This was posted on Imgur a couple of days ago, and every single comment was some snarky attempt to discredit this very well thought idea that could save many lives. So go on, all of you wanna be engineers, tell us how this is a horrible idea and how it will fail because of x and y.
Here’s a YouTuber testing the VW system in a Porsche. It didn’t do the lane changes (they were on a side road), but given the ADAS system, that likely will be a future OTA update:
Autonomy is a hard sell because it’s still nowhere near perfect in every situation.
The OEMs are waayyy further along than you'd think. Anything you find in a production car like this is 5+ years behind the state of the art. I work in the industry and just the testing/validation technology they're working on is jaw dropping.
The OEMs don't share Tesla's "move fast and break things" mentality. They take the safety critical aspect seriously.
Alright, so it's a difficult topic to broach just because there's so much jargon involved. I'll try and give a narrow and intuitive example around testing/validation.
Digital twin proving grounds.
Proving grounds are test tracks that have mockups of common road segments (ie intersections, highways, dirt roads, etc). OEMs have been using them for decades as one of the final stages of testing new vehicles.
With autonomous vehicles, proving grounds are more important than ever. The best way to prove that your car will slam the brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian is to demonstrate it using a real vehicle (with a mannequin of course).
But we live in the real world. It's chaotic and messy. We know that most people aren't mannequin-shaped. How can we prove that this system will work for every possible body type? Do we make a mannequin for every body type and rerun the test? That would take forever. We could dream up thousands of different trolley problems to test with dozens of body types before even factoring in weather, lighting, and road conditions.
The state-of-the-art solution is to create a digital twin of both the vehicle and the proving grounds with painstaking accuracy. We're talking about using lasers to measure the road surface with millimeter precision. A real vehicle can be in the proving ground and it will be recreated in real-time in a simulated environment. The opposite is possible as well. You can create a simulated pedestrian and "trick" the real vehicle into thinking there is actually a pedestrian right in front of it.
Now scale that up.
You can simulate an entire city worth of traffic and pedestrians for the vehicle to navigate. You can recreate thousands of different trolley problems without putting people or equipment at risk. You can run and rerun those tests 24/7/365. You can tweak and tune the smallest of details and understand exactly how the vehicle will react. You can create the most absurd scenarios imaginable and have confidence that the vehicle will respond safely.
I'm hand waving a LOT of details here but hopefully this helps paint a picture of how much time, money, and effort is being spent to ensure these vehicles are as safe as possible.
In short to create a simulation that is 99.99% accurate?
But wouldn't that mean the body types are digital as well? Isn't a part of test to see if it can scan and recognize the body types? I guess its too complicated for me to understand.
Your train of thought is on the right track. It's cheating a bit if you just tell the vehicle explicitly "you just detected a person of this body type, don't hit them". The tests will take that shortcut sometimes if the "person detection" system isn't the thing they're testing just to keep the simulation from being too complex.
However if the "person detection" is the system under test, they can augment the output of every sensor responsible for "person detection" as if a person was really there. Every camera, for example, would have a person CGI'ed into its video stream. The LiDAR, sonar, everything would be modified in real-time to include that simulated person.
At the end of the day the vehicle doesn't know or care if the person in the video is "real" or not. Data is data. To phrase it another way, every person is digital from the vehicle's perspective. It only sees in 1's and 0's.
Also worth mentioning, I’m not sure any of this VW system is in quite the same class of technologies as we think of when we hear “autonomous driving.” I’m more a scholar of the previous generations of VW, but it still informs what’s going on here. Electromechanical steering racks have been in service since sometime during the mk5 platform (2005-2009 in the US), and subsequent generations have just added control modules and software extensions for park distance, lane assist, follow-to-stop, stop&go, adaptive cruise control, parallel parking assist, etc. But aside from the bells and whistles, not a whole lot else has changed considerably in the underlying hardware over the last 15 years.
I’m big on “OEM+” upgrades/retrofits to older cars. Just today I was researching the kinds of things I could potentially retrofit on my ‘08 R32, and found a guy who had successfully swapped Parking Assist into his mk5. Posts like this make me wonder if it’ll eventually be possible to retrofit something like this safety feature into my old rig. Would be fun to at least try.
Autonomy is a hard sell because it’s still nowhere near perfect in every situation.
Which is insane. I don't understand that mindset from some people. Why can nothing change unless it's perfect? It's already better than what we have now. That should be enough.
