preventing a crash requires slamming on the brakes while the car is still far away from a potential obstacle. That makes it more likely that the car will misunderstand the situation—for example, wrongly interpreting an object that's merely near the road as being in the road. Sudden braking at high speed can startle the driver, leading to erratic driving behavior. And it also creates a danger that the car behind won't stop in time, leading to a rear-end collision.
[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274179