Cadillac's Hands-Free Driving Option Also Nags Inattentive Drivers (theverge.com) 68
Using LIDAR sensors, Cadillac mapped 160,000 miles of U.S. highways "within five centimeters of accuracy" to give its hands-free-on-the-highway cars the ability to better anticipate the roads ahead -- and to know when a human driver should take over. An anonymous reader writes:
"The car can see farther than the sensors on the car with the map..." says the chief engineer for Cadillac's new "Super Cruise" hands-free driving option for highways, "so if we have a sharp curve, we can anticipate that." The system also gives Cadillac's vehicles a safety check not available to Tesla, which can't stop drivers from using Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot even when they're not on a highway. "We know where the car is because of the LIDAR map and the other data in the car," says a product communications manager at Cadillac. "Therefore we have the ability to geofence it."
In addition, The Verge reports that if drivers look away for more than 30 seconds, "the car will know thanks to an infrared camera attached to the top of the steering column. Eyes closed? The car will know and start a sequence of alerts to get the driver's focus back on the road. It can even see through UV-blocking sunglasses." While the camera doesn't record or store data, it will flash a strip of red LED lights embedded in the top of the steering wheel "if the driver is caught not paying attention."
Cadillac plans to create and transmit an updated map every year, and will also regularly update its map by "constantly" checking the database from the Transportation Department, and deploying own trucks to draw new maps of construction areas.
In addition, The Verge reports that if drivers look away for more than 30 seconds, "the car will know thanks to an infrared camera attached to the top of the steering column. Eyes closed? The car will know and start a sequence of alerts to get the driver's focus back on the road. It can even see through UV-blocking sunglasses." While the camera doesn't record or store data, it will flash a strip of red LED lights embedded in the top of the steering wheel "if the driver is caught not paying attention."
Cadillac plans to create and transmit an updated map every year, and will also regularly update its map by "constantly" checking the database from the Transportation Department, and deploying own trucks to draw new maps of construction areas.
Good Approach Musk Ignored (Score:1)
See how such simple human-machine interface design eludes Tesla? It's because Musk is incompetent compared to actual car companies.
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spy car, no thanks. (Score:1)
u can pry my 96 civic hatch out of my cold dead hands
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Spam in a can.
Mega Accident Waiting to Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm waiting for the day these half assed self driving car systems cause a massive accident and some politician responds with some poor knee jerk "ban 'em" response. It's only a matter of time.
A self driving car system where I have to pay attention while doing nothing is the worst aspect of these features.
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Me, I'm waiting for the nanny-supervised driving system.
My car already won't show me my texts unless I'm at 0 mph. It's only a matter of time before my car figures out that I drive like a douche and forces me to pull over and calls a taxi for me.
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Yep, well, having enjoyed :| early retirement because some idiot paid more attention to a mobile phone and that green light was for going straight ahead and not turning right into on coming traffic. Well, who knew you could get concussion of the spinal cord which makes you temporarily quadriplegic, oh well, concussion kept it at a distinct mental distance, whilst those minutes ticked by, so it wasn't that bad. What can I say but bring on the nanny state on roads, now, do not delay, in fact do it yesterday a
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What can I say but bring on the nanny state on roads, now, do not delay, in fact do it yesterday and any idiot that cheats, let them 'enjoy' :| and extended custodial sentence
If you're not going to let people steer, then using roads is beyond idiotic. We have had the technology for self-steering cars since the 1800s, and it is called rail.
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You cant pass grandma on a "rail" Im in vegas, You wont believe how many times old people, and not to sound racist but asians also, stopping in the MIDDLE of intersections, for seemingly no reason, or doing 40 in a 65 on the freeway.. when everybody else is doing 70. Thats the real danger, If we just didnt allow people to get a license until theyre 25, and give it up at 60, The roads would be much safer. And i think there should be a mandatory Driving Safty class every 5years. I do service work for a living
Re:Mega Accident Waiting to Happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats the real danger, If we just didnt allow people to get a license until theyre 25, and give it up at 60, The roads would be much safer.
Not really. At this point you're already looking at diminishing returns because it tramples on opportunity for experience. A 25 year old who hasn't done much driving is going to be more dangerous than the 25 year old who's been driving since he was 16. At 60, you're giving up a lot of experience just to remove the risk of slightly retarded reflexes. At 75-80+, you might have a case.
