Seat 'lane assist' ad -are driving standards now THAT bad..?

[va1o]

ensignia said:

This place is full of bitter old luddites who'll find reason to complain about any new technology. It's getting extremely tiresome; I'm sure the days of having a manual choke and seats with no headrests were better.

Lane Assist is a useful feature to have, it'll probably help lane discipline and keep people more alert. How exactly is this a bad thing? I'm sure no one's completely reliant on this, it's just a nice feature to have as a safety net. After all, not everyone is a driving god like all the players on here.

Agree completely, the borish and predictable responses on here are getting a little tedious.

I'd happily have a car with Lane Assist, and ACC is top of my list of essentials for whatever I buy next. My priority for a daily driver is to be as relaxing and easy to drive as possible given it will be sat on the motorway everyday, driver involvement is at the bottom of the list.

[Mr2Mike]

ensignia said:

This place is full of bitter old luddites who'll find reason to complain about any new technology. It's getting extremely tiresome; I'm sure the days of having a manual choke and seats with no headrests were better.

Not quite, This place is full of people who are rightly fed up with the inappropriate application of technology, either for it's own sake or to try to make things safer for a generation of mouth breathing cretins who are breeding out more intelligence with every generation.

Some brainiac has invented an umbrella that uses a battery pack and high powered electric motor to blow the rain away before it drops on the user. Do you think this is a forward looking, useful invention that will help mankind, or an utter waste of resources? Can't be the latter, as that would make you a luddite...

[chrispj]

va1o said:

ensignia said:

This place is full of bitter old luddites who'll find reason to complain about any new technology.

Agree completely, the borish and predictable responses on here are getting a little tedious.

Here we go with the generalisations again, like everyone who objects to lane assist has never travelled my than a stone's throw from the inbred village where they were born. I personally (& I suspect most objectors to Lane assist) have no problem with ACC, city safe braking, ABS, or other helpful technological improvements and I would quite happily buy a daily driver with any or all of those. This one, I don't see the need for it unless you're not paying an appropriate amount of attention to your driving. If you have a need for it, then there's bigger issues to address than just keeping you in your lane, like why you're in the driving seat at that particular moment (if you're too tired to drive or have other more pressing things to do like texting or facebook...).

[m444ttb]

I was at a motor insurance seminar hosted by EY the other week and the guest speaker was a director from Thatcham. His main focus was Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems but he also discussed their view on other emerging technology up to and including auto-drive. If Thatcham's predictions on the cost of insurance (not to mention roD deaths) come to pass over the next 15-20 years (I think) we will all have a lot to be thankful for.

[so called]

ensignia said:

perfect the technology and cover virtually every scenario.

I find that a very nieve statement.
There are millions of cars out on the road with varying degrees of technical issues that the manufacturers don't of wont call back.
Every research topic has a financial cut off point.
Snowy and icey conditions didnt seem to have been a consideration for the lane assist and proximity brake control from the very lousy experience I had with it.

[va1o]

chrispj said:

Here we go with the generalisations again, like everyone who objects to lane assist has never travelled my than a stone's throw from the inbred village where they were born. I personally (& I suspect most objectors to Lane assist) have no problem with ACC, city safe braking, ABS, or other helpful technological improvements and I would quite happily buy a daily driver with any or all of those. This one, I don't see the need for it unless you're not paying an appropriate amount of attention to your driving. If you have a need for it, then there's bigger issues to address than just keeping you in your lane, like why you're in the driving seat at that particular moment (if you're too tired to drive or have other more pressing things to do like texting or facebook...).

But its like saying that car's shouldn't have airbags because only an idiot would crash. The systems are there to protect you in the event of the unexpected. It isn't here to take over the driving and should not be treated as a replacement for paying due care and attention

[Tony33]

va1o said:

But its like saying that car's shouldn't have airbags because only an idiot would crash. The systems are there to protect you in the event of the unexpected. It isn't here to take over the driving and should not be treated as a replacement for paying due care and attention

What some of us are questioning though is the scenarios in which it would be triggered. If for instance someone was to say it is helpful to keep them in their lane after a few drinks they would rightly get slaughtered. A far better system would prevent them from starting the car. If someone is that drowsy they are arguably equally a danger to others.

It is pure speculation but the what if is whether someone would feel they could continue whilst tired because of lane assist helping them. I think it is a valid question.

