Toyota's new accident avoidance system will take control of the car.

Just to emphasize I am playing devil's advocate here I don't want any electronics in my car. My favorite car of all time, the 240z, is carbureted :p
Because without full control you lose the fact that cars essentially are a form of freedom. You can go anywhere there is a road, at a variety of speeds in full control of something you have bought. How long before cars essentially become driver-less taxis?
From that point whoever controls this system of transport has complete control of freedom of movement. I just plain don't like the idea of this in any way shape or form.

If they took the money invested in this and made public transport better andcheaper and driving tests harder and more involved it would solve the problem they say they are trying to solve. Of people who don't like, or want, to drive and as thus don't put the effort into learning how properly.
That is how you think that is not how other people think. Also keep in mind that a self driving car can still take you anywhere you want to go, it will just not require that you drive it and likely will get you there faster. For freedom you can always get a motorcycle those will never be self-driving :)
Not to mention it will leave cars open to, in theory, being hacked. Hell even file corruption in the computer system could fuck the whole car.
Was leaving the office so couldn't respond to everything :)
While electronics can fail their failure rate is quite a bit lower than humans. Systems like these are in use in airplanes both manned and unmanned and have proven themselves to be very reliable. Modern planes don't need pilots at all they can take off, fly and land under computer control pilots are there in the event of something unexpected happening like both engines failing and then having to land in the middle of Hudson....

Also keep in mind that both the number of total car accidents and of severe car accidents (the ones that are not fender benders) have been on a steady decline since active safety systems have been introduced.
The best and safest drivers I know are ones who drive older cars. Once you realise you have 40 year old tech in you braking and suspension system you drive a whole lot more carefully. Especially with the knowledge that if you crash your remains will be buried in a jam jar...
Safety devices give IDIOTS and bad drivers false confidence, this system is aimed at IDIOTS and bad drivers.
But that's the point now isn't it? There is a limited number of good and safe drivers who can react to dangerous situations properly and quickly. Systems like this allows EVERYONE to be a safe driver, so what if someone just covers their head with their hands when they are about to hit something if the car goes "not on my watch" and safely avoids the accident? Sure that person is an idiot but at the end of the day that's one less accident and possibly one less death.

Moreover you should keep in mind that computers do not make mistakes, ever. They will always respond to the same inputs with the same outputs. I'll give you an example of a near miss I had that could be prevented by a computer despite the fact that I am at worst a decent driver. Was merging onto a highway with a pretty short merging lane so tend to use the entire length to build up speed. There was a fairly large gap in the traffic so that the car in front of me and myself could get on, so before merging over I take a glance over my left shoulder to make sure no one switched lanes or anything and that coast is clear all of a sudden my g/f yells "careful!!" turns out that car in front of me got HALFWAY into the right lane and STOPPED as in 100% completely came to a stand still. There was no time to brake but luckily there was no one in the middle lane at the time so I managed to escape unscathed. A self driving system wouldn't even allow that to happen, car in front of me would have merged on and kept going and cars in the right lane would have slowed down slightly to allow it to enter.
 
Air traffic safety have gotten further than cars (safest way to travel)

I'm pretty sure flying has been safer than driving since before any aspect of air travel was controlled by computers. ;)
 
There is something slightly wrong about this sort of technology. To much interference, next will be road charging, then enforced maximum speed on the public road, then what about driving rationing (It's the global warming I tell yop!!!).

So long story short - thin end of the wedge?
 
I really don't trust a system that takes control of the car, it could go wrong in so many ways. Really simple example: successfully avoided pedestrian A, but wait, there's pedestrian B on the other side.....

And Toyota is REALLY opening themselves up to lawsuits in that kind of situation.

At least the driver can say "It's not my fault, I wasn't driving, the car took complete control of itself at that point"
and he will get off Scot free.
But he might have nightmares similar to Stephen King's Christine novel.
 
You're thinking on the wrong scale - you don't need access to jam a signal. Not a big deal to cut off someone's cell phone, but cut off communications to all vehicles speeding down a highway.....

