Autonomous braking: 'The most significant development since the safety belt'

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43752226

by ZeljkoS • 8 years ago

161 176 8 years ago

I recently bought a WV Atlas with adaptive cruise control and front assist. It also has a variety of other sensors and assists. It is no way an AV, but these features IMHO add a lot of value. If every car had them, I bet road safety would increase significantly. I agree with the article. I think it is a big deal.

leeoniya• 8 years ago

yep, got a VW Alltrack last year. the adaptive cruise is really neat.

akira25012• 8 years ago

If every car had them, I bet road safety would increase significantly.

If you look into the data on fatal accidents and examine them even for a few minutes you'll easily see that this is a foolhardy bet. The causes of accidents and fatalities are highly variable and not what you would expect. There's also extreme variability between the individual states; for example, Texas has more _total_ fatalities than California. There's extreme variability between the sexes and for different age groups within those sexes. Finally, there are motorcycles.

AI/Driverless, AV and all the attendant sensors and inputs will have an impact, just not nearly as large of one as many people unfortunately expect.

alexfringes• 8 years ago

What’s a good way to look at and explore this data? Where did you learn about the patterns you mention above?

TheSpiceIsLife• 8 years ago

I haven’t looked at any data, but I’m willing to bet non-fatal vehicle related collisions out number fatal ones by a significant factor.

Would a decrease in some types of collisions be a reasonable assumption under the grandparents premise?

edejong6• 8 years ago

Finally, there are motorcycles.

Absolutely, I wish every prospective motorcyclist would study the stats (more than 35 times increased mortality rate per driven km [1]) and discuss this with their loved ones.

Those who insist driving a motorcycle afterwards deserve their genes to be removed from the gene pool.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety

matt_the_bass4• 8 years ago

I think safety includes non-fatalities. Where I live I can safely say that nearly every day during rush hour there is a rear ending collision causing lots of delays for lots of people. Rarely does this kill someone but it’s still a safety issue. I bet nearly all of these would be mitigated if every car had such technology.

Silhouette3• 8 years ago

If you look into the data on fatal accidents and examine them even for a few minutes you'll easily see that this is a foolhardy bet.

Quoting the linked article:

At the moment, most AEB systems are "forward-looking". In other words they are designed to prevent crashes where one car runs into the back of another.

Such crashes account for around a quarter of all accidents, but these are the incidents which can cause some of the nastiest injuries, such as whiplash.

AEB has been shown to reduce such collisions by 38%, according to research by the safety organisation Euro NCAP.

jbrooksuk• 8 years ago

I recently bought a T-Roc and ACC is pretty awesome. The issue I have is on the motorway, when changing lanes, it has a tendency to lose speed and with it being a 1 litre, it takes a while to build up the speed again.

It also has front sensors which has alerted and braked for me a couple of times when someone has almost stopped dead at 60MPH (even with stopping distance, it was a quick stop).

matt_the_bass4• 8 years ago

Maybe Changing lanes isn’t really a use case for cruise control that doesn’t require extra user attention.

In my car you can manually give it the gas when changing lanes and accelerate faster than by ACC without disabling ACC. Maybe your car allows that too?

nxc18• 8 years ago

Autonomous braking is a huge step, and, imho, more exciting at the moment than full autonomous driving because it can save lives right now, and is unlikely to take them (shots fired at Uber).

But buyer beware. Even within the IIHS safety standards, there is considerable variability. I love my Toyota Corolla (2017), but it's braking will only take a few mph off after warning you. I can't wait until my lease expires and I can upgrade to the Subaru (edit: or maybe the Volvo from TFA). Look up the videos, they are fully capable of stopping without any collision up to ~40 mph (disclaimer: never rely on these safety features, it's still your responsibility to be safe).

Do your research, happy and safe driving!

martinwww• 8 years ago

even warning few seconds before impact is useful, of course there are better systems but Toyota implemented Safety Sense to all cars which is great.