[Toltec]

Tony33 said:

hat some of us are questioning though is the scenarios in which it would be triggered. If for instance someone was to say it is helpful to keep them in their lane after a few drinks they would rightly get slaughtered. A far better system would prevent them from starting the car. If someone is that drowsy they are arguably equally a danger to others.

It is pure speculation but the what if is whether someone would feel they could continue whilst tired because of lane assist helping them. I think it is a valid question.

If it happens twice within half an hour the car should just bong at them continuously until it has been turned off for at least half an hour. If it triggers three times the car should show a 30 minute timer at which point if they have not stopped the car guides itself to a stop and electrocutes them.

Hmm, I may be in a strange mood tonight.

Edited to correct auto-correct. Oh the irony.

Edited by Toltec on Monday 15th December 21:09

[Tony33]

Toltec said:

Tony33 said:

hat some of us are questioning though is the scenarios in which it would be triggered. If for instance someone was to say it is helpful to keep them in their lane after a few drinks they would rightly get slaughtered. A far better system would prevent them from starting the car. If someone is that drowsy they are arguably equally a danger to others.

It is pure speculation but the what if is whether someone would feel they could continue whilst tired because of lane assist helping them. I think it is a valid question.

If it happens twice within half an hour the car should just bong at them continuously until it has been turned off for at least half an hour. If it triggers three times the car should show a 30 minute timer at which point if they have not stopped the car guides itself to a stop and electrocuted them.

Hmm, I may be in a strange mood tonight.

I guess me too, cos I lol'd when I got to the end of your second sentence

[chrispj]

va1o said:

But its like saying that car's shouldn't have airbags because only an idiot would crash. The systems are there to protect you in the event of the unexpected. It isn't here to take over the driving and should not be treated as a replacement for paying due care and attention

Well, no, it isn't like saying airbags shouldn't exist. The unexpected/unforeseeable happens and accidents result. Airbags, ABS, automatic city braking, these are all things which will hopefully prevent or mitigate the effects of this. As far as I can see lane guidance helps you keep driving in a more or less straight line if you are unable or don't want to give your full attention to driving. It won't bring you to a stop, it won't take avoiding action, it doesn't know what anyone around you is doing, I just don't see how, if the driver is alert and paying attention, it will prevent an accident. If the system can't take autonomous control and bring the car to a safe stop then all it is doing is provide a comfort blanket as the unalert driver careers down the road, which doesn't sound like an improvement in safety for the occupants of the car or those around them.

[andy43]

The late Peter Wheeler said he would rather fit a metal spike to the centre of the steering wheel rather than fit ABS to his TVRs. I think there may be a middle ground somewhere between that and snooze functions though
If your heart isn't beating fast enough, you're not concentrating - removing every possible risk, element of danger or discomfort will eventually lead to drivers falling asleep.
Most of these lane discipline/keep your distance systems are a good idea, because they are progress, the future, smart tech - but will they save lives? Or just dumb down the average driver to such a point that their reaction times are measured in minutes rather than milliseconds?
When a system like this fails big time, a flattened bus queue somewhere is going to make one hell of a court case.

[foggy]

Ari said:

I have a couple of questions that spring immediately to mind (and there are no doubt plenty of other similar scenarios).

You say LGS can operate at any speed from 0 - 200kph and that you use it in 20mph and 30mph sectors, so clearly it works in urban environments. What happens if its driving along steering for you, keeping you in lane, and the Active Cruise Control is looking for obstructions, and there is a car parked agains the kerb requiring you to steer across the white lines slightly to pass. Does it just anchor up behind the parked car?

In my post I meant I use ACC in all sorts of speed limits, but come to think of it in a couple of cars the active steering works from a standstill across the speed range. In your example a typical play out of the situation with a modern ACC system would be the car would continue to travel in the lane until the ACC detected the parked car partially in the path ahead and then it would probably smoothly reduce the power demand and possibly begin to brake comfortably. As the car gets closer to the parked car if the driver does not react in anyway and the car judges the situation as critical it could provide a Forward Collision Warning (FCW) in an attempt to alert the driver. What the car is very unlikely to do in such a small overlap collision situation is brake by ACC to a complete halt behind the parked car, nor will the auto-brake collision avoidance system activate until possibly the very last moment, because of the ease with which the parked car can be negotiated right up to the last moment by the drier with a small steering input. The basis of this is the vehicle manufacturer striving to achieve the lowest possible rate of false positive braking interventions so as not to cause a potentially dangerous situation nor lose the driver's confidence in the system. There's no car on the market as yet with collision avoidance by steering.