Life is about risk. At some point we enter not-worth-living status if the final say on all activity is the mob's knee jerk perception of relative safety.
I am constantly on my phone while driving. but i dont tailgate, i pay attention when driving even while looking at or using my phone. and if it takes more than a half a second to try to see what i need i either wait or pull over and do it. I have been driving service work since i was 16, every day.. didnt get a license until i was 21. I have never been in a car accident. *knock on wood*
I see so you one of those "it applies to everyone but me" types. When 'you' are talking on the phone, 'you' aren't distracted, it's only when everyone else does it. When 'you' drive without a license between the ages of 16 and 21, 'you' aren't doing anything wrong, yet you imply other 16yos shouldn't be on the road with or without licenses.
Fucking christ, the level of cognitive dissonance required for this level of hypocrisy... Put the fucking phone away while you're driving.
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I see so you one of those "it applies to everyone but me" types. When 'you' are talking on the phone, 'you' aren't distracted, it's only when everyone else does it. When 'you' drive without a license between the ages of 16 and 21, 'you' aren't doing anything wrong, yet you imply other 16yos shouldn't be on the road with or without licenses.
I never claimed i didnt do anything wrong. I was using that as a focus on how i drive. Sure i know it was illegal. Sure i did it anyways, scared shitless every day. But as i said im a better driver than most. When i do use my phone on the road, Driving somes first, I cant tell you how many times ive basically stopped talking to pay attention to other people that are driving like morons that i need to avoid. Im also not saying that makes it any safer. But my accident record says it helps. You realize there
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Im in vegas, You wont believe how many times old people, and not to sound racist but asians also, stopping in the MIDDLE of intersections, for seemingly no reason,
If you're in Las Vegas, I can believe it.
Tourists take pictures and tourists get lost. Not to mention, some will talk on their phone while driving.
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No the people I'm talking about aren't in rental cars. They're locals. Most of the time with the exception of the strip it self, tourists drive better than locals. Unfortunately
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If you like being nannied, maybe you and those who think like you should just move to North Korea or the western European country of your choice...oh I see, the nannying is for everyone else but you.
I am sorry for what happened to you but that doesn't mean 'infinite safety' is owed at the expense of everyone and everything else.
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Exactly. There's mounting evidence that the time/concentration required for people to 'task switch' from observing to driving is too much for anyone to actually react to a crisis. whether your eyes are on the road or not, you are NOT concentrating on the road if you aren't driving.
I think cars should continue to have the ability to override an automated drive system for the foreseeable future, but a car that throws up its metaphorical hands in an emergency and drops control in the hands of a checked out p
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I think cars should continue to have the ability to override an automated drive system for the foreseeable future
Oh they will, if only so that Google/Apple/Uber/whoever has a plausible excuse to dump accident liability onto the driver instead of assuming it themselves.
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In what a human would consider a crisis, it is unlikely that even if the human were paying attention that they would realize that they needed to take over in time to actually act. However, there are circumstances like construction or weather where an AI may not be equipped to perform the needed actions and would need to pull over until a human could take over.
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Nobody's Got To Use The Road.
Uncanny Valley for AI (Score:2)
A self driving car system where I have to pay attention while doing nothing is the worst aspect of these features.
This is the "uncanny valley" for AI. Just as we find a simulated human which is not quite right off-putting so too a car which is smart but not quite smart enough to be actually useful is extremely irritating. What I want is one of two binary states: either I drive or the AI drives. I do NOT want an AI which thinks it knows how I should drive - who wants an artificial back seat driver?
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I guess this is something like being a driving instructor. The student (AI) does the driving, but you have to pay attention for any mistakes the student may make and be ready to take over quickly. The difference, though, is that student drives are not allowed to drive fast.
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where I have to pay attention
A feature brought to you entirely by ambulance chasers and insurance companies.
Liaibility game (Score:2)
Really these cars should be driving without any supervision. But car vendors know they are going to get sued for every injury and fatality that occurs once we have fully autonomous cars, so they play these games so there is a human "operator" that can take the responsibility for mishaps instead of the corporation that designed the software.
Until there is a rigorous government safety testing combined with legislation for limiting liability, we're not likely to see the end of this.
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The only way it will work out in the long run is if it is B and the insurance on the car covers all damages for less cost to the consumer than a normal car.
