Slashdot Mirror


10 Major Automakers Agree To Include Automatic Emergency Braking On New Vehicles

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Department of Transportation, and Institute for Highway Safety announced today a landmark agreement from 10 of the world's biggest automakers to include automatic emergency braking on all new vehicles as a standard safety feature. The car manufacturers are: Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. "Automatic emergency braking includes a range of systems designed to address the large number of crashes, especially rear-end crashes, in which drivers do not apply the brakes or fail to apply sufficient braking power to avoid or mitigate a crash. AEB systems use on-vehicle sensors such as radar, cameras or lasers to detect an imminent crash, warn the driver and, if the driver does not take sufficient action, engage the brakes."

54 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. Translated by flipper9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

    1. Re:Translated by knightghost · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's a next step, but this one is just another way to interfere with a driver. My traction control system tries to murder me at least twice every winter.

    2. Re:Translated by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actual use could also be problematic. I occasionally have to reverse down a steep exit from a driveway onto a road and that always sets off the parking sensors because the sensors react to the approaching pavement without detecting the vehicle current disposition, being on a steep driveway. Will that mean the car will brake and leave me permanently perched on that driveway.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re:Translated by alexhs · · Score: 5, Funny

      You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

      That technology already exists. It's usually called a police roadblock.

      --
      I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
    4. Re:Translated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

      Even assuming that it isn't controllable remotely -- who is going to answer for accidents that happen when emergency break activate by accident?

    5. Re:Translated by vux984 · · Score: 2

      Will that mean the car will brake and leave me permanently perched on that driveway.

      1) Automatic emergency braking has been around for a few years already. If that was going to be an issue, we'd have already heard about it.

      2) IIRC the emergency braking is disengaged below a threshold speed. How fast due you hit the street off your driveway?

    6. Re:Translated by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      the real issue is that the cost of cars is going to go up again.

      But the cost of insurance will go down.

      the truth is they will make more money per car sold, and raise the cost of entry level cars

      Car manufacturing is an very competitive business. If they could just raise prices, and expect consumers to accept it, they would have already done so.

      This is proven technology, that is already installed in millions of cars. In mass production, it will add little to the cost of new cars. The cost saved in avoided or less severe accidents will likely overwhelm the equipment cost.

    7. Re:Translated by alangmead · · Score: 2

      Very few of the rear end collisions that this type of system protects against have fatalities. Even relatively few injuries compared to other accidents. What we are mostly talking about here would be reducing property damage (the car collided into) so insurance claims will go down (to the benefit of the ones collecting the insurance premiums) This will also be a boon to the companies who own the automatic emergency braking patents, as they get to license them to the other auto manufacturers.

    8. Re:Translated by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      oh but you see, they now have the blessing passing the buck, in the name of safety!

      Except markets don't work that way. There is no requirement to "pass the buck" to justify price increases. If they want to change the price, they can just change it, and car retailers do that daily, as supply and demand fluctuate.

    9. Re:Translated by SydShamino · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This safety feature mostly helps the person being hit, not the one doing the hitting.

      --
      It doesn't hurt to be nice.
    10. Re:Translated by vtcodger · · Score: 2

      I suppose that it'll be a net plus since most driving is done on OK roads and not everyone pays as much attention to other vehicles as one might hope.. But I agree with you. The poorer the driving conditions the less well ABS works. In heavy snow, having the wheels lock up more or less at random and not stay locked makes directional control when stopping really difficult. Not that driving more than a few mph on ice or in heavy snow is usually all that great an idea. But it IS annoying to have the car go out of its way to make an already difficult task harder.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    11. Re:Translated by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      The poorer the driving conditions the less well ABS works. In heavy snow, having the wheels lock up more or less at random and not stay locked makes directional control when stopping really difficult.

      If the wheels lock up, that's because you braked too hard. ABS unlocks them for you, giving you more directional control. If you want better directional control still, don't brake so hard.

    12. Re:Translated by FranTaylor · · Score: 5, Informative

      Very few of the rear end collisions that this type of system protects against have fatalities.