In reality what will likely happen is your driver, hypothetically welded to their iphone because of all their driver support functions driving on their behalf, will feel the ACC reducing the speed of the car, look out of the windscreen to observe why, see the issue developing and then merrily negotiate the car by themselves with ease. The slight ACC deceleration is a great super-early haptic warning in Time To Collision (TTC) terms that the driver can sense without it being of any real annoyance compared to last moment FCWs.

Now what muddies the waters somewhat is if you're in a state of the production ACC & LGS car that not only interprets the lane markings for guidance cues but can also pick up on vehicles ahead. At low speeds to medium speeds if you're following another vehicle in the above 'car parked at the side of the road' scenario, your state of the art car may make the decision to use the path of the vehicle you're following as its main cue and you'd feel the wheel gently turn in your hands and safely negotiate the parked car. Simple really!

Ari said:

What if you're cruising along an A road, ACC controlling the speed, LGS doing the steering, set at 60mph, and you reach a T junction?

Well, you'd either drive straight past it as normal if you're going across the top of the T or fire straight over the end of the junction, just as an unobservant driver would do. As far as I'm aware there's no production vehicle as yet that links sat nav mapping or sign recognition to ACC to affect control or provide situational warnings.

Ari said:

What if a child is running across the pavement and (were you paying attention) you could see he's about to run straight into the path of your car. Can the ACC see him and ease off in advance, or is it purely reactive (ALERT, there's an obstruction directly in front - apply brakes BANG too late!

This one is a pretty complex situation, the answer to which is - it depends on the geometry of the situation, the vehicle speed, vehicle sensor technology, the kiddie position etc. whether the car will be 'see' the child. The problem with pedestrians is, that compared to other road traffic, they can accelerate, decelerate and change direction pretty damn rapidly so the ACC system is unlikely to react until the pedestrian becomes a real crash threat either in the path of the vehicle or very close to it, at which point the pedestrian collision avoidance system (if fitted) could take over to avoid the crash or at least reduce the crash speed, which is general always beneficial for the ped. If the driver can see the ped and interpret the situation developing then as soon as they touch the brake pedal the ACC is deactivated and the driver is in full control. The alert mkI human eyeball and brain combination is at present the best sensor and processor system for identifying and interpreting such perpendicular crash situations given the rapidity with which the criticality of the situation can escalate or diffuse, but pedestrian collision avoidance systems can do their bit too.

Ari said:

Another question about ACC. As I understand it if the car in front brakes, you brake to maintain distance. What happens if you have it set at 80mph on the motorway, feet off the pedals, car steering merrily away, engrossed in your latest Facebook post when you come up behind stationary queuing traffic? Can it stop in time?

Again, it depends. Some ACC systems are not so great at detecting stationary traffic that wasn't previously moving (again for reasons of trying to tune out false positives with basic sensor systems - a system that has seen things moving that subsequently come to a halt can reliably identify them as vehicles, but if they've always been stationary...) however if they are identified, as described for the parked car scenario above, the driver will likely feel the ACC ease off the power in response to the traffic causing him to look up and observe the situation. If the driver doesn't do anything there will be FCW and then auto-braking if the car has such a system. High performing auto-brake systems are avoiding front to rear crashes up to 30mph or so, but at the kind of speeds you mention steering avoidance (if possible) is much more effective than trying to brake to a halt.

Ari said:

I keep coming back to the same thing, used properly maybe it has some merit. And you've tried it so you are better placed than me to be of that opinion. But, as you say yourself, these systems can be used inappropriately. We're talking about the Great British Public. They're not paying enough attention now - make them believe that the car will brake and steer for them and deal with any emergency and you're effectively licencing driverless cars.

Give it time, not too much mind... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Up8m6p8DU

[AW111]

Toltec said:

If it happens twice within half an hour the car should just bong at them continuously until it has been turned off for at least half an hour. If it triggers three times the car should show a 30 minute timer at which point if they have not stopped the car guides itself to a stop and electrocutes them.

Hmm, I may be in a strange mood tonight.

Edited to correct auto-correct. Oh the irony.

Edited by Toltec on Monday 15th December 21:09

I would be in favour of the car logging all of :
ABS activation
ESC activation
Lane control

And at least displaying a message if you trigger them too often (however you define that).
Maybe a sad face

That would (maybe) alert those who are driving at the limit of adhesion and not even noticing (see several posts above).

