Korean automated car fail (USA highway accident)

[flank]

The machines are out to kill us

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/01/we-were-in-an-accident-during-an-automated-driving-tech-demo/amp/

On Tuesday, January 30, myself and two TechCrunch video production staff were riding in a modified Hyundai Genesis equipped with technology created by autonomous systems startup Phantom AI, traveling south on Bayshore Freeway near Millbrae, CA.

In addition to the three TechCrunch staff, there were also two Phantom AI team members in the car, including founder and CEO Hyunggi Cho, and President and co-founder Chan Kyu Lee. Lee was at the wheel during the test, which was a demonstration of the startup’s Autopilot-like SAE Level 2 partial autonomous system, designed to maintain lane position, maintain distance between itself and vehicles ahead, and switch lanes automatically once directed using the turning indicator.

During the demonstration, while the L2 system was engaged and we were traveling at 60 MPH according to Phantom AI (though the human-machine interface in the video above shows 70 MPH as our set cruising speed), a pickup truck ahead dropped a poorly secured garbage bin from its cargo bed onto the roadway. The car in front, a white Nissan Rogue, applied the brakes to prevent hitting the trash bin, and our driver noticed the sudden stop and applied the brake in the Genesis with force to attempt to prevent a collision, but there was very little he could do at that stage and our car collided with the Nissan going approximately 20 MPH.

 

[jokiin]

this is a great reminder of how useless aftermarket ADAS systems are, will bookmark this video for when we get enquiries about why we don't support this function

 

[flank]

This is also a great reminder not to buy Korean cars. That braking power I remember a short time ago, people wouldn't be caught dead in one. Now they are stylist and youngsters are buying them.

 

[Nigel]

He could have stopped in time if he had pressed the brake pedal hard when he first put his foot over the brake, but he left the final decision to the car which is the natural thing to do since the car was supposed to be in control. By the time he decided to override the car it was too late, exactly what will normally happen if these systems become widespread. And this was with the driver actually watching what was happening in front and seeing the incident unfolding which often wont be the case if the car takes control of the speed.

Until the car is good enough that it can take full control and responsibility, the human driver should stay in full control, and the autonomous stuff should only ever do emergency avoidance.

 

[flank]

The driver is an idiot. You can see the speed needle in the car did not move that much when he was braking. He could have braked harder.

He could have stopped in time if he had pressed the brake pedal hard when he first put his foot over the brake

t minus 3 to t: Braking was applied as strong as possible, with braking force : 5~6m/s^2 (you can see from the speedometer we went from 60MPH -> 25MPH for 3 seconds). As you can see the driver was doing everything he could within these 3 seconds, expecting an impact.

t minus 0: impact at ~20MPH
So our driver could’ve clearly had a slightly faster reaction time, applied brake 1-1.5 seconds earlier, and braked harder since the maximum possible braking of a vehicle is about 8m/s^2.
But at that instant since he had you, a reporter in the car, he was clearly overwhelmed and the anxiety caused the slight delay in reaction time for decision making.

 

[Nigel]

The driver is an idiot. You can see the speed needle in the car did not move that much when he was braking. He could have braked harder.

The time to stop from 60mph for a normal car is about 4.4 seconds so he actually seems to be doing OKish, once he presses the brake pedal. You need a very good car to stop from 60 in less than 4 seconds.

The main problem is that he braked too late, presumably more than 3 seconds after the car in front braked since he had maybe 2 seconds gap plus he failed by over 1 second. Most people would have started to move their foot to the brake and thus started to slow almost immediately on seeing the brake lights in front, that didn't happen here because the car was controlling the speed.

"What happened was an unfortunate minor incident that we had a human driving error" - the problem was that the human wasn't driving.

 

[DashcamDPR]

Put too much trust in the car to do the work and this is bound to happen. I hate all the new "features" cars have today. He's in the driving seat, apparently a prudent driver, but unable to stop the car from crashing??

There's braking too late and travelling too close, I don't agree that "the car wasn't good enough" to stop.

These self driving cars don't switch the human driver off, the driver still has a brake pedal that works, a steering wheel that works, and a set of eyeballs and a brain and (IDEALLY) the ability to make judgements. It should never happen where a driver should be thinking "why isn't my car stopping yet"... You just press the brake when you think you need the car to stop, like throughout the last 100 years. Self driving cars are a bad idea

 

[Nigel]

It should never happen where a driver should be thinking "why isn't my car stopping yet"

Thinking is much slower than automatic reactions, if you have to think about taking over control instead of just pressing the brake automatically then instead of leaving a 2 second gap you should obviously leave a minimum 5 second gap to the car in front. Of course it wont work since there will always be other traffic filling that huge gap! Semi-autonomous cars will always be dangerous.

