Toyota automatically stops car before it can hit pedestrian
networkworld.com
Toyota automatically stops the car before it can hit a pedestrian
networkworld.com
It may seem snobbish to some, but I'd never let myself, my wife, and my future children drive anything but a Mercedes or Volvo.
Between the two of them, they've been behind nearly every safety system developed in the last 40 years.
I feel good about knowing that our hard work has let us put my wife in a car, for her 30 minute commute, that has 12 airbags, that monitors her blindspot and will prevent her from changing lanes when it's occupied, that monitors her alertness and sounds alarms if she begins to fall asleep at the wheel, that vibrates the steering wheel if she accidentally begins to drift out of her lane, that watches for stopped traffic or obstacles in her path and will apply full force braking in microseconds in a way that her human reflexes just cannot, that has seats designed to prevent whiplash, and seatbelt pretensioners, and an extra firewall in the engine compartment to prevent intrusion.
Not to mention, compared to the often under-engineered competition, it has handling and performance capabilities that can plausibly prevent accidents where any of those things would be necessary in the first place.
Neither of us has ever yet, to our knowledge, counted on these things to save our lives. But knowing they're there, makes me feel much more comfortable when she leaves home.
If you live in North America you can probably expect 2012's to be available in September and October.
You can pre-order now, of course. Including a wonderful option where you go to Germany, pick the car up as it rolls off the line, drive it around Europe for up to 30 days, then drop it back off to them to have it shipped to the US: And you get the car at dealer invoice less 8%. That's a little involved for a first time Mercedes buyer, but I wanted to make you aware of it, it's a very great program they've got there.
The C is a great car. We've got one in our family. If you have any questions, http://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w204-83/ is a great C Class forum. I'm active there under the same handle.
In a normal car, you keep your front wheels on the line you want to follow, release power, then smoothly add power to "shift weight" to the rear wheels and increase traction (acceleration causes the rear suspension to compress, making the rear tires push harder on the ground, increasing the normal force and increasing rear wheel traction). Doing that stops the oversteer (rear wheel skid).
In a Mercedes, the car assumes that you're an idiot for doing that, cuts engine power to the drive (rear) wheels, and applies breaks to the OUTSIDE REAR WHEEL. That procedure has the effect of decompressing the rear suspension and decreasing traction to the rear wheels, which are already skidding. The slide that resulted was unrecoverable. Yank the parking break and shift into neutral while in a hard corner at 40mph if you want to know what it felt like. For a few seconds, my instincts and the car's Traction Control fought each other as I tried to correct for the skids that improperly braking the rear wheels was causing.
Finally, I came to rest having skid across the double yellow…and then somehow the automatic transmission stalled.
It was a "mistake" that could have been fixed in less than a second driving a 1908 Model T. After a hundred years of innovations, Mercedes has completely removed the driver from direct control of the vehicle, WITHOUT an option to turn off those so-called "features."
I spent the next several months talking to people who did tuning for Daimler-Chrysler for a shop in Montana, cracking ECU encryption to reprogram the fuel injectors and intake system to perform well at high altitudes. And apparently there's no good way to turn off that Traction Control system except removing large chunks of code from the ECU, which voids the warranty and might have serious side effects. When I learned more about how the Traction Control system actually works, I sold the car.
I will never own another Mercedes. They breed laziness and irresponsibility without giving competent drivers the control they need to drive safely.
I'm currently an avid BMW fan because of two major factors: first, it's possible to buy manual transmissions without special ordering a new car from Germany; second, it is possible–by holding a button on the console for a few seconds–to COMPLETELY disable traction control. I have driven in snow and ice, torrential downpours, and heavy traffic in the last year. I haven't driven with Traction Control on since Mercedes almost killed me in 2006.
Frankly, I think EVERY SINGLE ONE of the safety features you suggested is a horrible idea. Pay attention to what you're doing, and don't drive if you're not physically and mentally capable of driving. I don't want my car to wake me up if I fall asleep driving…I want to be smart enough to not drive that night.
Frankly, the more I hear about Mercedes safety features, the more distance I like to keep between me and them on the highway.