You wouldn't just rely on the one system to control the car, you have to build in safe guards and backup systems. If it loses a link to another vehicle because it's being jammed like you suggest, it could still drive itself using a camera, because we can't currently jam visible light.
 
You wouldn't just rely on the one system to control the car, you have to build in safe guards and backup systems. If it loses a link to another vehicle because it's being jammed like you suggest, it could still drive itself using a camera, because we can't currently jam visible light.

Smoke? Dust? :p
 
I'm pretty sure flying has been safer than driving since before any aspect of air travel was controlled by computers. ;)

Flying has been safer than driving since these first took to the skies.

800px-Douglas_DC-3%2C_SE-CFP.jpg


Digital computers weren't invented yet.

Ducttape on the camera? :D

A more likely scenario is mud obscuring the camera. But yes, it's more than possible for 'normal' occurrences to disable such a system, as the DARPA tests show.
 
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A more likely scenario is mud obscuring the camera. But yes, it's more than possible for 'normal' occurrences to disable such a system, as the DARPA tests show.
I don't really see cameras being used in ULV's (just made that up), more likely sonars/radars/lidars as they would have a greater precision and we already have a crapload of software that works with those for range estimation. It would be more complicated with a camera as it would require advanced shape recognition systems*. Lets face it cameras are for people, computers see better in a different EM spectrum.

*This is not based on any actual experience with cameras used for such a purpose but from what I know of general tech a radar (or lidar) would have a much easier time with figuring out a shape of something as it can make a very precise calculation of the distance between different objects while on a camera image a person in front of a car could be counted as the same thing since they would be only a few feet apart.
 
What about this scenario, modern cars use "soy coating" on their wires so rodents nibble on them. I mean fuck, happened to my car so obviously it is not too far fetched.
 
What about this scenario, modern cars use "soy coating" on their wires so rodents nibble on them. I mean fuck, happened to my car so obviously it is not too far fetched.
Yet your ABS never locked up randomly :) Thing is we are using a shitload of electronics in cars these days, you got ECU's, ABS, ESP, ECS, TC, OMGWTFBBQ and so on. You also have shit like brake assists and adaptive cruise control and so on and it works just fine.
 
In response to the posts suggesting that I think I'm an awesome driver: I'm not. I'm quite possibly the worst driver on final gear to be quite honest. I suck at parallel parking and panic situations. Hell I probably need this more than anyone on here period. I also drive a car without any electronic driving aids whatsoever.

I guess where I'm coming from is a silly sense of paranoia. Computers have indeed come a long way, so maybe this isn't as bad as I think/thought.

I'd want to see proof though. I think the somewhat related self-driving car thing will be held back somewhat by people like me who are probably very shitty drivers yet actually like driving very much. Granted the percent of people that overlap the segments of the driving populous like that is very small, probably in the double digits, but still.
 
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Yet your ABS never locked up randomly :) Thing is we are using a shitload of electronics in cars these days, you got ECU's, ABS, ESP, ECS, TC, OMGWTFBBQ and so on. You also have shit like brake assists and adaptive cruise control and so on and it works just fine.

ABS wheel speed sensors do fail, and you can get an ABS system to freak out and lock up.

I'd also point out that legions of reviewers have commented on recent cars with lane departure warning systems that either plain don't work or are far too sensitive (Infiniti is notorious for the latter). Adaptive cruise control doesn't work 'just fine' either; they can fail to get a lock on a vehicle ahead or get confused.

I'd also point out that this was the result of the most recent public demonstration of Volvo's CitySafety system.

[video=youtube;-Y5qwU0hwB0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y5qwU0hwB0&NR=1[/video]

Yup, the system had become switched off automatically. Still doesn't mean that it'll work anyway.

Here's a prior demo when the system was ON.


It didn't work out a lot better.

Their pedestrian safety system works 'real well,' too.