Ninn• 8 years ago

Sorry, but i do not see how the warning is useful, as it first of all distract your attention from driving, and secondly happens too short a time before the would be accident for you to react in my experience. So as a stand alone warning feature without automated breaking, i dont see the use case that you're praising?

saltcured3• 8 years ago

I've also read enough complaints about inexplicable emergency braking activation to say that all drivers should be aware these are on the road. You need to consider that now random new cars may execute a "brake check" maneuver in situations where you would never anticipate a human to have done the same thing.

jon_richards2• 8 years ago

Sudden curves in the road when there are parked cars is the biggest issue for mine. I think it plots a path based on how my wheel is turned. When there's a 10-15 degree kink in the road, I can't turn early or I'll cross the center line, so it thinks I'm going to continue straight into a parked car. Hasn't brought me to a complete stop, but it could certainly mess with a tailgater.

eknkc• 8 years ago

Our two cars both have decent autonomous breaking tech. They did activate in actual risks a couple of times. At least once one prevented a certain crash. They act up rarely. Just some anectodes;

One of them thinks I will drive into a wall when I’m approaching a 90degree turn with a wall. Does the break check from time to time. Nothing weird at high speeds for now.

Other had a single break check at high speed, there was nothing in front so the sensors somehow messed up I guess. It braked for something like 100ms, at least it felt like that. Then kept driving normally. But even that was scary.

donkeyd• 8 years ago

My car does get triggered by lines on the street in a specific area. However, Dutch law says you're supposed to drive at a distance where you can anticipate that the car in front of you can go full stop at any time, so I'm not sure why this should cause people to do that and not the fact that they already should.

fantasticsid2• 8 years ago

I’ve thought about this and and I think the best thing to do here is to relentlessly keep a long, safe distance from vehicles ahead. There are just things you can’t possibly see that the driver before you can.(a puppy/squirrel/whatever that he wants to avoid killing, you can’t possibly know). You can’t anticipate what a human will do here.

You also give yourself a buffer when vehicle ahead have an emergency stop - imagine there’s a truck behind you.

I guess what I’m saying is these ‘brake checks’ are welcome, even if they only serve to educate people.

amelius• 8 years ago

You need to consider that now random new cars may execute a "brake check" maneuver in situations where you would never anticipate a human to have done the same thing.

This is to persuade you to also buy a car with new brake tech ;)

gambiting3• 8 years ago

The car will never emergency break as long as you keep your foot on the throttle. My Merc has beeped at me couple times where it thought I was going to collide with something, but because I kept my foot down it didn't actually start breaking - the system only activates if you let go of the gas.

greenhatman• 8 years ago

You should be expecting any driver to do an emergency stop right in front of you.

I've learned the hard way not to expect anything from other drivers on the road.

Make sure your following distance is such that you have enough time to react to completely oblivious driving behaviour from other drivers.

finaliteration• 8 years ago

I just bought a 2018 Subaru Impreza with Eyesight (their suite of ACC, braking, lane assist, etc). I was driving on the freeway into work less than a week after I bought the car and had someone pull out in front of me without signaling or slowing down. The car stopped itself before I had a chance to react and saved me from what could have been a really bad accident.

berbec• 8 years ago

I was very happy with the system in my 2014 Cadillac ATS. When paired with the cruise control system, I could set cruise when I got on the highway, and the car would keep distance properly, including coming to a complete stop (and starting up again) for traffic jams.

vaughanb• 8 years ago

Anti-lock brakes never yielded the accident reduction expected, primarily because drivers used the improved braking performance to drive faster in poorer conditions.

I guess the AEB works at reducing accidents because it IS autonomous and does not "improve performance".

BTW the KPI is reduction in insurance cost.

clhodapp2• 8 years ago

drivers used the improved braking performance to drive faster in poorer conditions

That's not the ideal outcome but it's still a net win, no?

xiphias• 8 years ago

The problem with this combination is that it may reduce the number of crashes/injuries, but increase the number of deaths at the same time

AFNobody• 8 years ago

Faster = higher probability of an injurious and/or fatal accident.

So from a safety standpoint, that is a not a win.

gargravarr5• 8 years ago

A German taxicab company did a study, pitting half its fleet with ABS against the other half without it. The accident rate stayed the same (in fact, was insignificantly higher) in the half with ABS because the drivers felt overconfident in the braking system:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100921074926/http://psyc.queen...

