Featured Fall of Tesla

Both.

Attractive nuisance doctrine - Wikipedia
... especially if the manufacturer misleads the driver into thinking that a car qualifies for autonomous driving, which none in today's market actually do.

 

The original post was about IIHS and CR removing their recommendation for Tesla's camera only Autopilot, because they haven't tested it yet. Autopilot is only level 2; Tesla has even said so themselves. With that, the car has the mechanical equipment to drive itself, but the software isn't up to that task. The human driver still needs to pay attention as if the system wasn't in place. Maybe Autopilot with cameras only isn't as good as with radar too, but neither system is intended for the driver to become passive while driving.

FSD is higher level autonomous driving that isn't in a consumer car yet. Transponders may become part those higher automation systems. For them to work, you need standardized communication protocols, and most cars having them. They can help with lower systems, but we don't even have wireless charging standards yet. Their use is a ways off.

Lidar is probably the best in terms of performance, which is why many autonomous systems being tested use them. However, they are expensive, and have moving parts. So may not be reliable enough for use in a consumer car at this point.

The millimeter band radar Toyota uses can have trouble with rain. Sight or it being better comes down to specifics.

There is a difference between the system not working, and when it isn't a good idea to be using. The manual warnings are about the latter, and they go back to dumb cruise control, because the situation is more likely to go bad than with a driver controlling the throttle when an unsuspected puddle or patch of ice is hit. The advanced aids haven't changed that.

 

So I read the engineering specs for the Tesla radar. They aren’t useless but did not impress me. Perhaps two with a 90 degree rotation and different scan rates … maybe.

IMHO, replacing the front windshield with two would crash any car in a short time. I encourage the radar advocates to ‘do the experiment.’

Bib Wilson

 

@Lee Jay I tried to research and yes it does appear that radar can see through inclement weather, ie snow:

https://www.abc10.com/mobile/article/weather/accuweather/self-driving-cars-radar-inclement-weather-rain-fog-snow/507-0438604e-ef32-4c0a-9634-99a6ec71fa12

It makes sense what you experienced that the camera system fails to operate before the radar system as weather conditions get worse.

I understand what you are trying to say. Not sure about the others....

moto g(7) power ?

 

That is great ... when coupled with true "self driving" software and systems.

Or with lower capability driver assist systems, when the portion of humans pushing beyond safety system capability ratings, is very small. But handheld mobile devices have demonstrated that humans overall are not that diligent.

 

Radar is such a different beast than visual light cameras that it's hard to see how one can be substituted for the other. Take for instance the tasks of speed determination and range finding. Cameras can do both tasks, but they require that the object moves a significant distance before the speed or range can be discerned. They also require an unobstructed view at all times for a pair of stereo cameras that are separated by a significant distance.

I love the fact that the radar based safety systems (and dynamic cruise) can determine if a car that "cuts you off" on the freeway is actually moving faster than your car and is thus not a danger. It can also detect in milliseconds that the car ahead of you is slowing down even without brake lights, thus saving the second or so that a vision only system needs to realize that the car ahead of you has slowed or stopped.

As for the argument that you don't want reliance on radar in inclement weather; Here in California we have "whiteouts" from both blowing snow, fog and dust storms. All three conditions appear very quickly and leave you close to blind. 20 car pileups are not unheard of. Radar based safety systems that can detect the pile up can slow your car before it adds to the accident. If it were required on every car it would be difficult to have future pileups.

As for the geotagged transponder idea... I love it. It could help manually driven cars as well as autonomous ones. The transponder can alert all the cars that are following you to the fact that you are slowing and turning left at the next intersection. That would work even if you are invisible to traffic because the car behind you is an 18 wheeler.

 

In these conditions, defensive driving requires that people SLOW DOWN SO THEY DON'T OVERDRIVE THEIR VISION! Those who don't properly slow down, are exercising a death wish. And every year, numerous of those deaths are delivered.

That would be true when SAE Level 4 systems become commonly available. But right now, they are not available on the consumer market. They are still in the research projects stage.

The radar-based Level 2 systems now available will catch some of the situations that drivers can't see when overdriving their vision, but will miss others. See the Owner's Manuals for partial listings (examples posted earlier) of the sorts of things they too-often miss. That is why they must remain secondary to the human driver, who has responsibility to keep primary control. And to slow the #@&% down when they can't see far enough with their own eyes.

Drivers depending on today's Level 2 systems to do a future Level 4 job are playing Russian Roulette not only with their own lives, but also with the lives of others. This is deadly, and it is criminal.

 

The camera Toyota mounted inside above my rear view mirror for this gets blocked by accumulation on the windshield.

 

That does not stop you from being clobbered by the idiots who drive like it's summer at the drag strip.