I think you are justified in wanting and buying a machine that suits your needs, but please don't assume that everyone is or even should be as adamant about driving as you are. I for one will happily let the computer take the wheel and allow me to focus on things I care about like conversation or coding. If I want a joy ride hopefully I'll be successful enough to own a classic gasoline powered driving machine ;)
Not killing people is completely different: it requires basic skills and some small measure of multi-taking ability. Which is more important, reacting to the car changing lanes without a signal in front of you or finishing your sentence RIGHT NOW?
The problem isn't even skill level. Driving normally at city and highway speeds is easy. The vast majority of 1st world residents know how to do it, and very very few of them make mistakes severe enough to affect anyone else's lives. The average driver is nowhere near as bad at it as most people seem to think.
But taking the driver's commitment to and awareness of the risks inherent in driving away and placing that burden on active "safety features" is a bad thing. I know their hearts are in the right place and that I'm not the person these systems are designed for. But they're going to get people killed.
My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should.
The pedestrian might be in slightly less danger if the car reacts properly. But then the car stops unexpectedly and the driver wonders what happens…and winds up stopped in an intersection for some nonzero amount of time.
Also, unless I'm visualizing this wrong (right turn on red hits a pedestrian in the crosswalk to his right that's parallel to his original direction of travel) the only way the pedestrian would have been in that crosswalk at all is if s/he was crossing against the light and crossing the path of cars going straight on a green.
I think that maybe you're wrong about a few things here. First and foremost, that your slide was recoverable.
I'm a car guy myself. Like you, I insist on manual transmissions with rear wheel drive. I've been to driving schools, read extensively about how suspension affects handling dynamics, and turned a few wrenches in my time. Even with all that, I try to remain humble about my own driving abilities and the fact that while I enjoy it, I don't drive professionally, so I shouldn't expect professional results.
Your comments about skid recovery apply to the input controls that are available to you as the driver. They don't apply to the input controls available to the traction control systems in your car. For every subtle detail that you learned about handling using the steering wheel, brake, and clutch, there are equivalents for the systems available to the traction control system, such as individual wheel braking.
Stopping a slide is about controlling rotation. You cannot use the brake to directly rotate the vehicle because you only get one brake pedal. The best use of that brake pedal, as a driver, is in controlling the speed and weight distribution of the automobile. That is the most you can hope for.
"My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should."
The stability program in a Mercedes absolutely knows the difference between power-induced oversteer and braking-induced oversteer. It uses accelerometers, yaw sensors, throttle position sensors, and individual wheel speed sensors to infer your intended direction of travel. Braking the outside rear wheel does transfer weight forward, but it has a far more significant positive effect on correcting rotation because of the asymmetrical application of braking force. Your slide was simply unrecoverable. You think that it was recoverable, but you'll never know for sure. Based on the physics involved, I think you're wrong.
I've tested the limits of these systems myself. My 2006 GTI had ESP. I took it out to a dirt road and explored the limits under slalom conditions and hard turns. These systems are amazing at recovering slides that can be recovered. If I pushed hard enough, I could "break through" to an uncontrollable slide, however. When you "overshoot" your mark, brake, turn, then hit a rumble strip (which significantly reduces available traction) you end up in an unrecoverable slide.
The irony here is that your Mercedes' ESP system didn't almost kill you, you did.
^1 Not to say I don't have my issues with the cars -- stuff like a crappy Chinese made iPod interface.
Edit: That video is stunning. Thanks for the share.
This 6:21 start point shows both (with/without) tests:
And unless you know what's going on "under the hood" well enough to either evaluate their code or design a real-world test that you can perform in an empty parking lot…you're left to decide based on what Mercedes says. And they're never going to say "our system can't detect the cause of a skid…it just reacts based on detecting the speed wheels are spinning and assumes the driver is completely incompetent."
Some of the systems are great. There's no reason a car sold today shouldn't have ABS: the driving techniques required to get similar performance out of non-ABS brakes are very skill specific and time-intensive to develop. It's not worth it for >99% of drivers. And there are "good" traction control systems. Subaru's computer-controlled differentials in their AWD system are pretty good. But that system isn't capable of making a mistake as bad as the "active braking" systems that are coming out.
