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Volvo Self-Parking Car Hits People Because Owner Didn't Pay For Extra Feature
schwit1 writes: A video that recently went viral shows a demonstration of a Volvo XC60's self-parking feature. It reverses itself, waits, and then confidently drives into a group of people at a non-negligible speed. (Two were hit, and while both were bruised, they were otherwise OK.) The situation was presumed to have resulted from a malfunction with the car — but the car might not have had the ability to recognize a human at all. A Volvo representative said the car was not equipped with the "Pedestrian detection" feature. That feature is sold as a separate package.
For that incredibly funny video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Similar situation.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
the car was not equipped with the "Pedestrian detection" feature. That feature is sold as a separate package.
Release to market with minimum feature set, Microsoft would be proud.
.. or robot car uprising?
I for one welcome our robot car overlords!
- I choked on the red pill and now I'm stuck in limbo
Shouldn't a human without any major cognitive disabilities know not to trigger the auto-parking feature when there were people standing in the spot?
Volvo's comments in the Fusion article also suggest that the pedestrian detection feature would not have helped, given that the driver appears to be accelerating towards the people injured. If somebody is driving a car at you, follow your instincts and get out of the way.
A more appropriate title would be: "Idiot hits pedestrians after purposely setting up his vehicle to do so, hoping it wouldn't."
That didn't look like a parking attempt. How is "ramming speed" the first step of parking?
I don't quite the understand the situation. Even if the car is unable to recognize pedestrians, should it just drive into 'unknown' obstacles like that?
Any vehicle that is capable of any kind of autonomous movement that doesn't include pedestrian (or dog, or cat, or cyclist) detection is defective, period.
Any auto manufacturer that makes such a vehicle is 100% liable for any deaths or injuries that happen during said autonomous movement, period.
This isn't rocket science. This should be considered "seat belt saves lives" level of mandatory.
Now, someone needs to get cracking with that recall...
Log in or piss off.
I'm a pedestrian, I have right of way.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Oh, you wanted brakes, too? I don't see anything on the invoice about brakes.
Sorry, in 2015 this isn't really considered much of an accomplishment anymore.
Self-driving car: recognizing humans is an optional feature now is it?
Great, waiting for the day brakes are an optional feature for traditional cars in these beancounters' books.
A quote from TFA: âoeThe pedestrian detection would likely have been inactivated due to the driver inactivating it by intentionally and actively accelerating,â Larsson said. âoeHence, the auto braking function is overrided by the driver and deactivated.â
So was the car driving or did the driver just cancel the process and try to run over someone? It sounds like the latter from the quote.
No matter how old it is, I still can't fathom the "extra" scheme applied to the automotive industry. It's not enough that most companies (especially luxury brands) already price their cars exorbitantly high, covering most R&D cost for technology it does not ship with as stock, yet they keep multiplying and over-complicating the extra packages in ways that if you want to add a single extra essential feature, you are pretty much forced to add 10 more (I guess Volvo guys forgot it this time but I bet they intended to do it). Why can't all cars be more like a Model S and ship with the most relevant technological developments "out of the box" (as there is no stand per se, it must come in a box). And I'm not even talking about the fact it's an electric car.
The car did not hit people because the owner didn't pay for an extra feature. The car hit people because the driver made an error, assuming the car had a feature the car did not have.
Get stuck while offroading? It's not the car's fault you didn't buy the 4WD version.
Damage the engine by filling up with diesel instead of regular gas? It's not the car's fault you didn't buy the model with the diesel engine.
Injured because your car didn't notify the manufacturer when it was in an accident? It's not the car's fault you didn't pay for the accident monitoring service.
This is a slippery slope. We must hold the driver accountable.
*All* cars today will confidently drive into a people. Most of them only do so by moving forward or backward in whatever direction they are pointed. The fact that this car has a button that backs up, does a little turn, then pulls forward does NOT change the chain of responsibility. Ex: Suppose my car has a button that drives forward 10 feet, honks, spins around, then drives backward 10 feet. Can I blame the manufacturer when I hit the button and run someone over? We can't let that become the standard.
Oh, did my drone just gun down a bunch of children? Blame Boeing, their bid for the child detection feature was too expensive! -- I DON'T THINK SO FOLKS!