SomewhatLikely• 8 years ago

On the other hand death rates have plummeted in recent decades thanks to all the safety advancements.

leoc• 8 years ago

Related to this, I wonder if insurers are going to demand access to an insured car’s autonomous-braking data?

greglindahl• 8 years ago

Your airbag already records that info, if it fires.

gruez• 8 years ago

don't worry, it's going to be siphoned off next time you get your car serviced anyways

fyfy18• 8 years ago

I wonder how many minor incidents it has prevented though. I was raised in the country where roads are often wet or icy in winter. Without ABS if you go around a corner and hit some black ice there is a good chance you would spin out and end up in a hedge or a tree. At the low speeds you need to drive (<20mph) it’s unlikely that the passengers would suffer any serious injuries.

bowlich• 8 years ago

As someone who drives rather frequently in atrocious winter weather conditions. I often wonder how AEB will handle black-ice and deep snow where tapping the break gives you a chance for loosing traction and ending up in the ditch.

First rule of winter driving is don't touch the brake.

rstuart4133• 8 years ago

I'd agree anti-lock brakes haven't had much effect. It will only help people who haven't learnt how to brake properly, but we all get plenty of practice at that during everyday driving so I expect the difference is marginal. But the story is different with a related technology, ESP, which is mandatory where I live.

No so long ago I was caught out not paying enough attention approaching a roundabout at a creek crossing on a rainy day. It dawned what I hadn't allowed for the slippery road conditions on that day when the car started to slide towards the creek rather than go the direction I was steering. I'm by no means an expert driver, but I've spun a car off a dirt road into the bush a few times in my miss-spent youth, enough to know when I've lost control beyond recovery. I only had a few meters before a collision, but another thing I learnt during that miss-spent youth is if you can arrange to slide into a guard rail sideways so the load is spread along the entire side, if your speed is low enough you might get away with no panel beating at all. So I eased off the brakes to get maximum steerage.

Then the car noticed the steering wheels had lost traction, and the ESP cut in. ESP boils down to steering with the brakes and engine - sort of like a handbrake turn, but the brakes are applied to a front and a rear wheel on opposing sides and the engine powers the other two. There is no way to do it manually. Turns out it's amazingly effective, as it both slows you down and gets the car pointing in the right direction.

There was no accident that day.

I've stomped on the brakes quite a few times to see what ABS in action feels like. I reckon I can do a better job manually. But there is no way I'd drive so crazily that ESP cut in on anything but a skid pan. Besides, there is no point. I know I could never do as good a job, because as I said, there is no way to manually replicate what ESP does. Having said that, a good racing driver will do better without ESP because they get the car pointing in the right direction before it starts skidding - but that requires paying more attention than I was at the time.

opencl• 8 years ago

I certainly hope that people do not get practice braking as hard as possible without locking up the wheels during everyday driving. Everyone 'learns' it when they first learn to drive but without frequent practice it is not going to be your immediate response when you get in a situation that requires sudden very hard braking to avoid a collision. Modern ABS is probably better at braking than 95%+ of people that aren't race car drivers ESPECIALLY in the situations where it's actually needed and people are probably panicking.

What you refer to as ESP is usually known as ESC where I live and it's also been mandatory here for a while, agreed that it is pretty incredible. I can definitely see it giving people a false sense of security especially in low traction conditions like snow/ice/rain.

tialaramex• 8 years ago

A lesson from the ABS experience has influenced the design of AEB systems. The problem isn't so much that humans abuse the ABS to drive in harsh conditions as that they don't understand that they're relying on the ABS at all. They go around a bend too quickly and they don't think "Man, I nearly came off there, good thing ABS intervened to keep the car going where I point it" but instead "I'm great at this driving thing, a less skilled driver would come off there".

In AEB systems the emphasis is on dramatic interventions when calamity is imminent. So for example rather than gently brake pre-emptively because you seem to be getting a bit close, AEB is focused on braking very hard at the last moment, this doesn't feel like your skill saved you, it feels (correctly) as if the automated systems kicked in to avoid a crash.

mirimir2• 8 years ago

Sure, AEB is a great thing. But it's odd to see "since the safety belt". Air bags have saved more lives than safety belts, haven't they?

Also, I can imagine additional advantages of AEB. If someone's tailgating, just hit your brakes enough that their AEB will trigger.

zachkatz• 8 years ago

This will save countless pedestrians' lives too.

vilhelm_s• 8 years ago

The first google hit (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.506...) says

in the period 1991-2001 [...] about 109,000 lives were saved by belts and 8,000 by airbags

so I guess seat belts were a bigger improvement.

raverbashing2• 8 years ago

I guess the question then is: why bother?