      Whiplash injuries are really horrible, the damage is permanent and painful forever. They happen even in low speed collisions. You've completely neglected the fact that whiplash injuries will be greatly reduced.

    13. Re:Translated by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      >What kind of crappy car has ABS that still allows you to lock up the wheels when stomping on the brakes?

      The kind that's driving on icy roads. ABS can only detect lockup if there's a difference in wheelspin rates. When you're sliding across ice and slam on the brakes, they're all going to stop at once, even though the car will keep moving. So, as the parent said, if your brakes lock up like that, you braked too hard. These systems are a great help, but they aren't 100% foolproof.

    14. Re:Translated by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've never heard of automatic emergency braking while in reverse, just when moving forward.

    15. Re:Translated by davester666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      In heavy snow and/or ice, when your wheels are not rotating, your vehicle is going to continue sliding in whatever direction it currently is moving, regardless of which direction you have the front wheels pointed.

      ABS RELEASES your brakes, so the wheels can rotate, both giving you more control over which direction you go AND working to increase the friction between your tires and the surface they are on [as when the tire is sliding, the coefficient of friction between the tire and the surface is LESS than it would be if the tire is rotating.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    16. Re:Translated by Jeremi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      i think people should be able to decide for themselves how much safety equipment they want to have

      That would be fine if the only people who suffered were the people who made the bad decisions. In this case, however, it's not only the inattentive-and-cheap car owner who suffers, but also whatever (or whomever) he runs into.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    17. Re:Translated by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean that automakers are allowing the police to stop people's vehicles at any time for any reason, remotely.

      Oh come off it.

      This technology is already in lots and lots of cars, its being advertised heavily by at least a half dozen car companies, from Subaru all the way up to Mercedes.
      When have you ever seen police stop anybody electronically?

      The technology has been proven for years in options packages or standard equipment on higher priced cars, and these days on mid priced cars.
      I've had it since 2012, and it has never once false alarmed and applied brakes inappropriately. It can detect and warn me of slower traffic AHEAD of the car in front of me, even when the car ahead has not yet realized it is approaching a crash.

      I'm embarrassed to admit It has braked the car at least a couple times for me when I was distracted.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    18. Re:Translated by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

      Even if you lock them up hard (which is easy to do when on glare ice) the traction control system still detects that the wheels have stopped.
      Some systems used initertial sensors, but it was found that drivers will steer during a skid, and this fact can be used by the computer that it is in a 4 wheel skid.

      Modern electronic stability control systems are an evolution of the ABS concept. Here, a minimum of two additional sensors are added to help the system work: these are a steering wheel angle sensor, and a gyroscopic sensor. The theory of operation is simple: when the gyroscopic sensor detects that the direction taken by the car does not coincide with what the steering wheel sensor reports, the ESC software will brake the necessary individual wheel(s) (up to three with the most sophisticated systems), so that the vehicle goes the way the driver intends.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    19. Re: Translated by stevedog · · Score: 2

      It is an issue already. I have PreSafe braking on my car (2015), which will automatically beep if closing on a car such that your rate of deceleration will be insufficient to prevent a collision, and then brakes if you get especially close and are braking but just not enough.

      It has gone off quite a few times when I am getting close to a car that is turning, because it can't detect the "rate of turn" and figure out that by the time I get there, the car won't be there anymore. It sometimes even does this on oddly contoured road with no other cars, like a decline approaching an inclining turn (sees the road as an unmoving object).

      I like the feature overall, because unless I am already braking, all that happens is a tone sounding, and it's especially nice in stop-and-go traffic. If the car had actually slammed on the brakes each time, though, I would not be nearly as excited.

    20. Re:Translated by epyT-R · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure the diminishing amounts of safety gained by these kinds of gimmicks is worth the massive distraction factor they cause. The solution isn't to enable people who can't be bothered to drive properly. The solution is to get distracted drivers off the road.

