Comment by hephaes7us | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hephaes7us | Hacker News Reader

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When the car actually drives itself completely, I think they will be safer than human drivers.

All of these half measures are pretty concerning to me. I think they let drivers feel more comfortable, despite paying less attention, and I think their failure modes may often be much worse than the (human-driven) crashes they purport to prevent.

Anecdote: I once had a rental car with alane-keeping assistance system that would nudge the wheel slightly. On the interstate, upon cresting a hill, I saw that there was a vehicle stopped in the shoulder, and I was concerned someone might step out into the travel lane. I already knew that there were no vehicles behind me in either lane, so I steered gently into the passing lane to give ample space to anybody who might step into the road.

However, in my haste, I had not used the blinker, so the lane-keeping system intervened. Imagine my surprise when the car decided to nudge me back towards exactly the dangerous situation I had been avoiding!

Luckily, nobody stepped out into the road. But if they had, this lane-keeping system could have killed them.

In comparison, even if the left lane hadn't been clear, the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.

Rivian enabled this feature a while back via OTA, and it was bad. It only ever triggered while entering or exiting a freeway, and it’s really quite distressing when you are trying to merge onto a freeway and the car tries to nudge you off the road. Or when you are getting off the freeway and the car tries to nudge you into an area that isn’t actually a lane.

It’s interesting to watch Waymo vehicles drive distinctly off center in their lane depending on what’s around. I’m not convinced that Waymo has dialed in the right tradeoff between its own distance from other cars vs driving politely and predictably, but they are certainly very aware of what’s around them.

(Yes, I switched it to a mode where it would beep but not try to steer once it was safe to do so.)

I had the same thing while passing an unexpected cyclist. That was an Audi A6, I vividly remember even though some 5 years have passed - I was one of the scariest things that happened to me on the road.

Maybe different manufacturers have very different implementations?

My partner’s Hyundai has a lane keep assist and it will always use the commanded input over what the computer thinks.

The computer only takes over if you have very loose grip on the wheel and you drift.

It's hard to believe a car exists that ignores steering input. I suspect you just didn't try hard enough. Perhaps because it was a last-minute decision, you weren't very confident it was safe to change lanes and chose to give up some decision making to the car?

> the hypothetical accident there would have been a comparatively minor fender bender.

Youtube will tell you that bumping into someone sideways at highway speed can leave either car spinning and flipping off the road.

Oh, I suspect you can overpower it, if that's what you mean. However, if you weren't expecting it'd do something like that in the first place, it can accomplish a nonzero change to your trajectory before you intervene.

Believe me or don't, but, if you operate a vehicle with these assistive systems, I encourage you to carefully familiarize yourself with the ways in which they may unexpectedly affect its behaviour.

Of course there'll be some effect but your reflexes are doing a closed loop control system with the trajectory of the vehicle as input, so you'll automatically overpower stuck controls without even thinking. If you're steering with your knees or your little finger, it might cause a crash but that would be thing not to do, not have lane assist behave differently.

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