 

The people that break the law, drinking, intoxicated, mobile phone use. I'm not sure we should go so far as to restrict everyone for these...

I remember when I was learning to drive in the early '90s, '91 more specifically, once I got my license I could take my minor friends with me. Now CA has a restriction minors can't take minors, at least alone, with them. I guess such laws developed due to this kind of concern.

So while I'm not for it, restrictions can be set in place. For example, wipers ON, disable feature because it can't sense limited traction in rain/snow. Or cap Vmax in which such will work.



moto g(7) power ?

 

The wipers don't clear it?

 

That was my immediate thought! (I was actually afraid of the repercussions of asking and didn't)!

moto g(7) power ?

 

Not in that location,. It is outside the arc of the drivers side blade.

 

I think you are confusing a number of issues.

1) if a car cuts you off, a good autopilot should slow down to increase the gap whether the car is moving faster or slower, that car will likely hit its brakes if the car in front of you that caused the small gap is not going as fast. How much you slow down can be reduced by a radar system, but its not going to make it safer.

2) If you are in a white out condition you should not be using radar cruise control. The system will allow you to travel at unsafe speeds for you to over ride it. During these conditions it will likely take longer than usual for your car to stop.

3) Radar systems can help prevent accidents or lessen their severity. This is mainly the auto braking system that the radar can facilitate by seeing the car ahead of the car ahead, or better through fog or snow or rain.

From my use of autopilot I would think tesla can get it working fine with a vision only system. The cars will likely still be vary safe for drivers and occupants. I do think the radar can make them even safer when the driver puts themselves in the wrong conditions. Lets admit it, drivers do this often, and the price is not high compared to the car. Still the agencies should test for safety, not assume the cars are not safe because they don't check a box. I felt fairly safe in my prius even without a radar, but I feel safer in my tesla.

 

Wow! Thanks for sharing that. Hmmm....

moto g(7) power ?

 

You are missing the point.

Whiteouts often spring up out of no where. No one in their right mind tries to drive in one. But if you are "caught" in one, the radar based accident avoidance system can slow your car down before you hit the invisible car 50 feet ahead of you. My car has a radar based accident avoidance system. If all cars have such a system, chain accidents would be much fewer.

When a car cuts you off it presents several dangers. First is that your instinct is to slam on the brakes, exposing you to a possible collision from the rear or loss of control. If, as often happens, the person is simply trying to get to the fast lane there is no need to slow for the second or so that he/she is in front of you. Radar can tell in milliseconds whether the car is accelerating, slowing or stopped. Camera based radar can't do that. It has to wait till enough frames have been captured to show the car direction and relative size before it can deduce direction and speed.

A vision only system such as Tesla is proposing might eventually be as good as an alert driver, but it can't get better simply because they both are working from the same source of data.

 

I found it interesting that the same news cycle that announced the removal of Radar by tesla also announced that Tesla was going to use the in car camera to ensure that people are actively paying attention to the road. There were too many YouTube videos showing how easy it was to fool the Tesla into thinking that there was a driver behind the wheel.

My first thought was that Tesla had law suits pending and needed to show "we are fixing it". Since "chips are scarce", one obvious way to solve the problem is to re-purpose the radar computing power to analyze the in cabin camera feed. Radar can be added back (to great fanfare) later when it's shown to be essential to safety.

 

Your initial post was discussing use of radar for use in crash avoidance and dynamic cruise. The crash avoidance can benefit from radar in those conditions, but stop using the cruise control.

Something to consider with radar is the effect of the signals from other cars and other radio sources.
"The results of the study show, levels of interference based on operation of current systems in congested environments will be significant. In scenarios with many vehicles operating radars in the 76-81 GHz band, the power from other radars will likely exceed the power of echoes from targets needed for specified performance, by several orders of magnitude."
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/13790_radarstudy_092518_v2b-tag.pdf
The noise from other systems makes it harder for your car's to pick up the return from that stopped car ahead of you.

Cameras may take more time to judge speed and direction, but they could have been tracking the car crossing lanes before the driver sees it.

The chip shortage could be part of it, but I don't think it is a lack of processing power. I'm sure someone knows the specifics of their hardware.

 

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Exactly.

As far as I understand it (only had my Prius Prime since April and it's my first vehicle with these kinds of active features--emergency braking, dynamic cruise, etc.), the signal that pops up on the display to brake (big red rectangle with white capital letters) relies on radar and is independent of the cruise control (though perhaps it relies on the camera that also aids in lane keep assist duties?). That's fine. But what might be causing confusion (and/or argument) is whether anyone is advocating the continued use of radar-guided cruise control in inclement weather--that is a definite BIG NO, NO!