Evolution of the automobile (emerging technologies)

So I have been looking at new stuff coming out on cars. Most of this stuff is something that auto manufacturers have agreed to put into most of their cars by 2022 (see http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/u-s-dot-and-iihs-announce-historic-commitment-of-20-automakers-to-make-automatic-emergency-braking-standard-on-new-vehicles ).

I got to try them out on a 2016 Prius the other day. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMJ_oV58WE4EF0W8ytIl13G1xtKQtrwFH

I know that most of us love our older and simpler cars, but I approach it as separating the car: "a piece of hobby equipment" from the car: "the appliance that gets me to work". Granted most of us blur the lines and make some comfort sacrifices for our hobbyist enjoyment (my daily is a 95 base model miata), but there is something to be said for whats coming.

Automatic Emergency Braking: Car will stop or severely slow itself to avoid or lessen a crash. I experienced it at 20mph (trust me, safe setting soft target object and no liability of mine if it didnt work, dont try it at home!), feet off the pedal and it full-abs stopped itself. Driven by both Radar and a Camera. IIRC, it may not fully get you stopped in time for a highway speed event, but could severely lessen an impact. It will apply regardless of if you are on the brakes, which should help with general populace who may not actually press the brakes hard enough for ABS to do its thing right before a crash.

Lane departure warning: Car has camera that sees the lines, gives tone when you drive over one and will even gently pull itself back into the lane. The pull strength is far less than my Mustang's tramline and it isnt self-driving car level, but a suggestive tug and is juuust noticable.

Adaptive Cruise control: automatically slows down for cars in front of you and speeds back up. Will even bring you to a stop, though to do have to press a button to take off again. I live near DC, and I think its AWESOME. I kinda want a car with it. Only issue, you can set the follow distance, but even the closest distance has people cutting you off in aggressive DC traffic.

Heads up display: the car projects your speed up on the windshield. It ALSO projects the speed limit (I think when it sees a sign and detects it). I found it helpful.

My verdict: appliance cars are getting fantastically better at doing their job. I do feel like these systems on an enthusiast car would be a sad distancing from driving the car, but on a daily slog to work in traffic would be much appreciated. Might not be what we all want to be driving, but systems that would keep Sally Mc-latte drinking, cellphone-using, soccermom from doing the rest of us in.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uPfQHQsT7Wc?list=PLsOvRYzJPCwVfODIW53Y78jqdDHVSnNoV

I'll be first in line when we can buy decent driverless cars.

SVreX wrote: I'll be first in line when we can buy decent driverless cars.

Oh, its coming... but probably at least 10 years out, despite the hype that Tesla generates.

I think they are rolling out these supportive systems first and seeing how it impacts things and using it to refine the technology while the driver is still in the loop to keep things from going wrong. Videos of people abusing what Tesla is trying to do with autonomous, but driver in loop abound. Its a matter of time till someone decides they can rest their hand on the wheel and have a movie going in the passenger seat and the car misses something and someone gets really hurt.

A few semi-counter points.

I find heads up displays to sometimes interfere with my view, similar to a dirty or glaring windshield. That said, if it's reading the speed limit sign, I'd sure like that. Yes, I know I'm supposed to see them on my own, and I usually do. But not always, and not always do I register a stupid low speed limit. A heads up display that showed it to me and especially showed my excessive speed, say in red, would be nice. Especially with all the speed cameras around here.

Automatic braking would be great, except for those times I've looked in the rear view mirror and decided I'd rather hit what's in front of me instead of being hit by what's barreling down on me or riding my tail. Thinking mostly of brodozers with frames at head height.

In reply to foxtrapper:

The automatic braking at 20mph stopped less than a foot from the target, you would be rear-end hosed no matter what in that case I think (1 foot wouldnt make a difference)

The bigger concern I might have would be it possibly getting in the way of steering out of it. Also soft objects like a blowing paper or garbage bag giving a false positive to the system and causing you to be rear-ended. I would bet there is still a LOT of work to be done to tell a blowing bag from say, a bicyclist or a deer.