Question: Does the brake still work in self-park mode?
IMO all of the reporting on this is ambiguous and expects us to know what stuff like "City-safe" means, without defining it.
Surely the vehicle already has to avoid obstacles to park?* Why does avoiding pedestrians cost extra?
It would be very helpful if someone who truly understand this could clear it up. Is the driver really a dumbass who should have known better, or is Volvo insanely treating "not plowing through human beings" as an optional extra?
* Or does it? I admit I have no experience with self-parking cars. How much preparation/setup (i.e. like "pre-washing" for a dishwasher) is required on the part of the driver? Is the driver expected to position the car in a certain way, and make sure certain obstacles aren't present?
Yeah...
Volvo might want to reevaluate their history and purpose for existing.
I believe almost all of the self parking cars currently available to the public more accurately described as hands free more than completely automated. From what I gather, the driver is still required to operate the pedals (for liability purposes rather than technical reasons).
It was the driver's responsibility to operate it safely (ie not stamp on the accelerator and actually look at what's ahead), the fact that a premium feature could have compensated for the idiot behind the wheel is moot. It's akin to driving straight at a brick wall then complaining that the accident was caused by a car company not giving you "brick wall avoidance" as a feature in your model rather than you doing something stupid.
Companies want to make (partly) autonomous vehicle activity, but the "don't kill people" component is a fucking upgrade? What asshole in marketing thought that was a good idea?
I keep saying, autonomous vehicles are all or nothing ... either you completely trust it, or you completely don't. There is zero middle ground.
Some half-assed measure of "well, it mostly works, but you need to watch out for pedestrians" or suddenly getting "hey, human, you'll die if you don't get us out of this mess in 3 seconds" basically mean this crap is a toy, and not ready to function in the real world.
So, until such time as Google (or whoever makes it) takes legal and financial responsibility for everything its car does (which they never will) ... then people should either carry a lot of extra insurance, or simply not buy one of these things.
Because when you kill someone, you can bet your ass the car company won't be stepping in to pay your legal bills. And since it's your car, you deserve what you got.
Self driving cars is technology's latest form of onanism. And I remain very skeptical they'll be safe or trustworthy for a very long time.
I'm just waiting for the first driver to be imprisoned because his autonomous car killed someone, and the criminal negligence falls to them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"The gasoline fume containment package is extra." --Volvo
According to Volvo, it was a demo of the vehicle's collision-avoidance systems, not self-parking. Choosing to do so:
1) Without paying for collision avoidance
2) At speeds at which collision avoidance does not function
is entirely the fault of the operator.
I'd like to see how this car drives itself with the challenges presented on an episode of "Canada's Worst Driver".
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
TFA said:
He said the car is not attempting to self-park. “It seems they are trying to demonstrate pedestrian detection and auto-braking"[while the car is under human control]
So not nearly as sinister as a self driving car that charges extra for a vital feature. It costs extra because it requires them to stick a radar in the car, and radars cost money; and it's fine that they charge extra as all of these cars should be equipped with a pedestrian avoidance system anyway, namely a driver.
RTFA. The headline is outright WRONG. The driver intentionally accelerated towards pedestrians assuming the car would stop itself independent of any kind of self parking feature.
How is this Volvo's fault?
You can't just pretend your car can do things it doesn't have the capability to do. RTFM.
While the people in this video are utter morons(even if you have actually verified the existence of a safety cut-off on a dangerous piece of hardware; Why would you test it on yourself?); Volvo's response seems...tactically unwise.
There may be good reasons for the 'pedestrian detection' feature to be an extra purchase(more sensors, more DSP, recouped development costs, etc.) or it may just be a single bit in the firmware waiting to be flipped in a magic screwdriver upgrade; but either way, "Yeah, we have a feature that would have prevented that accident; but it didn't because we prefer to charge more for it." seems like the sort of statement that is likely to attract the wrong sort of scrutiny.
If you admit to having the mature capability; how long before failing to include it is negligence? Will you be able to keep it as an add-on, rather than a standard feature like antilock braking? Are you absolutely sure that your sales people didn't misrepresent the capabilities of what they sold? and so on.
It seems as though they'd be much better off just issuing a flat 'don't do stupid irresponsible things' and quietly dropped the matter.