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People already accept that the brakes might fail causing them to go barreling into such a hazard. As long as the AI controlled cars are significantly safer, as indicated by the lower insurance costs, people will accept them. However, the difference has to be significant, a 10% reduction in insurance probably wouldn't do it, if it was 75% though, it might.
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If it is a common problem, it would be worthy of a recall, if it is exceptionally rare and not related to the design of the brakes, it won't.
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Brake failure is semi-dependent on the owner. If I maintain my car and test the brakes every time I drive, I can reduce the risk of the brakes failing. If I brake slowly I can reduce the risk of brakes failing and give myself more time to react in case the brakes do fail (this of course only applies to usual stopping, not emergencies).
Can I do something to make the AI more reliable or am I completely dependent on some programmer in a different country doing his job properly?
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Would you ever open up your laptop if you knew that every time the OS glitched out or otherwise failed to perform as expected you would be on the hook for thousands of dollars or more in damages?
Dell wouldn't make laptops and Microsoft wouldn't make operating systems if that were the case either. Car companies are not thrilled to take on a bunch of responsibility.
My argument is that owner and victim take on the financial responsibility. But only if the cars are built and tested to a standard. Owner (or victim) mitigate the costs through insurance, primarily the owner's insurance, rather than sue the manufacture every collision. It's not so unusual of a process in a state that has "no-fault" laws. Y
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And why should that be?
When I drive my current car, I take responsibility for my driving (by trying not to crash) and the acceptable operation of my car (by maintaining, testing it etc). Then if I cause an accident, it is my fault, I either made a mistake when driving or I neglected to maintain my car and it failed. So, my insurance pays for the damage caused to others.
What you are proposing is to take the risk of somebody else not messing up - I cannot do anything to make sure the AI works correctly, or, i
Sunglasses (Score:2)
We do know (Score:4, Informative)
Ultraviolet is at the opposite end of the spectrum from infrared, a low frequency as opposed to a higher frequency.
Sunglasses block UV at typically encountered energy levels because it is much more dangerous to your eyes; IR at typically encountered energies is not, and so they typically do not block IR, as there's been no need.
That is not to say that some enterprising operation could make them block IR as well. At that point, the car would probably refuse to self-drive at all, though. Of course, you could paint on "eyes" using IR-visible, non-vision blocking paint...
Anyway... a self-drive feature that won't self drive if you are doing anything but going through the exact motions of driving strikes me as almost completely useless. It is probably only a stopgap stage on the way to a more competent driving system.
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a self-drive feature that won't self drive if you are doing anything but going through the exact motions of driving strikes me as almost completely useless.
Like with that Buffalo newspaper Warren Buffet bought. When they installed folding machines, because of unions they had to keep the people who used to fold newspapers, so those people were making empty gestures in the air as the newspapers went by on the conveyor belt.
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That is not to say that some enterprising operation could make them block IR as well.
Rayban has you covered. One of my favourite films from my photography days was Kodak HIE and I would use it with a 920nm filter to get some seriously awesome photos. It was always fascinating taking a photo of groups of people wearing sunglasses. Most of them went completely translucent, except for the occasional one. Rayban's aviators seemed to across the board block IR light as well as UV.
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Forgot to mention, by block I mean absorb. They went dark black with no reflections.
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You can still do that now with regular smartphones. Get an IR filter like a Hoya H72 [hoyafilter.com] and place it over the camera lens. You'll get infra-red pictures with dark skies, brilliant white clouds and vegetation, while cars appear to have completely opaque windows.
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And horrible shutter speed, and noise etc. Plus the R72 isn't much of an IR filter. It lets a lot of deep red through. You're battling two filters against each other since there's an IR blocking filter on the sensor.
I modified an old DSLR to keep my IR fix going. It's quite easy in most cases to get in and remove the IR blocking filter. The trick however is to find a sheet of glass the exact same thickness that you can put back in its place. Removing an element that close to the sensor with a high refractiv
The most bang. (Score:1)
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Instead of putting these safety features in some of the most expensive vehicles why not put them in the vehicles involved in the most accidents?
All automakers are voluntarily bringing AEB (automatic emergency braking) to all vehicles sold in the US... and soon. Next year, maybe? Nope, 2022. Still, pretty soon.