Yes, the tech will get there someday. I don't think today is that day, tomorrow isn't looking good either.
 
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ABS wheel speed sensors do fail, and you can get an ABS system to freak out and lock up.

I'd also point out that legions of reviewers have commented on recent cars with lane departure warning systems that either plain don't work or are far too sensitive (Infiniti is notorious for the latter). Adaptive cruise control doesn't work 'just fine' either; they can fail to get a lock on a vehicle ahead or get confused.

I'd also point out that this was the result of the most recent public demonstration of Volvo's CitySafety system.



Yup, the system had become switched off automatically. Still doesn't mean that it'll work anyway.

Here's a prior demo when the system was ON.

It didn't work out a lot better.

Their pedestrian safety system works 'real well,' too.

Yes, the tech will get there someday. I don't think today is that day, tomorrow isn't looking good either.
I have never heard of that tech failing in a way that it causes your car to say no and do what it wants to do, I've had ABS fail and not work anymore but never had it randomly stop me in the middle of driving. The point is failure modes if the mode is such that it allows you to retain control of the vehicle then its not a big deal for it to fail.

On the flip side the Google self-driving car is doing just fine, I think the only accident it had it got rear ended?
 
Yes, the tech will get there someday. I don't think today is that day, tomorrow isn't looking good either.

I'd like you to come up with failure numbers rather than posting 3 youtube videos.

I'd be willing to put money in that even with failures, the system will stop the car short of impact much more consistently than a human that may or may not be paying attention. If this is the case I would like you to describe to me why you believe this is not an improvement.
 
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I have never heard of that tech failing in a way that it causes your car to say no and do what it wants to do, I've had ABS fail and not work anymore but never had it randomly stop me in the middle of driving. The point is failure modes if the mode is such that it allows you to retain control of the vehicle then its not a big deal for it to fail.
The things is, regardless of the way in which it failed it DID fail.

As has been said computer programs cannot be wrong, the can only function to the extent that they have been programmed to do. However they are programmed by humans, humans are very capable of being wrong. I also highly doubt humans can program in such a way that can predict any situation, it could be argued that the program would work in the majority of cases and that it would react in a superior fashion to a human.
But I can foresee situations where the computer would make decisions that would be detrimental in a bad way, it would also involve sensing everything around the car in all situations constantly. That's a lot of technology to go wrong...
 
And considering I was pointing to everything fancy on victor's RX8 saying "pft, that will just go wrong!" will explain the mentality of car tech I have after driving a vw. To have a proper system ALL the cars must have it and all you people thinking this is a good idea should picture herbie deciding he doesn't want to go that way. Do you REALLY want VWs to have sentience? they have terrible attitudes.
 
The things is, regardless of the way in which it failed it DID fail.
And this is EXACTLY why I don't want features like that in my car (but want them in cars for everyone else)
As has been said computer programs cannot be wrong, the can only function to the extent that they have been programmed to do. However they are programmed by humans, humans are very capable of being wrong. I also highly doubt humans can program in such a way that can predict any situation, it could be argued that the program would work in the majority of cases and that it would react in a superior fashion to a human.
But I can foresee situations where the computer would make decisions that would be detrimental in a bad way, it would also involve sensing everything around the car in all situations constantly. That's a lot of technology to go wrong...
See thing is that even a highly trained driver would have a 99% "success" rate for any given situation (the further you go down the chain the lower the rate will get obviously) a computer will have a 100% "success" rate for every situation that has been programmed into it (assuming correct programming of course). If you have a computer that can handle 90% of common accident situations on the road it would still be an improvement over a human driver. Looking at the accident statistics it seems like a fairly large number of humans cannot handle even common accident situations. Unless a driver is highly skilled/trained they are not likely to be able to respond properly to an uncommon one either. For instance I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be able to avoid a roll over if my car lifts on one side. In theory I know what to do but in reality....
 
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And this is EXACTLY why I don't want features like that in my car (but want them in cars for everyone else)

Butt....what if it failed...right into your car...:p
 
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