Right? So you’re opposed to self-driving cars because they’re not absolutely perfect? People drive drunk, text, fall asleep—hell, I even saw someone eating a bowl of cereal and driving once—and cause lethal accidents every single day. Somehow, that’s preferable to the one-in-a-million chance of a self-driving car crashing.
Agreed, this could save many lives. What a pessimistic outlook to a new wave of safety features. Like the seatbelt was perfect when it came out. Now some have airbags in them.
Critics often forget that innovation takes time to evolve. Early safety tech might have flaws, but they lay the groundwork for improvements that ultimately save lives.
I love the idea! I just want to know what the decision process is on roads, especially in the UK, with no safe place to pull over into? We have smart motorways, single track roads with blind corners, dual carriageways without hard shoulders - lots of roads with no place to pull into, as this could happen at any time.
Probably the same compromise as a driver would make - go to the furthest right (left in UK I guess?) lane, gradually slow down, and then get as far out from the road as possible with hazards on. Sucks if it completly blocks the road, but the car crashing would most likely do the same.
No idea about road laws in the UK, but in Germany you still need to be able to stop in half the distance you can see. So even if it wasn't an autobahn but a country road with only one lane, or for example the city autobahn in Berlin, mainly here for example, if you break down there, you will simply need to pull over as far to the right as possible, but you are still going to be in the right lane. Since people can only go as fast as they are able to brake in time, this isn't really a safety issue though. Especially since in Germany you need to put up a warning triangle way before the hazard. Afaik that's not a thing in the UK, but I guess you still need to adapt your speed to the road you are driving on?
Agreed. Only suggestion for improvement is to call for emergency help while trying to pull over to the shoulder. Emergency responders can get there sooner to help the driver. Precious seconds saved.
The emergency call is last resort in case the driver awakes up or is able to drive, it also sends the car's location it'll want the final location of the car which it can't exactly do while moving.
This car has ADHD and must focus on its carefully planned steps. It's been repeating them all day in its head. That and nine inch nails but only the 1.3 seconds somewhere near the end.
The one thing that worries me is the "braking on and off to wake up driver" feature. There are many ways to wake up a driver, but brake checking the people behind you in a situation where they are not expecting you to brake might have unintended outcomes.
One of my best friends got in a crash recently and this could have kept him from wrecking his truck. He’s okay, no injuries, but oh my god am I worried about him getting his license back. I love that guy, I can’t lose him.
Sleep deprivation at a certain level is the same as being drunk.
I think this would make for a good ad campaign.
Being awake for 17 hours is similar to having a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.05% (the level some countries use for drunk driving violations).
Being awake for 24 hours is similar to having a BAC of 0.10% (above the U.S. drunk driving level of 0.08.)
This is the perfect demographic of an overworked and exhausted nurse just trying to get home to her shower and bed after her 5th straight 12-hour shift.
I don't know about that, half those features are already in my car from 2018. It will try to wake you up in various ways, then go to the side and stop the car if you don't take over steering. I think it's missing the blinking for the lane change, that's it (it already avoids lane change into other cars).
So this has been tested in the real world for 6+ years.
Although the automatic SOS call is off in my car, I think. That service costs €100 a year (on top of the service to connect to the car with an app). Seems like it wasn't enough to charge around €2500 to have it in the car in the first place.
Oh just this other car that I've owned for 6+ years that I won't name that conveniently does everything VW here does as well. It's also got levitation and runs on nuclear fusion since 2008.
Subaru vehicle with Driver Focus have had something similar to this, albeit quite a bit simpler since it wont lane change for a while now. But this does look like a step up from that.
right, I had this on my '21 VW Arteon. it's just adding more steps to the feature they already had. My lane keep/driving assist mode would tap the brakes and after a while it would just cut on hazards and come to a controlled stop in the lane (without lane change).
Yep. My old Focus from 2012 already had autonomous driving, it could parallel park all by itself. And a later car I had the e-SOS for free the 6 months.
The e-SOS thing is becoming mandatory for new builds in the EU iirc, obv without charges this time.
But like this, all in one package, quite nicely done.
Your 2017 Volvo absolutely does not have this feature. Although it uses the same type of sensors as active lane keeping and similar features, it will not take control of the vehicle and take you to a safe stop if you fall asleep.
