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Volvo Promises 'Death-Proof' Cars By 2020 (extremetech.com)
mrspoonsi sends news that Swedish automaker Volvo has issued a bold promise: by 2020, there will be no serious injuries or fatalities in new Volvo cars.
Volvo already has various smart features in its cars, but by combining them all, it becomes much harder to end up in a serious accident. Adaptive cruise control for example, is already available on many cars. It allows you to set a maximum speed, but uses radar to maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you. It can even apply the brakes if need be. This can be taken a step further with full collision avoidance. When a crash is likely, the driver will be warned. If action isn't taken, the car can begin braking to avoid, or at least minimize the impact. ... Cameras will also be used to watch for pedestrians in the vicinity of the vehicle. This is similar to the technology that is used in self-driving cars to identify potential obstacles on the road.
Ok Volvo, see if your car can drive this.
Please don't put people in it if autonomous.
One of the reasons they need all that safety equipment is that the suspension system sucks. In many other cars, if you’re going down the road and start turning the steering wheel like you’re on a slalom, the car stay stable and steer and maybe rock a bit. In a Volvo, it will suffer massive body roll and basically go out of control. So they make up for it with electronics. Electronics are good, but why not fix the underlying problems first?
The 2016 Subaru Outback calls this EyeSight, with stereo cameras near the rear view mirror. The Outback decelerates and eventually brakes to keep a fixed distance (I choose about 160 feet, but it's selectable) from any car ahead. When no car is ahead, the Outback accelerates back to the set speed; eg, 60 mph. If I stray off road lines, the car will beep and tug back some. I presume other manufacturers do similarly -- the technology has arrived, not Volvo has arrived.
Please don't put people in it if autonomous.
The Volvo aren't autonomous in the sense that they don't handle the actual route.
Volvo mainly use their sensors (though it's camera + lidar + radar, just like on autonomous cars)
to detect possible objects that could collide with the car and break and/or sound an alarm.
Note that the driver can still override by slamming the gas pedal. (People want to be able to have the last say).
But if the driver doesn't do anything, the car will automatically slow down and stop before hitting the car/pedestrian/whatever in front.
(And also, resume driving if the car in front starts moving again. That's a very useful feature in a traffic jam. Though if the Volvo has stopped for a longer period of time, it asks a confirmation from the driver (button or gas pedal) just to be sure to have the drivers' attention.
After all, its NOT an autonomous car, and the driver is still responsible, so it would be better if the driver hasn't dozed off during the stop).
Ok Volvo, see if your car can drive this
Some of the feature of Volvo car are already useful in these situations.
Again, Volvos aren't autonomous, it's NOT their job to actually drive though this kind of hell.
BUT...
The lidar and radar will correctly whatch for anything the car might crash into.
The volvo will correctly stop before crashing into incomin vehicles or against the mountain (due to too narrow space for crossing).
The camera tracks the road and can sound an alarm if the driver risks quitting the path.
(Though unlike other brands like BMW, the Volvo won't correct the course by itself. It just sounds an alarm when detecting that the driver was swerving away of the path and either:
- hopes that the driver will wake-up correct and course
- of the driver will turn on the turn signal, because the driver was actually swerving away from the current lane on purpose - he/she wanted to change lane, but without the turn signal, the car couldn't know it and sounded an alarm anyway. Of course that last one applies to changing lane on a multi-lane highway.
Not trying to stay in path in the kind of hell like this mountain "goat-path-except-there-are-truck-on-it" from your terrifying example).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I suspect in the end, autonomy is going to look a little different than the predicticationaies are predicticating.
Some of this stuff is tremendous technology. Lane assist, automatic parking, anti-tailgating radar collision avoidance. All tremendous stuff. rerouting information
But a fully autonomous car? Probably not. The killer? Maybe not what you think.
I'm trying to imagine everyone planning out their route every day. It reminds me of the programmable thermostats. I tried them, but my schedule isn't the same from day to day, so I found myself just setting it on manual, and dialing in the temp I wanted when I got home.
"Let's go look at the Christmas lights honey."
"Okay, give me a half hour to plan a route" "Oh - look at the lights on that street - Let's go there." "Now I gotta re-program? Let's save that for a different evening, dear".