Years ago Volvo invented and patented the three-point seat belt. But they found it to be such a boon to safety that they gave it away without royalties.
Today, "pedestrian detection" costs extra?
No matter how old it is, I still can't fathom the "extra" scheme applied to the automotive industry.
It's rather simple so let me break it down for you. 1) Not everybody wants, needs or can afford every feature. 2) Automakers can sell more cars if they offer them at a range of prices. 3) People like to customize their vehicles because having something a little unique is valued. 4) If people weren't willing to pay extra for options then they would quickly not be offered. 5) Bundling options keeps complexity down to a manageable level and if done right improves profits for the manufacturer.
Why can't all cars be more like a Model S and ship with the most relevant technological developments "out of the box"
If people start gravitating with their dollars towards that business model then that is what will happen. I think it is unlikely but stranger things have happened. However remember that you are talking about a $100,000 luxury car so the rules are quite a bit different than for the market for a minivan or pickup that costs 1/3 of the price of the Tesla.
The video does not show any auto-driving. It seems like they were trying to demonstrate an auto-brake accident avoidance feature.
Basically, the driver (appearing to be fully in control the whole time) reversed the car and then gunned it, aiming at the pedestrians. I'm guessing the expectation was that auto-brake would kick in before ploughing into the bystanders.
This was a boneheaded move on part of the driver and the idiots who agreed to basically be crash test dummies. Fifth Gear tested auto-braking with a sophisticated dummy car, and it didn't always work reliably (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?...).
Just to reiterate, this was not any kind of auto-driving failure.
You almost have to stand in awe and wonder at the level of stupidity exhibited by a car company (the brand once synonymous with safety) creating a vehicle that operates with any level of autonomy without basic collision avoidance. Whether human, fire hydrant, light pole, vehicle, or wall; an autonomous vehicle should not be able to proceed should an obstacle be in its way.
Humans are capable of saying and doing all manner of ill-conceived things. It's part of our nature, and we all do something dumb from time to time. But this is an entirely different level. It's a decision so divorced from reality that it's difficult to find a comparison.
It's like an elevator that will move up or down with the doors still open and people half-way through, unless you buy a separate software package to check for that.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Same thing happened to me last week when my Jeep Cherokee was parking and it did not detect a lady passing by. Luckily my friends in the car noticed it and an accident was avoided. Pedestrian detection must be a mandatory feature on self driving/parking cars and it need to be a law.
RTFA. They were trying to demo pedestrian detection and driver was aiming at the people, but the car didn't have that extra so people were hit. Nothing to do with automatic parking.
Yesterday's news....tomorrow!
Spotting a car is easy. Spotting people, or other random obstacles, not so much.
Cars tend to be large and made of hard reflective surfaces. 2 or 3 ultrasonic sensors at fixed locations in the bumper is enough to notice a car and avoid hitting it. Those sensors are cheap, and you can probably run them with an 8-bit PIC.
A system to detect random objects is much more involved. More and better sensors, vastly more complicated program and a real CPU to run it. In this case, radar and a camera, both of which require lots of processing to use. All quite expensive.
Even better, the car wasn't parking itself. From the two articles, it sounds like the driver hit the gas with the expectation that the car was going to prevent him from running into people. It wasn't capable of that, and wouldn't have overridden his explicit action even if it were.
See that "Preview" button?
If you RTFA, it is the driver who plowed into the pedestrians. He assumed the car would detect the pedestrians and slam on the brakes for him, but it turns out the car did not have the feature or it was disabled. A stupid, dangerous stunt on the part of the people involved, and some seriously dishonest reporting.
This is the same as if the pilot told a self flying plane to fly into the Alps. Do you sue the company who made the plane because it allowed the pilot to do this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They're just another kind of obstacle. Either the self-parking feature stops before running into obstacles ... or it doesn't and it's entirely up to the driver to prevent the car from doing so.
Idiots who get wounded or killed, testing a bulletproof vest.
Running over the media is a feature, not a bug.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a15736/volvo-self-parking-car-accident-video-dont-worry/
They apparently were NOT using the auto park feature at all! They were just driving at pedestrians and expecting the car to stop on its own. Your car won't do it and the option isn't even available.