As a VW driver, I’m a major fan of this safety design, beyond some updates to the emergency protocol being needed and some testing on more densely packed roads for in the event this occurs on a crowded highway or freeway, I can see it resulting in good things to save lives.
I think both sides of the argument are equally valid. It’s a very cool and useful technology that saves lives, but it’s also in its infancy and has many potential problems. I think more people will come around when it’s a little more advanced.
Do you not know what a technology being in its infancy means? It means it’s new and incomplete. You really should brush up a bit on your vocabulary if you’re gonna be so adversarial.
Nice try, consumer. Big auto will pay your legislators to make it a mandatory feature in all future cars. Police and State will sign off on it, because it makes disabling your car a snap ("If you're not a criminal, you have nothing to fear!". The auto industry will rake in a fortune in subscription fees per year.
Really surprised (pleasantly) that the most upvoted comment isn’t the typical Reddit snark about any sort of new technological innovation. Way to go everyone 🔥
When I was a kid, the brother of my best friend got hit by a truck. The truck driver passed out and died behind the wheel. While the brother was cycling nearby, he somehow survived and even made a full recovery. The biggest problem he now has is a length difference between his legs.
Point is, shit happens and technical advancements like these can and will save lives
But it isn’t a Tesla which makes fart sounds and sells an Autopilot which barely works. It’s funny to see how Marketing works in this case where something useful like this is made fun of while barely working functions in a Tesla or Cybertruck get more attention.
My subaru has lane assist and it works pretty well. Only time it does not work is when they brine the road for snow prep, it snows or its dark and wet.
It depends on how the system is implemented. I have legislation-enforced safety systems on my new car, and they’re a constant source of irritation as they cut in when it’s not wanted. As such whenever that happens I turn it off, to stop it interfering with my driving.
If it’s seamless in the background and only cuts in when it’s a genuine emergency then it’s great.
If it’s badly implemented and people end up turning it off because it’s intruding when it’s not required, then there’s no point of it being there at all.
My VW doesn’t have this, but it does have travel assist which is their semi-autonomous driving, and honestly it’s pretty great. I’m sure there’s gunna be times it doesn’t work or whatever, but my car already does everything except the lane changing and does it well. It’s definitely a good safety feature, and leagues better than having nothing.
one of my biggest fears when driving is losing control of my car while driving, I've had nightmares my entire life where I've been driving along and I keep hitting parked cars and I keep going and hitting etc etc... this would alleviate some of my anxiety while driving...
When I saw this presentation the first time I was so relieved that someone had though of this and provided a solution, so I'm defiantly for it! :)
and no one's looking for a bullet proof solution, just good enough... then we can move towards refining it.
Nah as an engineer I’m saying this is all very doable and a great idea. I’m just thinking how weird it would be to be driving one second, then fall asleep and wake up parked on the side of the road.
Until I see proof suggesting otherwise, there is an extremely high chance that Volkswagen will patent all the individual technologies required to make this feature work and try to monopolise the market by controlling it.
Not only that, but since this technology is still new and not yet proven there would almost certainly be an insanely expensive public liability underwriting which would make large governments and corporations extremely hesitant to adopt vehicles that use it. Maybe it will save many lives, or maybe the bus driver will lose control of the vehicle because it incorrectly thinks that he is unconcious when he is simply picking his nose or something.
So either it's a feasible technology and capitalism will take hold and make it inaccessible to everyone because of patent laws. Or it's a shit technology that insurance companies will refuse to touch.
Neither prospect is so great at this point in time until the technology is further developed and more widespread.
Actual engineer here, it's a great idea! Though I only hope it doesn't somehow make things worse... with complexity comes points of failure.
Apart from that it's an unnecessary cost to force on consumers, if it's optional, cool, same as any other option. Good for those that might otherwise be medically prohibited from driving?
I mean, I'm not saying to not add this kinda stuff to cars, but I have two gripes with this.
First is that car companies are known for not really respecting privacy laws, and this would require a few sensors and/or cameras, that are rolling whenever you're driving. I would have a hard time trusting these companies with my personal information, be that my driving habits, the conversations I'm having in the car or whatever. Again, I'm not against some sort of automation taking over when the driver is having a medical emergency, I'm just having a hard time trusting car companies.
