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When an Algorithm Takes the Wheel
Wired has an interesting look at Jaguar's new automated driving dynamics system in their new XK convertible. From the article: "During an extreme test of the XK's handling capabilities, the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph. The car's back wheels swung first left then right before the XK's sensors registered a difference in torque between the rear tires and, transparent to me, righted the fishtailing effect by a combination of de-acceleration, tire rotation and vehicle weight distribution control. More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."
This technology is great, but for the love of god, please let me be able to turn it off when I want to! If I want to give the car some extra gas through a corner and kick the back end out, don't interfere with me. Safety is a great goal, but I want to tell the car what to do - I don't want the car telling me what I can do. There are times when traction control gets completely in the way of non-spirited driving, too (like going up a snow-covered driveway).
Toyota/Lexus is horrible about this. They include intrusive control systems and don't give you any easy way to turn it off.
KITT: "Michael, I don't think I can do that"
Michael: "That's alright little buddy, I know you can" [Pushes button to do STUPID ass maneouver]
Also, "Little buddy" does Michael not realize that he is a human, 6'4, probably about 180lbs (David Hasselhoff is kinda lankey) talking to a car that you know - weighs a lot - especially with all the toys it has built into it.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Side sensors on the car's side, for example, gauge if the car is about to roll over, and then activate the roll-over bar, which breaks through the glass of the back windshield.
For front-end collisions, a fiber optic connection from left to right registers impacts. The sensors' algorithms then program the hood and front end to react differently according to what is hit.
For pedestrians, a mesh-like material is activated in less than 50 milliseconds beneath the hood, which serve to cushion the blow upon impact.
These well-nigh amazing safety features leave me asking the same question that I ask myself when I hear GM's OnStar commercials, touting features like calling emergency services on airbag deployment.
How many lives does a feature have to save before it should be required equipment?
Early automobiles were deathtraps, until a fellow by the name of Ralph brought the issue to national prominence in 1965 with Unsafe at Any Speed , a book to which many of us owe our very existence. Since then, we have assumed a right to a safe vehicle. No car company would be allowed to sell a $3000 rattletrap with no seat belts and no air bags and an engine in the passenger seat, even if they required purchasers to sign a safety waiver. I think this can be counted as "progress", though the more Libertarian folks out there might disagree.
But assuming that Da Gooberment has an obligation to obligate safer vehicles, where do you set the bar? If a "mesh-like material" is the difference between injury and Pedestrian Souffle', why not require such a system on all vehicles? Or do I have to cross my fingers and only step out in front of cars built by Jaguar?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"More often than not, the sensation of flatness, as if there were a vertical force pinning the car to the road, was also felt then and when taking less extreme curves at high speeds."
Yeah, if only there was such a force...
I dunno. My old Honda definitely had a noticable cadence when it fell below idle. Although I don't see why anyone would tout that as a centerpiece feature...
This guy's the limit!
I drive a 1999 Toyota Solara SLE V6. There is a switch beside the transmission to disengage the traction control systems. I absolutely agree with you that their traction control is awful on snow. Getting from my house to the main roads through the residential neighbourhood requires disengaging the traction control and manually shifting the transmission between 1st, 2nd, and automatic. Probably because I'm too cheap to buy snow tires. A 2006 Lexus IS I looked at recently had a 3 way traction control switch: On, Off, and Snow. Apparently, Lexus agrees with us you about their performance on snow. CS
I rotate my tires periodically as well, but not usually when negotiating a 90 degree turn at 60 mph.
...ordinary stability control?
But assuming that Da Gooberment has an obligation to obligate safer vehicles, where do you set the bar? If a "mesh-like material" is the difference between injury and Pedestrian Souffle', why not require such a system on all vehicles? Or do I have to cross my fingers and only step out in front of cars built by Jaguar?
When the costs of the increase in safety make it too expensive for the poor to afford even the cheapest "safe" car.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
I think I might love this idea being fully explored. Add some more IA, a social conscience. The I-5 and I-405 will get much nicer.