Summary from TFA:
(1) The car isn't self-parking, it's under driver control.
(2) Pedestrian detection wouldn't have helped because the driver was overriding the automatic features of the car.
Pedestrian detection costs extra money because it requires installing a radar and camera.
Well, it used to. Heck, they invented seat belts or at least were the first to start seriously using them.
If you've got a safety feature you can include at trivial incremental cost, ethically, you have to include it.
The customer didn't pay for me to configure the soft overtravels, so the trolley hit the hard stop.
Sorry the operator got a concussion from the impact. Should have followed the posted safety placard.
Not my fault. Next time pay me.
This is what happens when you trust in technology, rather that your own God given senses."Psalm 20:7 (KJV) Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God."
Can I interest you in this blue button to get you back down? -Daffy the Duck
This is a video of a person driving into some other people. The car was not "trying to park itself" nor under any other sort of autonomous control. It is speculated in TFA that the driver mistakenly thought the car would automatically stop him from ramming the people he was intentionally accelerating towards. There is further speculation about why it didn't work, including that the car may not have had that functionality installed, and that maybe it did, but even if so the way he was driving (i.e. significant acceleration) would override the pedestrian-avoidance function. Sometimes it seems like there is a faction with an agenda against self-driving cars spreading as much misinformation as possible.
I think the guys that f'd that up just guaranteed that every possible safety protocol/program/add-on is *mandated* by any government, or regulatory agency that has anything to do with OK'ing automated vehicles. None of that "package" bullshit.
"Oh, you want to detect pets? That's another $500. Per year." or "Parallel parking is a bitch, isn't it? We can sell you that package too... But oh, do you want the plugin for parallel parking that will prevent you from whacking into the curb, streetlights, or people while it's doing so? Fork it over, bitches."
The prior owners of Volvo would not have done it that badly.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In my experience, Volvos expect you to get out of their way. Not the other way round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's open for debate, but my view is everybody DOES want every feature they can have.
Not really. If I've got a pickup I use for hauling dirt at work in sketchy neighborhoods I'm going to want a pretty minimal feature set. No point in having a fancy touch screen or satellite radio. If you are buying a car for your mom you might not want that 400HP turbocharged engine but you might want it for yourself along with that fancy rear spoiler wing. Different people have different needs and wants. Similarly many features cost significant cash and adding them can often put the cost of the vehicle out of reach for those of lesser means even if they desire.
Different ranges will cater to different markets (more revenue), but not necessarily more profit.
I think you may not fully understand the economics at work. My apologies if what I'm about to outline is already known to you. I'm a certified accountant and have done some of this work in my day job. This is an over-simplification but more features = more cost to the manufacturer = higher price to customer.
Margins are usually higher with more features but every vehicle has a minimum required profit margin which is typically called a hurdle rate by finance folks. As a general practice the auto maker won't make the car unless they can get at least the hurdle rate margin for it. (the exact rate is arbitrarily chosen but is indexed for the risk of the investment) They also have fixed costs (tooling, assembly lines, salaries, engineering costs, etc) that they need to recoup and which don't change whether they sell 1 vehicle or 1 million vehicles. If they only sell fully pimped out vehicles they are leaving profit on the table because they will have to amortize those fixed costs over fewer vehicles. Even though the might make less margin on the less optioned out vehicle, their unit costs will fall because they sell more of them and can spread their fixed costs over more vehicles.
It's more complex than this but companies maximize profit when when marginal revenue = marginal cost. That is the additional revenue gained from selling one more car just equals the additional cost of selling that one more car. By offering vehicles with fewer options at a lower price point they push out to the point where marginal cost hockey sticks up from over production and increases profit to the manufacturer. Wikipedia has a good article on what is going on.
No. Most cars aren't works of art, because art is one of the few "industries" where uniqueness is key. Save for some limited-edition, luxury cars, that point is moot. Extras rarely value a car, age and exclusivity do.