I mean, a false positive might not be as big of a deal if the car behind you has the same system, but THAT's gonna be a LONG way off.

I think it'll be more like 5 years before the first fully autonomous cars hit the showroom floors.

Some of these systems are handy, generally if they don't get in the driver's way and/or can be easily turned off I don't have a problem with them. The speed limit warning and auto-high-beam look really useful (especially the auto-high-beam on other people's cars!). Sometimes I want to know what the speed limit is because I see a cop or suspect one is hiding nearby, and I don't know because I don't pay any attention to speed limit signs

On a relative basis- this transformation is happening slower than you think it is.

The really good adaptive cruise control is getting pretty old- I loved it on our development cars we had 8 years ago. The auto braking- we had on an Edge lease 5 years ago.

The lane parts are newer.

The next step will be car to car and car to ground communication- so that you will get warnings to slow down well before you will need to. And the technology to re-route traffic will come to more cars. And better yet, ground stations will make lights react to traffic more. Which will suck if you are that one person at a light against huge traffic- but the needs of the masses....

Some of the big challenges are weather related. Which really messes with the sensors- lots of noise.

We may have a fully auto car in 5 years. Maybe. But it will be a while until they will be available to the entire market.

The automatic braking needs to be trained to detect speed cameras and react accordingly.

My 2007 Mercedes has adaptive cruise with auto braking (I think only when the cruise is on? Not sure) and it's very good. I've worked my way up trust wise and I'm confident letting it slow itself when traffic bunches up for construction slowdowns and then accelerate when we all speed up again. Looking at what Mercedes was doing a decade ago makes Tesla seem not very impressive at all as we clearly could have been doing that a decade ago.
What I really want is a "follow that guy" button which would attach me to someone in front of me for five minutes so I could relax for a couple of minutes on stupidly long road trips.

I'm glad that you guys are able to embrace it, but I don't want any of that in any of my cars. I don't want to sit there and be driven around by some code in a computer. I know it is coming and eventually it will be good in terms of traffic congestion and safety, but I am not at all looking forward to it. The minute my car braked when I didn't tell it to or tried to keep me in my lane when I was trying to pass someone I would park it and walk home.

I don't want adaptive cruise control no matter how convenient it is. I want people to have be more engaged with the act of driving, not less engaged. I wish we could just skip from regular cars straight to self driving autonomous cars and skip this middle ground that I find entirely distasteful.

In reply to alfadriver:

Yeah, V2V and general communications are the other biggies coming. Some things might be coming where the systems supported by camera/radar would have a few minutes of information leading up to an "event" (meaning accident, or near accident), which could really change a number of things from a safety and legal standing.

We already have event data recorders (EDR) in new cars, but its looking like some manufacturers will be expanding it. Its going to be interesting to see how some of it works out in the courts as far as who can get the data and for what.

T.J. wrote: I want people to have be more engaged with the act of driving, not less engaged.

I find that incredibly idealistic. Considering that the distracted driving movie I saw in drivers ed was shot in the 50's, this isn't new, and isn't going to get better.

Most people don't like driving, they do it because they have to. And until there's a really great transit system across the country, people are going to have to drive.

In reply to alfadriver:

I agree and that is why we need to get through the awkward transition as fast as possible to get the fully autonomous cars. It is the in between that I don't like or trust. I either want to drive or not drive, but not share the driving with some bit of code located somewhere inside a chip in some module somewhere in my car programmed by someone I don't know.

I find lane departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, automatic braking, etc. only serve to make drivers pay even less attention to what they should be paying attention to and that is why I do not like them.

In reply to T.J.:

You can look at it as being able to be more distracted, or as an aid to the current level of distraction.

I see your point, but the current interactions from those systems are not so powerful that the driver knows that they can pay less attention. The commercials are kind of dumb that way. And actually- some of the interfaces are "hey- wake up and pay attention!" kind of things. Vibrating wheels, alarms, etc.

