A new report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) on autonomous vehicles is out, and the results are clear. While the IIHS says autonomous systems can provide some safety benefits, self-driving systems “aren’t robust substitutes for human drivers.”
IIHS’s study used only cars that are already available for purchase by the public. So it did not include systems still in testing like those from Google’s self-driving company, Waymo. Instead, the test subjects were a BMW 5 series, a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Volvo S90, and Tesla’s Model 3 and Model S.
The IIHS tested the ability of all of the cars to use adaptive cruise control, active lane-keeping, and automatic emergency braking. According to IIHS chief research officer David Zuby, “some systems handled some situations better than others.”
All of the cars but the Teslas had trouble braking consistently when a vehicle was stopped in the road ahead of them for example. But then the Teslas were the only ones who collided with a test balloon in an emergency braking situation when adaptive cruise control was turned off. The cars performed as intended though, applying emergency brakes to mitigate the severity of impact. When adaptive cruise control was activated, the cars stopped earlier and gentler and avoided the balloon entirely.
In addition to their technical shortcomings, IIHS found that self-driving systems can be dangerous because people expect their cars to keep them safe. When a self-driving system is activated, people are less likely to be paying close attention to the road around them, creating unsafe situations.
While autonomous-equipped cars currently on the road can offer some safety benefits, IIHS concluded that “the early results underscore the fact that today’s systems aren’t robust substitutes for human drivers.”
Source: gobytrucknews, thehill, insurancejournal, wired, chicagotribune, iihs
Just put those people who who make HOS and ELD to become law. Dealing with traffic, weather, contruction, congestion, sleep time changing from west coast to east coast.. 1st day start to drive @ 5:00 am.. 5 days later stary driving time is midnght… will they sleep straight from 1:00 pm…
Please… we r human being.. we r not machine switching on and off….
Fatal acident because the selfish of people. They dont share the road.. everyone is hurry for their own selfishness..
I only believe in god.. if it suppose to be happen.. it would happened. Thanks to fmcsa that now driver drive faster.. fighting each other over parking spot.. cursing each other on fuel island for taking so long at pump.. driver sleep on the ramp even having a good trip plan, just some traffic jam or delay with road condition.. waking up on ram no restroom to anwser mother nature or clean up themself to have a fresh day start…
Congratulation FMCSA…
Sorry wrong post
Hey Source of Reason
Look at this study. They had trouble keeping their lane over hills, crossing the line in curves, etc. I thought you were bragging on their ability to measure within millimeters? Did they just barely touch the line, say by a millimeter?
Is your Nuwave oven done cooking that stirfry yet?
The NEW technology on todays trucks brakes down so often or needs a replacement part or needs to be updated or realigned or rebooted on a regular basis.
The DEF systems always need attention too.
I’m a co. hand for a good sized carrier now 6 years. I’ve been given 8 different tractors to use during this time. They all have been in the shop for technology related problems on a regular basis. One unit was braking down on a every 6 weeks basis for 14 months.
I was an oo for 28 years prior to this and the 3 trucks i owned over those years never went down like this new stuff.
Driverless OTR? I doubt it.
The company that puts this technology into their trucks are going to go broke. The first time that the system is hacked and people are killed on the interstate because of this….The law suits will put them out of business…DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU!!!!
They will disclaim responsibility. The courts will tell you to sue the hacker, not the carrier, in the flimsy premise that the hacker was at fault, and the carrier was just another victim. The carrier will recover their losses through insurance, and the hacker will be in some country where the victims can’t touch him – China, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria… whatever.
If you have any doubts about this, I direct your attention to the recent Equifax hack (or frankly any of thousands of other hacks), in which they lost 300 million credit records. They offered victims two years of their new credit monitoring service for free, after which it is available for only $10/month. So in two years, thanks to being terrible at information security, they will presumably be looking at up to three billion dollars per month in revenues, to alert you when the security of information that they created and protected poorly, gets out into the “dark web”. At which time they will almost certainly have an upcharge service to inconvenience you while they putz around pretending to fix your credit, until you get tired of being ripped off by everyone, and give up on credit entirely.
Corporations do not get held responsible for these things. It’s people like us that get screwed.
Sooooo true! Thank you!
Autonomous or not, defensive driving can depend on the abilities of drivers to anticipate other drivers intentions. I have a feeling these vehicles are nearsighted, not seeing far enough ahead for things like a bridge out, 90° pedestrian traffic, distracted drivers, and can they read emergency signs? Nevermind dodging oncoming lane excursions. They also can’t see something thrown from a bridge.. And in a controlled crash, when a collision is unavoidable, will the car be able to choose running into a disabled vehicle that is unoccupied instead of one with passengers?
All these people are just getting ahead of themselves with technology, this stuff wasn’t even possible 10 years ago and now they think it’s so advanced they can shovel it into moving 80000lb vehicles lol they must have good salesman to get people to believe it will actually work anytime soon………..keep dreaming and leave Our jobs alone please get onto the next thing you can try to ruin,thanks have a great day
Chris hit the nail on the head!!!
“In addition to their technical shortcomings, IIHS found that self-driving systems can be dangerous because people expect their cars to keep them safe. When a self-driving system is activated, people are less likely to be paying close attention to the road around them, creating unsafe situations.”
THIS is exactly why those systems are going to cause more mayhem than anything. It’s not that the systems are bad and “IN THEORY” should help mitigate damage and injuries… IN THEORY only. In practice people will be lazy because that’s how humans work, will let the car keep them safe and get into situations that would have been entirely avoided if the driver had his eyes and full attention on the road ahead.
They aren’t even safee “in theory”. The real world is full of variables that are too complex for a computers to reasonably account for, and automated perceptual systems are a long, long ways from the degree of detailed perception that humans have achieved through evolution. Sure, the cameras can be better than human eyes, but it’s not just about seeing – *perception* involves quickly sorting through what is seen, to determine what needs attention. Automated vehicles try to operate as though everything requires attention, or nothing does. When they find the practical middle ground (if ever), they will have to operate on the same general judgement skills as humans do, and they will still make similar mistakes. Tge difference will be that humans are held accountable for their actions and mistakes, and computers will not be – which means that we cannot tolerate fallibility from them.
Vehicle automation will only be practical, in the forseeable future, if we control the conditions within which these vehicles operate. Automated-only enclosed highways, fot example, or something along these lines… Frankly, it’s probably more productive to pursue some kind of quantum teleportation technology, as a driverless transportation solution, than it is to pursue driverless vehicle technology.
Lmao the hubris of these techies is insurmountable. Every vehicle on the road will have to be automated and communicating with each other before we bother automating trucks. Humans are unpredictable and a computer has no heart or courtesy. We all rely on the courtesy of each other to allow last minute lane changes, quick safe merging responding to emergency crews and broken down vehicles on the shoulder. How will this couresty be programmed?