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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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
Except, of course, that it wasn't a self-driving car, simply a self-steering parking mode, and the driver had full control over the speed at all times. Le sigh...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!