Almost none of the present day autonomous car utopia scenarios are very practical. The concept of you kickin' back and reading the paper while your car drives down the interstate to work at 80 mph while following the person ahead of you at three feet behind just isn't going to work (do all cars have the same stopping distance? are all cars maintained to that presumed same difference.
And in the Utopian autonomous car vision, the cars know what each other are doing, so they become a huge part of the Internet of Things. And sitting at the ready behind the wheel, always alert, always ready to take over, is completely ridonkulous. Is MADD going to start agitating for criminalization of people with slightly slower reflexes?
What I am seeing is a whole lot of different technology that will make driving safer, all allowing the driver to be safer, while not requiring that the driver pre-plan, or be so bored they fall asleep waiting for that one moment they might need to take over.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It is interesting to watch Volvo taking an opposite approach to Google. If you watch Google's TED talks on their autonomous cars (the one from last year) you'll hear the speaker go on and on about how there will be no way for a car using an incremental approach towards automation to offer 100% safety, and the only possible way to do it is to delete that approach from your thinking and design completely from the ground up that the car must be 100% autonomous from day one.
Personally, I think Google's approach is flawed because they make a flawed assumption: That the driver will, as automation increases, stop paying attention even faster and thus have increasing numbers of accidents. This is flawed because there is nothing preventing the automation from simply being offline until the last moment when it can prevent the collision. ie: The driver must remain fully engaged. And states in-between can similarly fully engage drivers by keeping one aspect of driving constantly required (Moving the wheel, maybe moving the pedals, changing gears, etc). No, not the way Mercedes does it where you can tape a bottle to the wheel and the car keeps moving it for you. No, I mean you just don't automate that part of driving *at all* until the last second before an accident, at which point the result will be the car coming to a stop at the side of the road. The kind of thing that will happen within seconds if you just let go of the wheel on a highway. The kind of inconvenience you aren't taping a water bottle to the wheel to experience.
Another argument presented was that semi-autonomous cars would have to engage the brakes and slow down the car, which would be unacceptable to drivers. I find that faulty reasoning as well because I don't see why a driver who cannot accept the computer making that decision for him will be any more accepting of it because the car is fully autonomous. I watched this play out, personally: Took a megabus. The driver was having to hit the brakes a lot due to traffic. The bus was too late for a few of the passengers to get to their destination on time for a concert they were to be singing at. This group decided to bug the hell out of the driver, clearly displeased by his having to slow down. Frankly, there's not really much difference, for a passenger, between a bus driven by a driver, and an autonomous bus. They'd be equally pissed off.
I'm happy to see that Volvo is taking the step-by-step approach and look forward to what they produce.
The swedish and other scandinavian people are suprisingly honest: words mean a whole lot to them, it doesn't even have to be put in writing. They feel like cold and reserved, but if they promise then they will deliver, no matter what. That is hard to grasp from a north-american viewpoint, where media is much influenced by cunning jew-think and cheeky fraud is the laudable moral code baseline.
That difference is one of the reasons the little SAAB JAS-39 Gripen fighter jet has been sold / long-term leased to several countries in 4 continents, despite enormous marketing and political pressure behind the american F-16 / F-35 bandwagon. The head of czech airforce stated it openly to the press they have 10 years of experience where Sweden always delivered on time and within agreed budget, while in fraternal beer-meetings other airforces often complain of being fscked financially and capability-wise by the Lockheed / Pentagon cabal on every possible occasion.
Therefore if Volvo says 2020, then it will be 2020. China now owns them, but the people sliding the sliders are still swedes. You can't realistically expect them to prevent tailpipe loopback suicides, drug cartel shoot-outs, car bombings, Chixulub asteroid impacts and Dakar Rally sand sinks. Yet, I am willing to believe they can successfully prevent all preventable civilian, gentlemen driver road deaths, among 1-70 year old (*) reasonably healthy occupants in new-make Volvo cars by 2020. Maybe they will even deliver for the promise to people ouside the Volvo vehicle, like pedestrians, cyclists, prams, etc.
(*) I feel it would be excessive to demand they protect 99 year old frail, barely alive to begin with occupants in german autobahn unlimited speed ramming vs. a shinkansen. For the little children promise, that is only valid if the kid is placed in a certified safety cradle-seat as recommended by every 1st-world car maker and legally mandated in many developed countries.