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Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the stopped car was hidden by the moving car that avoided it successfully. Only when that car swerved to avoid the stopped one did the BlueCruise car have line-of-sight to the stopped one. There was no visual at all, and no lidar, but possibly some indirect radar.

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And radar generally ignores all stopped objects because there are too many false returns. It’s really only useful for objects traveling at some speed. If the CRV had been going even 5 miles an hour it maybe it would’ve been detected.

Every radar system has this issue. It’s basically the same thing that caused that Tesla to run into the side of a semi so many years ago. The semi was stationary (relative to the road direction) so if the radar saw it probably ignored it.

I’ve never heard of a system that uses the cameras. Except Tesla since they removed the radar I guess. No one else seems to.

Subaru's eyesight uses cameras

Sorry. I meant cameras only. As far as I’m aware every system on the market uses cameras for lanes and radar for obstacles ahead except Tesla since they removed their radar.

I’m guessing (but didn’t check!) Subaru also has the radar too.

Subarus only use cameras.

Interesting. Thanks. Personally I’d rather have the radar + camera. I see it as more reliable.

Doesn’t help in this situation though.

Need to understand the modular nature of cars. The radar is one system and camera is another. Camera is only used for lane detection the only output from the camera is if road lines are detected and how close to either line. Based on this the car can “ping pong” since it detects it getting too close to one line, or if it has two cameras it can determine what the center of the lane is by keeping the distance from each line equal.

Radar typically applies to the ACC system while camera applies to LKAS or lane centering. Rarely are the two connected. FSD and comma.ai are probably the only systems which combine the two.

Right that’s how I’m used to them all working.

> Camera is only used for lane detection […]

That might be true for some vehicles only.

Subaru EyeSight cameras (there are 2x front cameras and 1x rear camera) are also used to detect moving and stationary objects, and it will engage the emergency braking if, e.g., you are driving or reversing into a wall. Lane detection can be disabled on Subaru cars, yet the EyeSight will continue to scan surroundings and be ready to start breaking.

As of this year, the EyeSight is available even on Subaru BRZ 2nd gen with the manual transmisson.

> ... Subaru BRZ 2nd gen with the manual transmisson.

How does it manage that? Is the clutch electrically controlled?

It is just emergency braking (electronic brake distribution across all wheels according to sensor readings), plus ABS in a hard braking scenario. The clutch is not affected.

So the car brakes, but you have to press the clutch?

You don’t have to, the car will stall out. Another scenario: you are in 5th gear and the cruise control slows down to 15mph. The car stalls. My manual did that 25 years ago

Frankly, I do not know – mine is the '23 model, not the '24 one.

According to this video, breaks will be applied automatically, even if it is in neutral or if the engine stalls: https://youtu.be/8WIydvZZ23I

The Bluecruise setup in the article also uses cameras as well as radar.

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