Follow aviation's lead (Score:1)
Every flight crew will consist of a pilot and a dog [mountrantmore.com]. The pilot's job will be to feed and entertain the dog. The dog's job will be to bite the pilot should he touch the controls.
Mapping vs real-time (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Tesla's "on the fly" approach is the right one long term. If Caddy is depending on historical saved maps, any change at all will be a serious challenge. Road construction, parade barriers, broken down vehicles, etc. You can't rely on what a road was yesterday.
And yearly updates? That alone tells me Cadillac doesn't get it. Tesla's algorithm updates, what, every 2 weeks or so - with major car OS updates very few months. And Cadillac thinks that a yearly map update (probably only for 2 or 3 years) is going to make them competitive. That's cute.
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That's cute that you think tesla's parlor trick is anywhere close to the where gm is. [jalopnik.com]
Re:Mapping vs real-time (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno. I can buy a Tesla today with a pretty good auto-pilot that works now. Traditional car companies have, um, cruise control? Beeping if a car is in my blind spot?
Everyone who's anyone SAYS they have a group working on autonomous driving. Your pay-walled link (hidden nested behind 2 layers of fluffy blogs) doesn't seem to be based on anything but R&D department press releases.
I welcome the idea of multiple competent approaches to the problem - but I stand by my original post. Humans can drive just fine without memorizing roads to within millimeters. We drive by figuring out the road as we come to it. Makes sense for technology to use a flexible approach like that as well.
In the original article, the Cadillac rep seems to be bragging that their system doesn't work on roads in general, and has a very limited use case. Strange things to brag about.
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I dunno. I can buy a Tesla today with a glorified cruse control that's pretty crappy [jalopnik.com].
Re:Mapping vs real-time (Score:4, Interesting)
Nissan is testing full auto diving at the moment on roads in the UK. I think it's sensible to go for the full no-driver-needed, but it seems that Tesla has forced their hand a bit and they are releasing a half baked auto-steering this year.
It's rubbish even by current standards. Doesn't work at low speed, doesn't start moving again when stopped, limited to 60mph maximum.
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There is nothing automation-wise in current Teslas that hasn't been in a Mercedes-Benz or Audi for years, and usually without the enormous heaps of bugs that plague pretty much everything Tesla releases. Tesla may be excellent at marketing, but they are not ahead of anyone in self-driving technology. They are just more willing to release unfinished software and more likely to exaggerate and oversell capabilities than companies that have longer experience with liability and safety regulations.
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A major car OS update every few months sounds fucking insane for something that can literally kill you and everyone around you. That, surely, isn't enough time for rigorous testing.
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[A few months], surely, isn't enough time for rigorous testing.
The frequency of updates says little about how much testing each update received. Perhaps that latest update has been in testing for a year alongside several other versions staged for release over the next few quarters. Also, quite a bit of regression testing can be done with previously recorded sensor data before the software comes anywhere near an actual car.
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but is limited to 35mph
I strongly suspect this is how they are getting any kind of resemblance to safety, by artificially slowing everything down.
incorrect summary (Score:3)
"anonymous reader" writes:
The system also gives Cadillac's vehicles a safety check not available to Tesla, which can't stop drivers from using Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot even when they're not on a highway.
That's not correct! Tesla's system knows if you are on the highway or not. Currently cars with AP2 are strictly limited to 35MPH off a limited access highway, and 80MPH on it.
Your insurance company will LOVE this (Score:2)
Tesla? (Score:2)
The system also gives Cadillac's vehicles a safety check not available to Tesla, which can't stop drivers from using Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot even when they're not on a highway.
Pretty sure Tesla can roll out that change to all their self-driving models if they want to. Heck, they already have the capability to geofence to raise the suspension of the car at places set by the driver (ie: a dip in your driveway).
Hopefully Cadillac and Tesla nudge each other on to the point of completely self-driving vehicles.
You paid a lot for that Caddy (Score:1)
Poor Cadillac (Score:1)
So whats the actual point? (Score:2)
You're presumably paying a lot extra on the car price for for the amortized R&D costs and the cost of the hardware to even do this, but then you're still driving in all but name.
Given most cars already have a cruise control, all it seems to be capable of doing is saving you the "extreme" (NOT) effort of having to occasionally turn the steering wheel, but it cant even do that all the time.
Personally, I'd MUCH rather do without all that crap and just drive myself thanks.