Also airbags depend on seatbelt use to be effective, and some of them have killed people.

objclxt• 8 years ago

Air bags have saved more lives than safety belts, haven't they

Not by a long shot - seat belts reduce the chance of death by 60-70% across all crashes. Airbags reduce the chance of death by 15% in frontal collisions, and very little for other types[1]. The airbag isn’t going to much good if you’ve been ejected from the car.

[1] http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittPorter20...

Swizec• 8 years ago

Airbags also have the misfortune of having killed more people than safety belts. Especially kids. Or people leaning forward.

That’s why modern cars try to avoid firing them unless absolutely necessary. You can get into a pretty serious crash and they won’t fire if the computer decides its better to let you gently tap the steering wheel than to run an expkosion into your face.

Fun example of an old and new Renault Espace crashing into each other: https://youtu.be/vRxLlFm3VUA

King-Aaron• 8 years ago

Airbags also have the misfortune of having killed more people than safety belts. Especially kids. Or people leaning forward.

Not to mention the current situation with Takata, where they have had instances of their airbags directly killing people due to a failure of the metal housing, which turns to shrapnel.

alkonaut5• 8 years ago

Air bags have saved more lives than safety belts, haven't they?

That depends on how you count: no life saved by an airbag would be saved without airbag AND safety belt. An airbag alone saves no lives.

And I still doubt the airbag+belt combination made a bigger dent in the statistic than the introduction of the safety belt did (Although it's hard to compare due to completely different time periods)

mirimir2• 8 years ago

OK, that was certainly a thoughtless comment :(

I did mean seat belt + air bag vs seat belt alone. But even then, air bags apparently improve seat belt protection by less than 20%.

I was thinking of dramatic high-speed frontal collisions with ~immovable objects. Where forces from seat belts alone can cause damage.

squam• 8 years ago

Perhaps Tesla should consider licensing this tech from Volvo.

/snark

taneq2• 8 years ago

Serious question: Would the Volvo system have picked up and appropriately responded to the gore point involved in the recent fatal Tesla crash? Any time anyone raised the question of Tesla's AEB's reliability, the responses were along the lines of "no AEB is perfect", "AEB only works on cars", etc.

unityByFreedom• 8 years ago

Would the Volvo system have picked up and appropriately responded to the gore point involved in the recent fatal Tesla crash?

I'd rather ask, would the Volvo system steer towards the barrier like Tesla's AP may have done [1] [2]?

"IIHS research shows that AEB systems meeting the commitment would reduce rear-end crashes by 40 percent." [3]

AEB on its own may save lives. Whether autosteer systems do or not is an open question.

[1] https://youtu.be/VVJSjeHDvfY?t=37s

[2] https://youtu.be/6QCF8tVqM3I?t=28s

[3] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/u-s-dot-and-iihs-a...

frogcoder• 8 years ago

I was wondering about the AEB when the Uber accident happened. It should’ve been equipped with AEB but it still hit a pedestrian. Did they just pull out the whole software and replace it with their own navigation logic?

MertsA• 8 years ago

Yes, that was something that was mentioned before by Volvo. Uber disabled the AEB that came with the vehicle and according to Volvo it likely would have detected the pedestrian.

facorreia• 8 years ago

The company that makes the standard safety equipment said it had been disabled[1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disa...

icc972• 8 years ago

The skeptic in me thinks that this story is Volvo trying to counter the bad news of their car killing a pedestrian with good news of how many drivers haven't died.

Although it's not their fault for the crash, celebrating the safety of an SUV, when it's size and extra weight means that crashes with pedestrians will more likely end in death, seems odd.

boxcardavin• 8 years ago

I drove into a dust storm in Central Washington in a rental Volvo several years back and autobraking saved me from rear ending a car. I made it out, but a huge pileup ended up happening just behind me. https://www.kiro7.com/news/massive-crash-closes-eastbound-i-...

jakobegger3• 8 years ago

I've read about a couple of accidents like this, and I always wonder why people don't slow down or stop before they drive into dense dust or fog?

namanyayg• 8 years ago

Maybe because of the worry of getting rear ended themselves? And I'm sure a lot of people do; but then those drivers don't make the news.

sandos• 8 years ago

Seems very common in the US to just keep going at considerable speed with even limited visibility.

dvtv752• 8 years ago

Not directly related to your comment, but I was driving downhill a few months back when some halfwit came the other way in a car that clearly wasn't roadworthy. Must have been leaking a huge amount of coolant into the oil, because the cloud of steam (or smoke) behind it was so thick that half a dozen cars ended up just parked in the middle of the road, waiting for it to clear before moving off.

