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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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
There exist a system fÃr detection of hinders in all cars. It's called a driver.
The driver should never use a feature of a car that can make it move in a way that it can hit a human.
Its common sense.
Just saying it like it are.
No, it sounds like Volvo's lawyers told him to point the finger to limit damage when the pedestrians file a civil suit against the driver and also name Volvo. Typical PR spin. Nothing to see here, these aren't the droids you're looking for, etc etc.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
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?
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.
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.
The car wasn't driving itself. The driver in the car stepped on the gas and drove into the people.
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.
It wasn't doing any autonomous movement so your premise is garbage and thus the rest of the post meaningless.
The idiot in the car backed up and then accelerated towards a group of people. Surprise, surprise, the car didn't magically stop and the people were hit.
Now, the car company in question does sell something that might have caused the car to apply the brakes automatically in that situation but it costs a bunch of money. Are you seriously claiming they need to include that on every car they make?
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.
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.
So, you're saying the "self-parking" bit the headline, summary and article describe is a complete red herring and had nothing to do with what the car was actually doing at the time?
If you say so. It doesn't invalidate anything I wrote, it just might not be applicable to the situation that the headline, summary, and article all apparently failed to describe.
Log in or piss off.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
The summary is luddite bullshit. The video has nothing to do with parking, it has to do with an auto-braking feature on some new Volvos that detects people and stops even if you're trying to ram them at full speed. But that feature costs extra money, and they didn't have it on the car they tried.
The video supports this contention, because it shows a dozen or so people standing in front of the car, several with cell phones out to film. The car is nowhere near a parking spot. It accelerates like the driver floored it, and nobody gets out of the way. Note that the way they did the test actually would have disabled the system even if they'd had the right car. As you say, all auto-driving technologies currently in use must be over-rideable by the driver, and this driver was flooring it manually.