The first part of the article mentions the driver being able to take a meeting or watch a movie. That’s complete horseshit if they need to be ready to take control of the car at all times.
It's also only available on certain stretches of the Autobahn. If the system allows you to enable it, you can use it. The German law allows autonomous driving up to 130 km/h although Mercedes currently only allows their system to work up to 60 km/h.
This has to be the standard for all but the most egregious examples of other-driver-at-fault crashes. That, together with marketing standards, e.g. you can say FSD but you have to also disclose Level 2, should help clean things up while incentivizing good development.
But companies will offer this only if the downside risk is bearable. Which, (IANAL) is quite certainly much bigger in the US than in Germany.
Is the liability in Germany uncapped?
That's weird; usually laws are behind the tech, not ahead of it.
Mean speed is somewhere at ~110km/h (and you're on the slower end in my experience if you go 110 km/h).
When I interpret "being constantly ready to immediately take over" language, it's unambiguous that I need to maintain full situational awareness as if I were driving the vehicle.
Physically and mentally transitioning from partial to full situational awareness obviously takes some time, and yet from the graphic in the SAE link, the chart remains entirely ambiguous about the permitted time between "when the feature requests" and when "you must drive".
Furthermore, a quick review of SAE J3016 Rev 2021-04 reflects equally ambiguous language in § 5.4 NOTE 4 (my emphasis):
> NOTE 4: In the event of a DDT performance-relevant system failure in a Level 3 ADS, or in the event that the ADS exits its ODD, the ADS will issue a request to intervene within sufficient time for the fallback-ready user (whether in-vehicle or remote) to respond appropriately.
I'm curious what the normative minimum of "sufficient time" will be in practice.
The way I’m reading the SAE, it’s closer to the second. Like, it’s actual real self driving, but might need the user to take back control with a modicum of warning if it sees, say, a construction zone ahead or if it detects too much standing water on the road.
This is marginal. Volvo was trying for a level 3 system where, if the driver did nothing, the vehicle ended up safely stopped, preferably out of traffic. That's the gold standard for level 3.
"Under German law, to be allowed to operate at Level 3 above 37 mph, vehicles will have to be able to autonomously reach a 'safe haven' such as a breakdown lane in case of an emergency."[2] Mercedes is not there yet. They claim 10-second handoff, but they really want the human back on line in 3 seconds.[3] Look away from the road for 5 seconds, and the system starts complaining.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
[2] https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/mercedes-benz-drive-pilot...
[3] https://mercedes-world.com/news/mercedes-benz-level-3-drive-...
> You’re allowed to take your hands off the steering wheel, to take your eyes off the road, and even to turn your head to the side. But you can’t take a nap. > > As I discovered in my short closed-course test-drive, some flexibility is built into the system. For instance, as long as you’re belted, it’s OK to look back to a child in the back seat for three to five seconds. > > You can push it too far, though. After consulting with the engineer in the passenger seat, I closed my eyes completely, and just eight or nine seconds later a prompt popped up asking me to confirm I was still alert. I ignored it, which soon started the 10-second countdown toward disengagement.
If the car is able to recognize far enough in advance that it doesn't know what to do in a situation and reduce speed, pull over, etc., then that could be enough time for a person to put down their phone and take control of the vehicle.
I think the idea here is that typical executive meetings ( which of course Mercedes owners would be) are monotonous and boring and it would not take more than 20% of your attention in any case.
Roughly same for movies as it has to be Hollywood franchise movies which even if one is watching first time, it still feels like seeing same thing thousand times before. And now concentrating on road looks more interesting than movie.
All Mercedes has to do is put `*` on Movies/Meetings and define them appropriately to be on firm legal grounds.
No '*', Mercedes takes full responsibility and there are many seconds before it shifts control (and liability). The system can reliably predict when it will want to give back control.
Source: https://www.rambus.com/blogs/driving-automation-levels/#leve...
I created a mySAE account to download the full spec. What I found is that the manufacturer generally has fairly free reign to define their "operational design domain (ODD)" for level 3 systems, aka what conditions the car's "level 3" operation is designed for and can operate under. The only real requirement for level 3 is that OEDR is required (monitoring the driving environment (detecting, recognizing, and classifying objects and events and preparing to respond as needed) and executing an appropriate response to such objects and events (i.e., as needed to complete the DDT and/or DDT fallback [fallback to driver]).
Props to SAE for making their spec free do download, modulo a gratuitous account.
Later, they add the nag. 2018 I think.
In that case, this paragraph from the article doesn't make much sense (in fairness, it was on pretty shaky ground to begin with):
> Mercedes’ Level 3 conditionally automated driving assistant can, on suitable highway sections [emphasis added] and where traffic density is high, offer to take over the driving, leaving the driver free to do something else, like watch a movie or participate in a meeting.