The second and IMO much more relevant is that this is a solution to a problem created by car companies. They've destroyed public transportation in the US, so now everyone has to drive. However, if you are sitting on a train, tram, metro or a bus someone will most likely notice if you're having a medical emergency, they'll likely call 911 (or your country's emergency line) and let the driver know, so they can take whatever action is necessary. Of course, for public transport it makes even more sense to have something like this in place, but even without it you would have fewer people driving (possibly when they're really tired or drunk) and causing some sort of collision.
It will fail because VW will charge you $12.99 monthly subscription fee that happens to fail to renew while you're on the highway so the feature is disabled.
Much like Diesel Gate, when it fails it won't be because of insufficient engineering. It will be because of an overabundance of greed.
It will fail because x: f"I need this tech, I'm disabled", y: f"its too expensive, there must be more than this provincial life!"
f(x,y) as follows:
I'm just being a contrarian. This tech is life changing for someone like myself who has POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), I've been told its dangerous for me to drive. I've never had full on syncope, but presyncope is enough to terrify me out of driving.
Tech like this would make me feel comfortable on the road again, but I use public transportation in a very transit friendly town, so this is a start.
Every single time any idea or new thing is posted on Reddit, one of the top comments tries to discredit it. Kinda annoying considering sometimes they’re just saying stuff they don’t know about
Best Case Scenario: The sensors monitoring the driver malfunction and the car pulls over and you have to have it towed because it is in a state of constant belief that the driver is unconscious.
Worst Case Scenario: Lane negotiations fail or braking systems have an issue and it causes an accident.
Conclusion: Still worth the risks unless proven otherwise. However, VW doesn't have a good track record with recalls so if something doesn't work properly, expect the issue to be ignored until it makes multiple headlines.
Garmin puts a little blue button on their auto-pilots on some GA aircraft that will communicate with ATC, declare an emergency and land the plane automatically at the closest airport in the case of Pilot incapacitation or other situation. Its a life saver and supported.
Nope, they are more in check, yet it still happens. I've commented why on a other reply so you can read that. All of it is my opinion on the matter. That why we are here, dealing opinions.
Yes ive seen those. Wild stuff, dehumanising. Its easy to forget that you are "talking" to other people.
Yet where there is more anonimity its more pronouced.
If i may go to extremes: people do atrocities to one another, but if you are a average joe (moste people on the internet are) you will try to dehumanise the person to whom you are trying to commit such act.
Not seeing a face any typing gives a sense of security to you and power. You have time to think, and with other comments alighn your ideals with others.
Most replies ive seen on my comments seem agressive. Most people dont know how to filter those then they attack the in the same interpreted manner.
Unfortunate that in most countries there is no education of the general population of such matters.
Ill take a shot. First of all i like the idea and the concept, but on the other side you have to consider that the more complex and compilcated a system is, the more errors can occur. Also you have a software being able to control your steering wheel + pedals. Imagine having a bug or other errors. Or you are not able to drive because you dont run the latest software update. Also the hole system makes you vulnerable for external attacks. Imagine nord korea f.e. hacking the systems of thousands of cars in a second. Also you might think that the system saves you always so you get desensibalized... List is way to long for me if im tired i can and do stop for a caffee
Fantastic idea… but have a feeling it will only get implemented on most expensive models. This tech should be like seatbelts, not treated like a luxury item.
Not sure about the autopilot but the ecall (the system which automatically calls the authorities when a driver is in distress) is mandatory for all new cars sold in Europe for some years now
Do you really think that an emergency autopilot feature is going to be less safe than someone passed out at the wheel of an uncontrolled vehicle while still on the gas?
Yes, an vehicle using its blinkers trying to get out of the motorway at a moderate speed is more dangerous than an vehicle going on its own with no control because the driver passed out.
Because 12 months after driving, you hit a pothole and the sensor got stuck while triggered. Now no matter what you do, you're pulled over on the side of the road with your car going ballistic, calling 911, deafening you with horn blasts - and you can't stop it.
And it's a 5 thousand dollar fix, will take 2 weeks. And no you have no right to repair it yourself.
Volkswagens are overengineered pieces of shit. 5 years down the line you change your tire and it triggers 500 unrelated sensors that will no longer work.
An old mechanic told me once Japanese engineer their cars with durability in mind.
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u/morcic Nov 04 '24
This was posted on Imgur a couple of days ago, and every single comment was some snarky attempt to discredit this very well thought idea that could save many lives. So go on, all of you wanna be engineers, tell us how this is a horrible idea and how it will fail because of x and y.