The step to allow your car to just take over is going to be really huge for drivers.

I would wager that driving is the most dangerous thing the average person does on a routine basis, yet most people treat it very nonchalantly and don't give it the respect and attention it deserves. I think that most people don't drive, they ride, even if they are behind the wheel. Machines that do the job better than people will save lives, I have no doubt, and like you said, a lot of people do not like to drive, so it will be a win-win for the majority.

GameboyRMH wrote: I think it'll be more like 5 years before the first fully autonomous cars hit the showroom floors.

It will be way longer than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

How are they going to program that into the software? Who takes the liability? You?The car company? Insurance providing coverage?

That's just one of many issues with fully autonomous cars that aren't on a closed course.

My wife's new GPS unit includes a dashcam that doubles as an optical sensor for audio/visual driving alerts like forward collision warning, lane departure warning, and traffic moving alert (i.e., put your phone down!) -- this tech isn't expensive anymore, and integrating with the car's driving systems is an obvious next step.

After taking a pair of thousand-mile road trips with my family in the past two months, I've decided that a self-driving feature--at least for highway travel--will be on our next family-mobile.

I'm just looking forward to the day when my car communicates with the police, so they can just send me a ticket if I break the law. No more waiting on the side of the road while the cop writes the ticket. (that is very dangerous for the cops you know---- so it would be safer if our cars just did it for us) Heck--- what would be even better is if my car refused to break the law---under any circumstances. Then I'd be totally safe.

I'm all for some tech--- like HUD (which Corvettes have had since the 90s). I'd be lying though if I said I was looking forward to autonomous cars, or the creeping (and invasive) tech that sends my car's information to whomever and wherever. Already insurance companies are using OBII info to set rates---- I see this becoming the norm, where your car instantly connects to your insurance company, the cops, and maybe even your boss. (if it's a company car) Sure we'll be safer in a world without speeding, donuts, burnouts, or off-road hooning. Safer, more boring, and less imaginative.

For years automakers and lawmakers have focused on making cars foolproof, so any idiot will be safe behind the wheel. They've done this instead of educating drivers on how to actually operate the 4000b chunk of machinery they are flying down the road in. Why learn anything-----we'll just let the computers do it all for us.

That said---- go ahead and enjoy our autonomous future. Just don't try to eliminate regular cars from the road. You can have my non-autonomous car when you pry my dead hands off the steering wheel!

get off my lawn!

I just really hope these systems are good at recognizing motorcycles. I am hooked on two wheels and hope to never have to give it up.

Joe Gearin wrote: For years automakers and lawmakers have focused on making cars foolproof, so any idiot will be safe behind the wheel. They've done this instead of educating drivers on how to actually operate the 4000b chunk of machinery they are flying down the road in. Why learn anything-----we'll just let the computers do it all for us.

Why do you think that it's the auto industry's responsibility to educate drivers?

Never has- society or private companies have always taken that on.

Again, most people don't like driving. And people being individuals, you can't MAKE them drive better. You have to make them want to.

In reply to Nick (picaso) Comstock:

Most of the stuff I have heard says that they are still working on refining that. Also bicyclists and animals.

Apexcarver wrote: In reply to foxtrapper: The automatic braking at 20mph stopped less than a foot from the target, you would be rear-end hosed no matter what in that case I think (1 foot wouldnt make a difference)

That's what I mean. I don't want to be rear ended because the system panic stops for a bunny that leaps into the road, I'd rather hit the bunny.

z31maniac wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: I think it'll be more like 5 years before the first fully autonomous cars hit the showroom floors.

It will be way longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem How are they going to program that into the software? Who takes the liability? You?The car company? Insurance providing coverage? That's just one of many issues with fully autonomous cars that aren't on a closed course.

Probably the car company. Cars will have a simple set of rules on who to hit when a crash is inevitable and there are multiple possible targets (like cars instead of people, adults instead of children etc.). The ethical issues of autonomous cars aren't as much of a problem as they're made out to be.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

If that's the case, I doubt shareholders will approve them.....