Turned my lights on to avoid being hit, seemed to work - or maybe I was just surrounded by cautious drivers that day.

mac01021• 8 years ago

And admit that I can't see???

gargravarr5• 8 years ago

Probably arrogance. It's been many years since I've driven through fog thick enough to truly limit visibility, so light fog I might only drop my speed by 5-10MPH. Taillights are still visible at a safe distance in light fog. I can just about remember how easily they disappear (almost evaporate) into nothing in thick fog. Assuming the fog isn't that thick and driving through with excessive speed, it's astonishing how quickly the car in front with rear lights on full can appear out of nowhere.

A combination of wanting to get to your destination on time, inexperience and overconfidence are probably the key reasons.

gambiting3• 8 years ago

Example - you're driving at 4am on an empty road with patches of heavy fog - so most of the time you can maintain the legal 70-80mph with good visibility, but then there are bit where the fog gets heavier for half a mile or so. So you slow down the first few times, but as there is no traffic at this hour, you just don't after the first dozen times or so, it's annoying and boring to be slowing down constantly. At then accidents happen because the 13th time there is something on the road.

jcranmer• 8 years ago

It's because the purpose of slowing down is primarily in terms of safety margin: if something goes wrong, you give yourself time to safely stop. If the occurrence of low visibility is infrequent enough for people to not have experienced an accident, but frequent enough to have experienced it more than a few times, it quickly settles into a habitual "well, I've had no problems going 70 in 0-visibility fog the last dozen times, so it can't be as unsafe as I'm told." What makes it more annoying is that actually driving a safe speed is also immensely unsafe, because the other cars are going 70 and can't see the car going 25 until it's too late.

One of the most unnerving drives I had to do was traveling on the Ohio Turnpike in super-dense fog. The traffic was heavy but moving more or less at speed. Cue the toll plaza... and the need to reform two lanes of traffic, with slowly accelerating truck traffic, cars whizzing from the right to pass the accelerating trucks, all in dense fog with almost no visibility (I don't think you could see the rightmost toll lane from the leftmost). And one idiot didn't have his lights on.

Final safety tip: if you can't see the road very well, turn your lights on. Even if they don't help you see the road (which they don't in fog), they absolutely help everybody else see you.

dgudkov• 8 years ago

People tend to underestimate the real speed. After driving for long time at 60mph, slowing down to 25mph feels like crawling while it's actually still pretty fast.

urban_winter• 8 years ago

The BBC story, also reported in multiple other places, is a nice bit of Volvo marketing g, but is nonsense.

Volvo introduced Aeb in 2007 on the XC60. The XC90 only got it when they introduced the new generation a few years ago. Therefore claiming that the exceptional safety record of the XC90 is in any way related to AEB is just rubbish.

The reason why XC90s are associated with so few passenger injuries (note, no claims are made for injuries to other road users by XC90s) is that they are large, heavy and chosen by safsr-than-average demographics.

ggg99904• 8 years ago

Another reason the XC90 has a great safety record is that it’s a 4500 pound car with a 4 cylinder engine. This isn’t safety enhancing in itself but does ensure that it is only bought by people with the most sedate driving habits.

lazyjones• 8 years ago

Those 4-cylinder engines deliver up to 303hp and the hybrids get another 87hp from the electric drive train. So they're not exactly weak cars...

ggg99904• 8 years ago

Drive one. The throttle is leaden.