Or,
Or,
To be honest, I still want control of my car. I'll drive, thank you. (Still don't trust ABS since I hit that deer.)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Why don't they concentrate their efforts on something more worthwhile - such as making their cars suck less?
Seriously, I've known at least 3 people who bought them (against my advice) who all unloaded their problem-prone cars within a year to some other poor soul. (Just for the sake of not picking strictly on Jaguar, BMWs suck quite a bit sometimes too. I have a friend that I pick up from the BMW dealer's service dept at least once every 2 months or so).
Before any Jaguar fanbois flame on, there's certainly a reason why the resale value of a Jaguar plummets to 21% of its original retail price after only 5 years of ownership.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Some lady slowed to a stop without her tail lights working, so I noticed it at the last moment. I deliberately fish tailed my car, and I was about a foot from her rear bumper. If I had ABS or anti-fishtailing, I would have been in an accident.
God spoke to me.
"I think this can be counted as "progress", though the more Libertarian folks out there might disagree."
What most capital-L Libertarians fail to realize is that you can't "vote with your dollar" if you're dead.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
a combination of de-acceleration, tire rotation and vehicle weight distribution control.
Translation: The car tossed him out the window.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
...the car only fishtailed back and forth once after I jerked the steering wheel on a wet road around a 90 degree turn while driving at about 60 mph
You could also just slow down.
I'm kind of sick of seeing commercials with cars driving 60mph through 2 feet of snow as if it were a hot summer day.
How much does it cost to fix when it breaks!
Sorry, I know for some people, its not an issue. But I can't stand gizmos that break and cost $1k + to repair. Why don't we just mandate better driver education. (Like weekend car control bootcamps or something!!! Like the motorcycle safety courses.)
-=fshalor
Well, the safest thing you can drive is probably an M-1 abrams tank, for $5,000,000, but I doubt many people would actually buy one of those even if they were available to the public :)
They are, they're called SUVs: same weight, same mileage, same damage to other cars in an accident, it just doesn't have the big gun and the tracks.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Examples include: Proper adjustment of the seat and headrests for best control and protection; proper wearing of the seatbelt; proper use of child-safety seats; keeping signal lights in proper function and using the turning signals; Taking new drivers on a real high-speed driving course where they actually do accident avoidance maneuvers; teaching new drivers how to recognize treacherous road conditions; more emphasis on cooperative driving instead of purely "defensive driving" (which quickly turns into a passive-aggressive "I can be in the left lane because I'm doing the speed limit" game).
Less is more.
Actually, what most Libertarians realize is that you cannot govern based on emotions, and that everything has a value.
For example, the latest just-approved medical treatment is usually very expensive (it may have cost $1bn to develop), while the treatments we had 10 years ago are cheaper, but not as effective. Should every medical plan have to cover the expensive option?
For a more stark example, six healthy British men nearly died while participating in a safety test for a new drug. Do you think it ok for drug companies (and indirectly, us consumers) to pay for people to risk their lives for this? Or is it wrong to ascribe a value to this?
Don't anyone mistake this for what it is: a robot that overrides your control inputs.
Automated highway systems will never happen.
First, and foremost, you could never have a mixed environment of automated and manually driven vehicles. Watching iRobot and seeing Will Smith take over manual control on an automated highway was completely ridiculous. In an environment where computers will have to react to the unpredictable behaviour of human drivers, the computes will always lose. How many 200 car pileups will have to occur before it is realized that computer drivers and human drivers won't mix. Computers cannot anticipate the irradict behaviour of a drunk driver. Nor can they anticipate a woman swearving across 6 lanes of traffic to hit her exit because she was too busy putting on lipstick to pay attention to the exit signs. Humans and computers won't mix.
