At 80mph, the stopping distance of an average car is around 300 feet once the brake is fully engaged. That exceeds most car radar systems. And with no warning lights the camera won't do much good either.
"Low beams or dipped lights should shine about 150 to 200 feet ahead, while high beams or brights should shine about 350 to 400 feet ahead" [1].
Would it be customary for someone on that highway to have their high beams engaged?
Using them in this situation will cause major glare from mirrors of the drivers in front, and possibly for the drivers in the opposing direction.
[1] as indicated by the stopped vehicle being reported in the center lane
It is not for finding stopped stuff in the middle of the road at high speed. I hear there are too many false positives for that to be done.
But we don't know how many other vehicles were on the road and what light they were casting. The bystander who reported witnessing the crash was within visual distance, so couldn't have been too far ahead of the MachE. It wasn't reported if there were any other vehicles. If you have enough vehicles on the road (with their lights on) lack of overhead illumination isn't too significant.
It’s designed to fix driver inputs during a panic. You’re right it doesn’t do anything on its own.
I think this is a pretty important point for any well-built self-driving software. Does anyone know if radar advancements could help increase this?
The big problem is that a stopped vehicle looks exactly the same to the radar as any other stationary object.
So if it sees something stationary it could be a stopped vehicle or it could be a reflection from a road sign. Or a lip in the pavement. Or something else like that.
Basically from what I’ve heard if it were to try and stop whenever it saw something stopped ahead it would constantly slam on the brakes unnecessarily. So stationary things have to be ignored, and it can’t save you from them.
They all suffer from this. The only solution I’ve heard of is LIDAR but obviously that’s a huge step up.