Has nothing to do with cars being (or not) works of art. People don't (usually) demand that their car be truly unique but they do demand that they be personalized to a significant degree. People choose different paint colors, different engines, different wheels, etc. Car customization is a multi-billion dollar industry both at the OEM and aftermarket levels. I work in the industry and I can assure you that people do not want exactly the same vehicle as the next guy and many are willing to pay to get it. Companies that do not accommodate this to some degree are leaving money on the table. The US manufacturers tend to offer more options and the Japanese less with the Europeans somewhere in between. Even Tesla offers several power trains, trim packages and other options - roughly on par with what you see from the Japanese automakers for certain vehicles.
I bought a new Sony CD/DVD drive to replace a failed drive, but when I tried to watch a DVD movie there was no sound and a message that I had to purchase some dolby software license to get it back. Only phucking windows would allow crap like this. Switched to Linux shortly thereafter.
“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” -- Terry Pratchett
Of all the features to make optional, "pedestrian detection" is not one of them.
Either include that in the auto parking feature or do not include an auto parking feature.
Really... these auto driving features are premature in most cases. People need to take responsibility for what their own cars do and not fob it off on dubious auto pilot systems.
That said, I don't even like automatic transmissions... I'm convinced that they're responsible for stop and go traffic. People with manual transmissions do not accelerate and then jam on the breaks over and over and over again. Instead, the whole highway keeps a consistent speed.
it is why in such traffic I get behind the biggest semi I can find. That semi is NOT accelerating and stopping over and over again. That guy is going to go the average speed of traffic. I get behind him... and an otherwise stressful drive becomes quite peaceful.
When we have fully automated cars, I think it might get better just because I'm convinced that most issues on the roads are caused by fucktard drivers. And maybe the robots will be less stupid. But who knows.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The article says it crashed into journalists. Journalists aren't people.
The article seems to indicate that hammering the accelerator bypasses the pedestrian avoidance system.
In case you *want* to run someone over? Brilliant!
You can practically hear "'Murika!" out of your mouth.
Oh, and FYI, the site having a physical location in the United States doesn't mean what you're implying it means.
In short, stop being puerile and get a grip on the global Internet. You're an embarrassment to ACs everywhere.
STFU n' quit cryin bitch, face the music here http://linux.slashdot.org/comm...
Collision avoidance is a feature that comes standard in humans. The guy who got hit just wasn't obeying his.
A Faggot is a bunch of sticks. A Fag is a Cigarette.
Homosexual Ciggs everywhere, rejoice in your freedom.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Some are saying this is a total non-story because this is just like every other car on the road: in general when a driver presses the gas cars move and don't automatically sense obstacles and stop. The car wasn't operating in a completely autonomous manner, it only moved when the driver stepped on the gas, so the driver was being an idiot and essentially backed into the pedestrians himself.
But if I'm understanding the situation, I still think there's an interesting issue going on: when control of the car is split like that, it's not necessarily obvious what the driver is controlling and what the car is controlling. In this case I think the car is steering, and the human is controlling the gas. That's a potentially confusing mode in which to operate a vehicle, and could legitimately be questioned as a design decision.
I think the human driver could reasonably tell what he was instructing the car to do and indeed was being an idiot, but I also think manufacturers shouldn't get a free pass just because human input was required to make the car move.
Is this like, your new computerized prosthetic leg/hand/heart has been attached, but the software to regulate it so that it has no surges is extra?
Or is this "we hired new grads at ridiculously low wages, assuring that we got grads from the bottom half of the class, then gave them insanely short deadlines, so that they were writing the code in 60 or 70 hour weeks, and they'd never gotten the class they don't teach in school, error catching and handling, and that's what's running this, and they have to pay for the "extra", which was written by programmers (#insert nose_in_air.h; developers()) with some years of experience, who they had to pay a *lot* more for?
mark
My favorite disclaimer of late was in a commercial for drink pouches. The ad showed a bunch of kids playing in a pool/waterpark, and that super-tiny, flash-by text at the bottom of the screen read: "your parents should always supervise you around water."
I'm just glad my kids are simultaneously stupid enough to think they should swim alone because it was happening in a commercial, yet smart enough to read and heed disclaimers
My dearest Volvo, As a proud owner of a '96 850R, I love you very much. That being said however, running over people is not an "option". Any questions, feel free to contact me. Best regards, -an owner.
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
It was just a natural reaction, a sort of self defense mechanism. Self driving cars tend to feel threatened by the presence people...
How is that optional?
.. was working as perfectly