    21. Re:Translated by davester666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes. And in that exact situation, non-ABS brakes would do exactly the same thing. And there are also situations where ABS activating is worse than if it didn't activate. Just like seatbelts and airbags will kill some people. But for the vast majority of cases where it does activate, it results in the driver having more control and being able to stop faster than if it did not activate.

      Formula 1 didn't ban ABS brakes because they didn't work well. It was because they worked too well.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    22. Re: Translated by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The thing is, you are assuming that the car that is turning won't be there anymore. This is not given. The car might abort the turn for some reason, it might stall, it might take longer than you expect. Better to slow down.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    23. Re: Translated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "figure out that by the time I get there, the car won't be there anymore"

      YOU IDIOT!

      Please stop driving like this. I bet you also assume that a pedestrian crossing the road a 100 yards ahead of you is going to get out of the way in time?

      What happens if the pedestrian trips and stumbles in the road? What if that turning car sees an obstruction to the turn and stops? They are focussing on the road/drive they are turning into and you aren't, so there's every chance you won't see the obstruction.

      You MUST treat all obstructions as potential stoppages and slow down accordingly. Yes, on average you'll end up going a little slowly, but it's infinitely safer.

    24. Re: Translated by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      I had to disable it once, in mid slow-motion skid on snow as I was approaching a retaining wall. I'm not sure what the car was trying to do, but it was not working.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    25. Re:Translated by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      The best way to accomplish that seems to be to be to lock all four wheels and use the steering to control direction while the vehicle slowly slithers to a stop.

      Wrong

      Not only do you have less control over direction when the wheels are locked than when they're unlocked, but your car will stop more slowly.

    26. Re: Translated by icebike · · Score: 2

      Not confusingly at all. These systems are one and the same in mist modern cars. Once you have the hardware to do one, adding the other is dirt cheap. You will seldom see a vehicle sold wwit one bbu not the other.

      Reread what I posted.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  2. Glad to have it by crow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bought a new car this year, and it has it. I'm very glad to have it, even though it has triggered once or twice when there was nothing there due to a sensor glitch. The reason I have a new car is that I failed to brake in time to avoid an accident.

    Yes, the technology isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than not having it.

    As we get more of these features, it should result in fewer accidents and lower insurance rates.

    1. Re: Glad to have it by cosm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It should, but what about externalities. People become more reliant on it and could end up paying even less attention rather than pay fucking attention to the car in front of them. Speculation is moot. Show me trials before it becomes federal law or some ilk like that.

      --
      'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    2. Re: Glad to have it by FranTaylor · · Score: 5, Informative

      People become more reliant on it and could end up paying even less attention rather than pay fucking attention to the car in front of them.

      the whole point here is that humans are really poor drivers, they kill tens of thousands every year. expecting them do to better is really just folly. they need help.

    3. Re: Glad to have it by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think you misspelt "Americans" there.

      No, Americans are actually among the better drivers in the world.

      Maybe you should try looking at the accident death rates for different countries.

    4. Re: Glad to have it by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the whole point here is that humans are really poor drivers

      I think you misspelt "Americans" there.

      Nope. Americans are not particularly bad drivers. Here is a list of traffic fatalities by country, both per capita, and by distance driven. Americans are no where near the bottom.

    5. Re: Glad to have it by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same argument has been made about ABS, traction control, electronic stability programs and similar changes that mitigate or hide the forces at work until they overwhelm the system or that take away part of the work like cruise control and so on. At least so far the conclusion has been that even though people push the limits, overall it does good. Particularly if they limit the scope to hard/emergency braking or even just damage reduction, so you normally want to brake yourself. I mean, clearly if you do the math of distance and speed you at some point cross the threshold where a crash is inevitable, but there's still time to turn a high-speed impact into a low-speed impact. And that matters a lot, it's still an accident but they're not all equal.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re: Glad to have it by akgooseman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Americans are nowhere near the bottom of the list of all the countries in the world. If you compare us to the first world countries on that list: we're really shitty drivers.

    7. Re: Glad to have it by Jeremi · · Score: 2

      Speculation is moot. Show me trials before it becomes federal law or some ilk like that.