AmVess• 8 years ago

It's a 4400lb car that will do 0-60 in 6.4 seconds in top trim. It's 4 cylinder engine is both supercharged and turbocharged. The demographics determines the safety, not the number of cylinders it has.

ggg99904• 8 years ago

The Audi Q7 3.0T is $7k cheaper and does 0-60 in 5.7 seconds. The XC90 is a completely drivable and enjoyable car, but people who care about performance are likelier to choose a different SUV and likelier to get into an accident in that SUV.

virgilp2• 8 years ago

Have you driven it? I didn't, but my current car is a similarly-sized Seat, also 4 cylinder. It's quite snappy for its size, snappier in fact than all US cars I personally drove (though, tbh, in the US I've never been in a hurry, and I tend to drive 100% legally because I'm not in the mood of familiarizing myself with foreign/US law)

ggg99904• 8 years ago

The SEAT Ateca is almost 1000 pounds lighter than the XC90.

vincnetas• 8 years ago

And i think this is a good thing. Public streets are not a racing track.

kalleboo• 8 years ago

it is only bought by people with the most sedate driving habits

Aside from Jeremy Clarkson of course, who's bought like every generation of the thing

dingaling• 8 years ago

does ensure that it is only bought by people with the most sedate driving habits.

I would disagree with that statement!

As an urban cyclist the two most terrifying vehicles on the road for me are the XC90 and the VAG PL71 ( Q7, Touareg, Cayenne ) not only because of their size but also because they are predominently driven by distracted parents on the school-run.

Two tonnes of SUV, poor outward visibility, stressed driver looking for a parking spot on the kerb, kids bickering in the back == danger.

I can understand parents buy them to keep their little darlings safe from the other nasty cars but I'd much rather jostle with twice as many normal-sized sedans.

oldgradstudent4• 8 years ago

The articles says that

not a single person has been killed while driving it, or as a passenger.

It doesn't say anything about no one killed by the XC90, which is quite, ahem, surprising for an article touting AEB.

alkonaut5• 8 years ago

It's easier to build a safe car if it's big and heavy - but the number of cylinders isn't really a measure of safety (anymore). All manufacturers will go to smaller petrol engines and then to no petrol engines. The new hybrid is 400hp, which is as much as they used to take from the V8 version of the XC90. It might be that the XC90 is bought by safer drivers on average - but the performance probably isn't the difference. 3-400hp is plenty even for the biggest suv if you want to go fast. To me 0-60 in 10s is plenty quick, and these cars are 5000lbs and do 0-60 in 5 to 8s which is extreme (for everywhere but the US)

KozmoNau711• 8 years ago

More people should have "sedate driving habits". The road isn't your personal racetrack.

Slow down, stop stressing, live longer.

vigdals2• 8 years ago

Thats some really impressive stats.

I think this is a combination of great safety equipment, the safeness of the car itself (crash tests and so on) and the people who buys it. Its not the most hardcore drivers who buys a Volvo, even tho the 2017 and newer models are really good looking. Volvo has always been a pioneer in security as well

KozmoNau711• 8 years ago

Define "hardcore driver". Is it someone who drives aggressively and takes dangerous risks?

vigdals2• 8 years ago

Yep

roflchoppa• 8 years ago

oh man my Datsun is a coffin compared to these things ha. lap belts are designed to cut you in half <:0

dmitriid• 8 years ago

Volvo's stated goal is:

"Vision 2020 is about reducing the number of people that die or are seriously injured in road traffic accidents to zero. "[1]

As sceptical as I am about corporate statements, you can see that Volvo is steadily working on this. They don't do splashy announcements or announce revolutions in driving, and yet they bring more and more changes and improvements to their cars. From assisted braking to lane assist to blind spot information to city collision avoidance to many many other small and big improvements.

[1] https://group.volvocars.com/company/vision

jnsaff2• 8 years ago

My relative owns one. The Adaptive cruise control only picks up moving cars in front of you and tries to kill you when there’s a stopped car in front of you, say at a red traffic light. I’ve never been brave (or stupid) enough to see whether the AEB would counter that especially in marginal road conditions.

alkonaut5• 8 years ago

Isn't autonomous braking standard in most new premium-ish cars? My not-so-premium VW has it. Any car that has a distance-sensing cruise control should have it.

oldgradstudent4• 8 years ago

It's a weird piece. The describe the XC90 as the safest car they ever tested, and that it hadn't had a fatality since 2002. Then it attributes it to AEB.

The problem is that the XC90 got its AEB in 2015. This cannot be the reason for the impressive safety levels since 2002.

Sammi• 8 years ago

Yeah. The Volvo XC90 is a big car and most of the excellent safety record for it can be attributed to the inherent higher safety of larger cars:

https://www.edmunds.com/car-safety/are-smaller-cars-as-safe-...