Secondly, you need to either put the highways underground or put a cover on them. There is no way a computer driven vehicle will respond appropriately if a deer rushes on the road, or suddenly there is a freak blizzard and the road conditions go from dry to slick. Putting highways in tunnels will mean your eliminating weather and most other external obstacles from interfering with computer driven vehicles. A human might pick up a deer standing still off the side of the road and slow down anticipating if it might jump out. A computer probably wouldn't register the deer was standing there until its firmly embedded in its windshield.
Lastly, simple fact will be that there will be some significant flaw in the entire system. Your not going to get all car manufacturers to use the same systems. Your going to need some external system regulating the traffic and communicating with a variety of different systems which will vary city to city, state to state. Even if the communication protocol is standardized, your still going to have some car manufactures that implement automated driving better then others. A Jaguar or other high end vehicle is going to react faster and have better handling them some Geo Metro or Ford Escort.
Bottom line is, in an environment with so much variation, something will go wrong, and it will cost significant human life. When this happen, people will abandon the concept of computer driven vehicles.
Its a nice hobby, but its a complete waste of time. Unless they invent anti-gravity and force fields, your never going to have an automated highway system.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
My father complains about his anti-lock brakes, says they don't feel "natural." Personally I even hate power steering. Does anyone else feel like these kinds of things distance you from a more natural, intuitive feeling of control?
This space available.
I hope slashdot got paid to put this up. Sounds like a car commercial to me...
Slashdot didn't, but I'm sure Wired did.
possibly this one
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.77.html#subj6
I have a 1997 Cadillac DeVille, as part of the Northstar system I have ABS/Traction Control and ICCS (Integrated Chassis Control System) AKA Stabilitrak. My car does what this Jaguar does by keeping the car going where I point the steering wheel, and Cadillac has had it since 1997!
The system does what it is supposed to and does it well, it has saved my ass a couple of times on icy winter roads. My only problem is that if you are a good driver these systems will help you, if you are the type that pushes a car just because a system like this in in place you will get into trouble. The systems work very well but they haven't figured out how to change physics yet, a 3,500lb car will not change direction or stop on a dime.
The old adage "Just because you can doesn't mean you should" definatly applies here, drive these cars in a "spirited" fashion but a left turn on an icy road doing 60 mph is not in your future.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
A former manager of mine mentioned a case with an A300 in Europe that wouldn't go below 6000ft because the computer decided that it just wasn't going to. Finally the flight engineer, in contact with Airbus folks on the ground, ended up under the panels pulling out modules until the auto-pilot was singing "Bicycle built for two," and they managed to get the thing onto the ground in Bonn in one piece.
Most professional pilots in the USA can't stand the Airbus planes for that reason; on the Boeings, you just slap down a couple of paddles and you're in control. (I wrote flight performance computer simulations for desk-top flight trainers for a few years. I heard some stories.)
I think having the vehicle control emergency systems is a lot safer than having the car completely drive itself at this point. It combines the best of what people are good at, which is being able to physically identify where they need to be on the road and maintain basic control, and what a computer is good at: namely, crunching numbers.
Humans are worse at thinking logically in situations where they have to emergency brake, or steer, etc. and are more prone to panic. If the computer could figure out these functions for the driver, that would make driving a car a lot safer in hazardous conditions.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
> a locked tire will slow you down faster than ABS in many circumstances.
Not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. This is the kind of incorrect belief that can get people killed.
For car tires, static friction (i.e., when the tire is rolling) is almost always significantly higher than dynamic friction (i.e., when the tire is skidding). In other words, skidding tires brake slower than rolling tires.
ABS makes your car more controllable; it also makes your car stop faster. This is, in almost all situations, not a tradeoff---ABS is simply flat-out better than non-ABS in all meaningful ways.
There is a reson why insurance companies don't give out ABS discounts any longer in places where it snows regularly. They don't work well because conditions are variable from one second to the next, and the algorithms that are programmed into the controllers can't measure intent. In fact, among people that I know that HAVE ABS on their vehicles, the first thing they do is pull the fuse to disable it in winter.