You're basically suggesting that people decide to not get in their cars if they even slightly think they might be too tired to drive. You know as well as I do that there's no way to measure this (unlike drinking, where if you consumed any alcohol in the last several hours you shouldn't get behind the wheel.) So, it's a bit of a pipe dream to think drivers are actually in the position to make a judgement call about their own risk of falling asleep at the wheel before leaving.
Regardless, my point was that these safety systems are meant to protect responsible drivers from irresponsible ones. I'm skeptical that the presence of safety systems could somehow convert a responsible driver to an irresponsible one.
Take a nap in your car. Let someone else drive if you're not alone. Call a cab and pick up your car in the morning. Call Safe Ride, and they'll send a driver and a moped that will fit in your trunk if you're somewhere they operate.
There are always alternatives to putting yourself in a dangerous situation. And, I believe these systems will lead people to drift further into these types of dangerous situations before even thinking about safer alternatives.
I'm happy for you that you've found a car you like. For me, I don't feel BMW has the same track record of safety innovation, but even before I grew to value that, what disuaded me most from owning a BMW is the fact that they use runflats only. And even if you've got a salesman willing to swap them out with conventional tires, there is no place in the trunk for a spare without it just sitting in there rolling around, taking up space. But I respect that BMW makes some fine cars and they feel very different on the road than does a Mercedes.
The criticisms you have about making drivers "lazy" is the same thing some people said about antilock brakes. And in fact, I have an uncle who swears as you do that if he had full control over the brakes, he'd have avoided an accident.
For me, knowing that these safety systems -- able to react in fractions of a second -- are there to help save my life and keep safe the woman I love, is invaluable. And I believe that for every one of your stories, there's dozens or hundreds of stories where these things led to a person walking away from an accident than they may not otherwise have survived.
I think the average person would agree. A system that beeps if you fall asleep at the wheel? Yes. A system that nudges your steering wheel fi you drift over the centerline? Yes. None of these things even augment your driving, they just direct yoru attention to the road.
In fact, the only thing I mentioned that does intervene in your driving is the blind spot intervention.
Anyhow, glad you didn't have any serious issues. And I hope we both know how fortunate we are to be able to sit here and debate the relative merits of one German sports sedan vs another.
I think manufacturers are trying to get consumers used to the idea that technology might be the way to go for a lot of driving systems. People need to get the idea that self-driving technologies enhance safety. I think that's why they're starting with braking. As people become comfortable with and grateful for their car taking control in emergency-ish situations like that, they'll similarly become comfortable with the car taking control during normal driving. At least that's the thought.
Better approach: Install a small wireless sender in the car that broadcasts at a given frequency.
Then allow people who want a minimum noise level to buy a small receiver that broadcasts those signals (or another type of indication signal) to a headset.
This allows you to keep the noise level down and at the same time provides "notifications" to the visually impaired.
1. Blind folks generally rely on directional sound. Knowing a car's nearby is better than nothing, but you can't tell how fast it's approaching you, from what direction.
2. In a city, it'd never stop beeping at you.
2. Beeping was just an example. Just "encode" the information as motor noise and it will sound more "natural".
Dumb idea.
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/07/20/safety-group-sa...
Personally, while I see where you are coming from and share your reservations about unproven technologies, I also foresee a time - within our lifetimes and hopefully sooner than later - where cars are 100% computer controlled and roads are at least an order of magnitude safer.
Imagine if every drunk at the bar could just press "home" on the dashboard of their car and then sleep it off during the trip?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg
These technologies need to gain the trust of the drivers before they can become mainstream.
Automatically making a decision (that the human is better at making) and potentially causing an accident due to a random sudden stop = bad
Incidentally, heavy breaking reduces a car's ability to corner which may end up causing accidents which could otherwise be avoided.
What about when the car really is better at making that decision? IMHO, we are few scarce decades away from cars that will just be plain better drivers than the median meatbag.
...except that we've been a few scarce decades away from this for a few decades now. For the most part the history of this thought process is that we dramatically underestimate the problems involved.
(Please note: tongue-in-cheek.)
Is it because we welcome an AI which breaks, but not one which drives? Why?
Because passive AIs are less scary than active ones? And active breaking is still perceived as a passive action?