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/413018/laws-of-physics-pe...

It's just physics. When large a object meets a small object then the large object wins because it has more energy and ends up pushing the small object backwards.

userbinator• 8 years ago

Also the fact that it's a Volvo, which among other things will introduce a lot of selection bias. For several years, there were no deaths in a Volvo 240 either:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...

gideonparanoid• 8 years ago

Also, surely that needs to be more accurately described as 'safest car ever tested /for its occupants/'.

alphadevx• 8 years ago

There has been a similar system on Mercedes cars (Collision Prevent Assist) for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5ia5e07BqU

oldgradstudent4• 8 years ago

Aren't all of them just using Mobileye?

pmontra• 8 years ago

Don't use that if you're leading a bicycle race. It happened in the Dubai Tour earlier this year: the organizers car (a Mercedes) autobraked and the bunch crashed into it. They disabled the sensor after that. Obviously it's not a normal use case.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/abu-dhabi-tour-organisers-bl...

tristanj• 8 years ago

Volvo's automatic collision braking sure has improved since 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg

harel• 8 years ago

This feature is also available in "cheaper" cars. My Kia Niro has is, and although I didn't get a chance to make "full" use of this (thankfully), I did incur the "too close" beep which prompted me to break one time I was not paying the road the attention it deserved. As a side note, with auto distance keeping cruise control, lane assist that actually moves the wheel to keep me in lane, side radar that alerts if a car is coming as I try to switch lanes and the AEB, this is great entry into autonomous driving (as far as some core systems that are actually in commercial use already).

Tade0• 8 years ago

I had this engage in my car once. It was the first time I was driving with glasses on - I must have misjudged the distance between me and the next car. Scared me, but not as much as the guy following me a little too closely in his E46.

It does beep randomly sometimes - usually in heavy rain. But that one time it turned on pretty late, so it's a good last resort.

Bromskloss• 8 years ago

Still, I can't help but feeling sad, as a human, to be taken out of the equation and not be needed anymore.

contravariant• 8 years ago

As a programmer becoming obsolete is the greatest possible achievement.

jbms2• 8 years ago

I'd like to see more variable brake lights to go with this:

i.e. a strip of light across the rear of the vehicle, that progressively lights up according to how hard the vehicle is braking (or anticipates braking, if it's autonomous).

Some cars have a flash-brake-lights-under-heavy-braking, but I think it would help traffic flow if you can more easily distinguish a touch of the brakes from a press of the brakes.

veritas3241• 8 years ago

I've thought this would make sense too and I feel like I'm missing something as to why it hasn't been implemented. Complexity perhaps?

Interesting to note, though, that we do have weak forms of braking that don't light up the tail lights - heavy engine braking in the case of manual transmissions, lighter engine-braking for automatics, and in the case of electric vehicles (at least a Tesla in my experience) the lights don't kick on from regen unless it's passed a certain deceleration level.

arbitrage2• 8 years ago

There's no tangible benefit big enough for the added complexity and maintenance cost.

What exactly do you get from incremental brake lights?

enraged_camel• 8 years ago

I dunno. I personally like the non-variable brake lights because I can gently tap on my brakes to make tailgaters give me space.

mstade• 8 years ago

I think some sort of variable lighting would be nifty, but in my book it's the wrong solution to what is really a problem of keeping distance. For highway driving the answer for me there has been adaptive cruise control – it's amazing! What I'm missing though is for a way to have the car keep distance, but still leave control over the gas to me. This would be very useful in high traffic situations where setting a cruise control speed isn't really usable, since you'll likely be disengaging it now and then due to braking because someone is cutting in.

I put a lot more faith in sensors to judge the distance to the car in front of me, than my visual perception of brake lights. At a certain medium distance, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to judge the difference between 25% brake and 75% anyway, but my car's sensors would be able to detect that I'm on a collision course, and could adjust gas/braking accordingly.

gmiller123456• 8 years ago

Anybody know how well these handle water? I imagine a situation after/during heavy rain with giant puddles of water. A car in the lane next to me hits a puddle at high speed throwing a lot of water in the air in front of my car. Does the car slam on its breaks?

dingo_bat• 8 years ago

If the splash is large enough to cause visibility issues, I'd say it must slam the brakes.

Autonomous braking: 'The most significant development since the safety belt'

Related Stories