 

[DashcamDPR]

No one should have to think about "taking control" though. I know I'm biased as I hate the concept of self-driving, but this is exactly my point! When you drive your car yourself you almost don't have to think, your reflexes kick in and you stamp on the brake, but this guy's left looking at the stationary traffic in front and almost reacting like "what am I supposed to do?!".... while sitting inches away from a brake pedal!

 

[jokiin]

No one should have to think about "taking control" though. I know I'm biased as I hate the concept of self-driving, but this is exactly my point! When you drive your car yourself you almost don't have to think, your reflexes kick in and you stamp on the brake

the reflex response should be to brake regardless of what the car can or can't do, even passengers will often have a reflex response to brake in emergency situations

 

[DashcamDPR]

My work passenger constantly stamps in the passenger footwell.... he doesn't trust my ability

How would any of us feel if a self driving or semi autonomous car ran into the back of us and we found out the person in the driving seat hadn't touched the brake pedal?

 

[Sabe]

the reflex response should be to brake regardless of what the car can or can't do, even passengers will often have a reflex response to brake in emergency situations

So should semi-auto cars have brake pedal for every seat

 

[Gibson99]

So should semi-auto cars have brake pedal for every seat

if they did, some people would never let the car move an inch!

Cho told us that the Automatic Emergency Braking system would’ve normally engaged at that point and prevented the collision, but it was disabled for the demo because it had been throwing too many false positives and was undergoing tuning. Lee’s manual disengagement, which resulted from pressing the brake pedal to the floor, as you can see in the video, didn’t occur fast enough for us to shed all our speed.

so the delay in pressing the brakes was either nerves, or he forgot auto-braking was disabled.

 

[jokiin]

if they did, some people would never let the car move an inch!

i think this video just showed that the guy trusted the autonomous systems too much, or that they were seriously flawed. the car should have started braking as soon as the nissan changed lanes to get in front of them, but it didn't.

if you read the back story they had the automatic braking turned off as it was glitchy, may have been less glitchy than the driver though whose brain seemed to be having an out of body experience at the time

 

[GTA Driver]

I have video of Uber testing automated cars in Toronto from last summer, apparently with a driver on board. It failed to handle a right turn around the bicycle lane as per Ontario law.

I am really nervous about testing on live streets. I know not all scenarios can be tested on a track, but sheesh.

 

[Rajagra]

There was something on BBC news about uber testing autonomous aircraft taxis. Think being a passenger in an oversized 'drone'. That will be fun.

 

[flank]

Autonomous boats would be cool too

 

[Rajagra]

"Worse things happen at sea." Confirmed!
Good to see some people still have instinct for self-preservation, they could have been killed.

 

[old4570]

A good reminder , it's the nut behind the wheel !
Auto drive is new , maybe 10 years from now they will be reliable .. For now its up to the nut holding the wheel !
If the nut is faulty , then accidents will happen .

 

[GTA Driver]

My father had a powerboat and we did a lot of Fishing in the mid 80 to mid 2000's in Lake Erie which is a huge lake where one could out and see no land or boats and be therefore be tempted to "troll" with no one at the wheel. I was thinking about an in incident in the late 80's when going thru another round of the shovelling the driveway.

Trolling is the a method travelling slow, about 1 to 6 mph in the freshwater (depending on what you are fishing for). Some boats will have their captain move a way from the wheel to go to the back of the boat to tend to fishing for a minute. This usually pretty safe due to the speed and lack of other boats, though I would be nervous approaching another boat at slow speed that would not adjust his steering when approaching me. There is a device available that can steer the boat. I am not a fan of being away from the wheel at high speed as there can be debris one should steer away for.

So one day we are out fishing and according to the VHF radio, doing much better than anyone else. Not a boat in sight. We see a boat in the horizon approaching us at high speed and we commented it must be someone who heard us brag about how well we are doing. They get closer, don't slow down and keep on approaching. There's no horn.

When the boat whizzes 30 feet past us, we see two scantily clad couples at the back of the boat with this surprised and bewildered look on their faces. No at the wheel and probably no bothering to be at the console for a number of minutes. They had no idea we where there.