      I've discovered this really useful web site called "The Google", it lets you type in a search term like "studies of the effectiveness of automatic braking systems", and it will show you what you're looking for. It's really cool!

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    8. Re: Glad to have it by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

      Part of that is because the standards to obtain a drivers licence in the US is a joke. Go to Germany and see how much time, money, and effort is required, then come here and show up with a pulse and get a licence. (more or less)

    9. Re: Glad to have it by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

      I've discovered this really useful web site called "The Google", it lets you type in a search term like "studies of the effectiveness of automatic braking systems", and it will show you what you're looking for. It's really cool!

      What is shocking is that this is a tech site, and it is full of Luddites!

  3. This is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My last 2 accidents came from being rear ended by jackoff distracted drivers. One of them was quite serious.

  4. Re:The first fuse I pull by FranTaylor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    bullshit, no way I'm letting the car brake for me.

    if you have ABS, the car is already deciding when you can brake and when you can't.

    if you have an automatic transmission, the "gas" pedal is merely a "suggestion" to the system that actually controls the throttle.

    if you are driving on public roadways you have already agreed to follow whatever regulations the government has decided to impose on you

  5. List of "major automakers" by crow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like that all of the Big Three American automakers are included: Ford, GM, and Tesla.

    The biggest names missing are Fiat/Chrysler, Honda, Hyundai, and Kia. I'm not surprised that the Koreans aren't included, as they are going for the bottom of the market where there's not as much padding for added costs.

    1. Re:List of "major automakers" by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is also easy for Tesla to "volunteer", since all of their cars already have this technology. So they are agreeing to do nothing.

    2. Re:List of "major automakers" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Honda offer it on all models in Japan, so I'd be surprised if they didn't join in anyway. Kia are trying to become a major player too, e.g. releasing an EV that's actually quite good, so I bet they will offer it as well.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  6. Re: How dare they? by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And you also have the responsibility of paying for poor decisions. .

    How precisely does one bring back the dead? Do you really think that perpetrators are actually capable of restoring the damage they've caused? huh?

  7. Here's an Idea... by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why don't we put some effort into human factors and get people to put their hands on the wheel and pay attention?

    If you're going to get fancy and throw technology at the problem, how about spending some effort to force people to shut their fucking cell phones off while driving? There has to be a way that you can brick cell phones while it is in the vehicle. Get some people on this, find a way. I see idiots fumbling on their phone and drifting off the highway or across lanes of traffic all the time. Let's fix this, OK?

    Automating car response like braking is not going to work well on a snowy day with slick roads. Might be dandy in sunny, dry California, but the rest of the world actually has weather and precipitation. Having cars slamming on the brakes randomly because the computer mistook a drift of snowflakes or blowing leaves for a car bumper is going to cause more accidents, not less.

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    1. Re:Here's an Idea... by FranTaylor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why don't we put some effort into human factors and get people to put their hands on the wheel and pay attention?

      Humans are proven to be terrible drivers, they kill tens of thousands of people every year. "Human factors" are not going to get rid of the screaming child in the back seat and they are not going to solve the argument you are having with your spouse. Humans can and will get distracted and kill people. It happens every day. Rearraging the controls on the dashboard is not going to solve any of these problems.

    2. Re:Here's an Idea... by ThatAblaze · · Score: 2

      I think humans have proven to be amazingly excellent drivers in general. Every time I have occasion to visit a wall-mart parking lot I look at the people and think "Man! Kudos to that freak of nature for getting all the way from their house to the parking lot without swerving off the road!"

      When I think of how the average person manages to make hundreds of trips in a row without a collision despite the fact that we have evolved zero traits to support safe driving I get all teary with pride. 200 years ago there was no need for anyone to learn to drive, and yet today the vast majority of the population manages to do it with over 99% success rate. If I was an alien from another planet and I was reading statistics on how the human population behaved I would assume that we couldn't possibly be as good of drivers as we are.

