Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

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Is this supposed distinction actually meaningful? I don't know...color me unconvinced.

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.

There’s a big difference between “constantly vigilant” and “you can chill out and watch YouTube, and just, like, don’t be drunk or super stoned

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.

Chilling out and watching youtube is still a huge issue though. You lose situational awareness and, drunk or not, you cannot react to sudden urgent issues that confuse the system.

There are studies on this, but most of them are paywalled.[1] The key value issue is "takeover time", where a level 3 system asks the driver to take over. Values studied are in the 5 to 7 second range.

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-...

I can’t find anything supporting “they really want the human back on line in 3 seconds” in your 3rd link. Quite the contrary:

> 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.

Human back online in three seconds is really not much different from instantaneous. Certainly not reasonable to read a book with both hands on the book and not on the steering wheel.

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