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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.
This would be a very valid rant if the reporting here were correct. The car wasn't trying to park--it wasn't controlling itself. From T 2nd FA: "It seems they are trying to demonstrate pedestrian detection and auto-braking", which is what he didn't pay for. Even that feature is overridden if you keep pressing down on the gas. This is entirely driver error.
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.
The pedestrian avoidance is a completely separate piece of kit. The parking system is made of short range ultrasound sensors and/or cameras around the car. The pedestrian detection is a longer range *radar* detector looking forward, used when driving at city speeds. It's a much more expensive system so it's understandable that it isn't standard (yet).
Of course the parking system also detects humans like any other obstacle. It's just dumb sensors and cameras like cars have had for many years).
The article seems to indicate that hammering the accelerator bypasses the pedestrian avoidance system. So, whether or not one was installed, activated and functioning correctly the driver still would have hit those pedestrians because of the way they were driving.
Sigger than your average
Second, there is the "pedestrian detection system". This is a radar-based long-range detection system used when driving in the city (for auto alerting the diver and/or auto-breaking if a child runs out in the street, for example).
In order to do self-parking, only the parking assistance hardware is involved. The parking assstance avoids all obstacles, and of course it would never automatically move the car if it detected an obstacle. The pedestrian radar is an optional package simply because the hardware is still quite expensive. Of course there will always be optional extras on cars. Volvo is probabl class leading when it comes to having the safety features made standard as soon as possible, but this piece of kit is just too expensive yet
So: 1) Volvo does not "charge extra" for enabling some feature on hardware already included. 2) There is no "pedestrian detection" that can be enabled or disabled that relates to parking .It's a city driving pedestrian safety option. 3) Other cars with parking assist or automatic parking have anything other than the sensors (cameras/ultrasound) that Volvo use.
Parking had nothing to do with it. It wasn't a demo of the parking system, and the problem wasn't with the parking sensors. The demo showed someone try to use the pedestrian detection (city speed long range obstacle radar) when there wasn't one on the car.
City-safe (city safety really) is a system that automatically applies the brakes when it detects another vehicle within 6 meters of the front of the car with which a collision is imminent. It's designed for stop-n-go city traffic to avoid or at least reduce the severity of the relatively common low speed rear end accidents.
It has nothing to do with parking so avoiding pedestrians in that context is irrelevant.
The driver is a dumbass.
Volvo has a "automatically brake when a pedestrian collision is predicted" feature which costs a bunch of money and hence "not plowing through human beings" is an optional extra just like it is in almost every other car ever made. Of course it isn't even optional in most cars - though I'm sure you could retrofit the LIDAR and computer and so on.
Self parking is irrelevant, since that was not being used in the case in question.
It is in Paris; drivers there sometimes nudge other cars to widen a tight parking spot.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Some times, and only widen? Be wary of vehicles who's number plates indicate that they came from department 75. Having lived in Paris for a while it was always humorous to see someone with a huge ass Mercedes S class or BMW 7 series park it, especially if there was a smart car in front or behind them. I saw a number of smarts get pushed up onto the curb or into the vehicle in front or behind them.
Time to offend someone
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.