I wish I had done the same. My vehicle was involved in one moderate crash over a thirteen year span (I bought it new) and two minor ones due to the fact that the ABS controller was not programed with an optimal solution for downhill on ice, i.e. acceleration despite intervention by the controller. As a result not only was my stopping distance increased, but I was unable to actively steer the vehicle into the curb to gain additional traction from the median snow and from the collision with the curb.
Don't give me the "but the systems have improved since you first bought yours". No, they haven't. Try this on a northern winter day when conditions are icy - go out for a test drive in a new vehicle with ABS. Go to the nearest mall/shopping center, whatever. Get the car going, try to stop, measure the stopping distance. Now find the ABS fuse and remove it. Repeat test. Result: ABS makes car stop straighter, but increases stopping distance. In addition, ABS makes car stop dead-straight, (no you can't steer with ABS in near-zero-traction conditions - total myth - try it), so any chance you have of using a skid to maneuver yourself out of the way is completely out the window.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
...but, had I not had the ABS, I probably would have stopped sooner. It was a dry, high desert winter night in southeast Oregon. The deer couldn't decide to jump right or left so it jumped left (good idea) then decided to jump BACK into the path of the car. On the good side, I was driving a '90 Volvo 970. The box design did what it was supposed to do, it killed the-ever-living-frack out of Bambi, and my wife and I were able to make it down the road to check for repairs and send a reservation trooper after the carcas. We continued our trip.
Now, don't get me started with Volvo rounding the frame of their new cars. Nothing beats 300 pound livestock like a square nose.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
But by staying a little futher behind her you never would have had a "I fishtailed to keep from getting in an accident" story to tell us.
If you knew her lights were not working why would you be close enough to lessen your chance of stopping if she jams on the breaks for the Pink Elephant in the road. (they ARE there).
Drive a Lil' more carefully
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
One more technology that allows people to drive even more carelessly and dangerously, blindly relying on automation to keep the car under control. Physics will always remain the same, and I suspect that when the driver DOES lose control of the vehicle, the outcome is going to be all the worse for this.
Not to mention what happens when inexperienced drivers learn to drive with this stuff and then move to a vehicle without it. For example I have never driven a car without ABS and I suspect I need to kept well away from them, as I don't have the correct reflexes to prevent wheels from locking in an emergency.
There was once this British driving instructor who said that all cars should have a long, sharp spike protruding from the center of the steering wheel... it would be the best imaginable safety equipment.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
From the sounds of the review, it seems that this kicks in only when the car is pushed beyond certain limits, and that it performs certain actions faster than a human driver might be able to because the sensors and feedback mechanism are inherently faster through the computer than they are through the human behind the wheel. Humans can outperform the computer only when they correctly anticipate all of the road conditions.
Correctly applied, this can allow the human to push the car further than would otherwise be safe because you have fine grain closed-loop compensation that is superior to pure open-loop anticipation. The driver can offload a few unknowns onto the car's compensating systems and really dig into it. For one thing, I don't think I've seen a car with human inputs for controlling the torque available on each of the four wheels. In contrast, several of these high-end systems can do tricks like partially applying individual brakes to force the differential to divert torque to non-slipping wheels. Last thing I want is four brake pedals.
This has some implications. First, for a performance car, this should be relatively easily disabled, or at least severely restrained for cases where the driver wants to perform some "trick driving" actions inconsistent with "going down the road fast and staying on the road." e.g. intentional donuts, spinouts and burnouts. Second, when active, the system better not fail when the driver is relying on it to take up certain slack since a driver accustomed to the computer compensation has mentally offloaded some of the burden to the vehicle.
I don't think this is about putting kid gloves and nerf on the car.
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
The costs of regulation and safety really hinder the poor's ability to own and operate personal aircraft as well, but I doubt you lament the fact that we don't have many old jalopies blithely flying over your house dropping parts and avgas into your pool.