  8. Tesla is not a Big Three company by RobinEggs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The so-called Big Three automakers in America are Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Tesla has yet to ship even 100,000 vehicles in one year; the rest each have over a dozen models that ship that many, several that ship well over a million, and there's a few models between them that ship into the tens of millions.

    Sorry to be so pedantic and punchy in correcting this, but I think it's a little annoying - bordering on delusional - how often slashdot people, reddit people, etc. give Tesla and SpaceX credit for things far, far beyond what they've actually accomplished so far. Those companies have impressive potential, but they're **far** from replacing Chrysler, NASA, Lockheed, or any other the other entities in their markets.

    1. Re:Tesla is not a Big Three company by cliffjumper222 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, from a market cap perspective, the big three are Ford, GM and Telsa. Fiat-Chrysler was eclipsed by Telsa back in '13:

      Ford - $54.4B
      GM - $47.7B
      Tesla - $32B
      Fiat-Chrysler - $18.8B

  9. Re:and what stops by SirSlud · · Score: 2

    All this does is do what you should be doing anyhow. If the guy behind you is going to rear-end you because you stopped safely to avoid a collision, he was doing to rear-end you after you rear-end the car ahead of you. This isn't rocket science. The only thing that understandably scares people is that if computers are making decisions for us, even if it makes a significant reduction in accidents, we feel like we could have done better had the computer not intervened. It's a blame thing. But any accidents involve victims who did nothing but be in the wrong car at the wrong time. But yes, we crave control, it's built into our fabric of the instinct to survive. Unfortunately, we're also great at making things that we can't control very well.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  10. Re:The first fuse I pull by Predius · · Score: 2

    No, it doesn't. (And yes, I drive stick, and also road race motorcycles and am familiar with clutchless shifting using the throttle there.) The ignition cut out is what temporarily unloads the transmission making for a smoother shift, the linkage doesn't 'pull back' on the throttle. Think of it this way, have you ever felt the throttle pedal 'push back' more during a shift? You actually don't need to unload a traditional planetary gear automatic to shift anyways, the gear change is accomplished by bands restraining outer gearsets. Again, to demonstrate this unplug the ignition cutout feed from the transmission, floor it and hang on as you get hard but functional shifts.

  11. Re:Make driving exiting to make it safe. by FranTaylor · · Score: 2

    The problem is the low speed limits. They make driving so boring..

    People like you are why human drivers will soon be outlawed.

  12. Re:The first fuse I pull by quintessencesluglord · · Score: 2

    God you are dense.

    Following your line of logic, if you have electric windows, the car is deciding to open and close them, not you. If you have power brakes, the car is deciding to brake, not you. If you have cruise control, air conditioning, etc.

    ABS modulates the brakes. That is more than fine hair away from deciding when you can and can not brake. Those of us who grew up without ABS still reflexively take our foot off the brakes when the wheel goes numb, and reapply because, get this, ABS only allows you to steer with locked brakes. Your actual stopping distance is longer than if you had applied the brakes short of engaging the ABS.

    And you might have discovered the "1,2,3" past the "D" on an automatic transmission. Surprise! You can control the gearing just like a manual. The throttle body controls the throttle for automatic or manual.

    But more to the point, implementation of automatic braking is going to be key. If it is noticeable for all the wrong reasons, it is just inviting people to disable it. And if it can't differentiate between a semi in front of me or a motorcycle, or when you happen to drafting on track days, several automakers could be facing lawsuits when sudden, unanticipated application of the brakes cause the vehicle to go out of control.

  13. Another idea by sonamchauhan · · Score: 2

    Three short blasts of the horn when its doing this...

    Gets everyone around you alerted to the fact your car thinks an accident is likely.

  14. Try non ABS by dlenmn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Speaking as someone who lives in WI, USA and, until recently, drove a car _without_ antilock brakes, you're nuts if you think that ABS is doing more harm than good. It takes very little to lock non-antilock brakes on a sowy road. ABS aren't part of some conspiracy. They're life savers. (FWIW I speak as an defacto American automotive Luddite with my manual transmission.)