[cptsideways]

Going by the number of people who manage to crash in a straight line on a motorway, its a good thing. But for anyone who likes driving its the most annoying feature ever!

[so called]

Hi Foggy, a quick question on your point of the system "activating at the last possible moment"...
'Most' drivers are taking into account road conditions constantly and making decisions on safe braking distances without even knowing it.
Braking performance is very much dependent on the road surface condition ( friction coefficient ).
What input for road condition and so optimum braking performance are these automated systems being given ?

[paranoid airbag]

Mr2Mike said:

Not quite, This place is full of people who are rightly fed up with the inappropriate application of technology, either for it's own sake or to try to make things safer for a generation of mouth breathing cretins who are breeding out more intelligence with every generation.

Some brainiac has invented an umbrella that uses a battery pack and high powered electric motor to blow the rain away before it drops on the user. Do you think this is a forward looking, useful invention that will help mankind, or an utter waste of resources? Can't be the latter, as that would make you a luddite...

Highly agree, I can't stand these cretins who can't even breed their own carrier pigeons any more. Bloody internet.

(sent from my iPigeon)

[Mr E]

I'm enjoying the technical insight on how some of these systems work. Thanks very much to those who are involved in these systems and discussing them in detail.

AW111 said:

And at least displaying a message if you trigger them too often (however you define that).
Maybe a sad face

Again, the fancy electronic festooned family car monitors the way I'm driving (I presume control inputs and the like) and will give me a warning if it thinks I'm doing it badly, suggesting I need a break.

It's only ever gone off once. About 8 minutes from home at 3am after a horror of a day returning from holiday. It was right, I was knackered and not driving well.
I thought I'd hate it, but it seems to be a well calibrated system so I've left it on.

[Devil2575]

Mr2Mike said:

Not quite, This place is full of people who are rightly fed up with the inappropriate application of technology, either for it's own sake or to try to make things safer for a generation of mouth breathing cretins who are breeding out more intelligence with every generation.

Excellent, except funadamentally incorrect.

We are not breeding out intelligence. On the contrary we are becoming more intelligent as standards of education improve.

Lane assist, ABS and all the other safety features out there do not act in such a way as to replace an intelligent function that the driver is performing. Driving itself is not a task that requires an especially high level of intelligence.

[Devil2575]

andy43 said:

- but will they save lives? Or just dumb down the average driver to such a point that their reaction times are measured in minutes rather than milliseconds?
When a system like this fails big time, a flattened bus queue somewhere is going to make one hell of a court case.

Do you think that systems like this are actually going to have an effect on a drivers reaction time?
The system under discussion is to intervene if you drift out of lane and alert you to the fact, so attempting to prevent an accident caused by a tired driver who loses concentration. It's happened to me before. This is hardly an issue of reaction times.

The second part is an interesting point but let me make a comparison. In the 50s the control room of a chemical plant used to be full of dials and switches and it was controlled by the operators. The first change was the introduction of simple control loops to automatically control certain functions and then one day someone came up with an idea to let computers control the plant instead and now we have a DCS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_control_system). This is essentially automated a lot of the functions that the operators used to carry out. Then someone designed an Optimizer which went one step further and actually runs the plant based on parameters you input, such as asking it to maximise the make of a certain product or simply maximise profit. In effect all the operators do now is monitor the plant and intervene if a specific manual operation is required or a problem occurs that the DCS cannot handle. While this has inevitably lead to operatore becoming less skilled in certain areas of running a chamical plant, it has lead to plants being far more reliable and freed up operators to carry out higher level tasks. A computer is much better at monitoring multiple functions simultaneously and can be programmed to understand how they respond in relation to each other and act accordingly. So in comparison to the early days chemical plants now run much closer to design limits but do so much safer than they used too. However allowing computers to control the plant leads to the similar question to the one you posed. What happens when they get it wrong? This is a real situation and because the consequences of getting it wrong can be very severe we do a lot of work to ensure that there are systems in place to protect against such an event. However all systems have a failure rate and even the best of them has a probability, albeit vanishingly small, of failing to danger and it going completely tits up. However almost without exception, every failure of a chemical plant that I have ever read about has had it's roots in a failure of the people involved. Almost without exception the week link in the system is when people are involved. This isn't because negligent people are involved, at least not always, but because people make mistakes.
So yes it is possible for the technology to go wrong and kill people, but it's a lot less likely than people getting it wrong and killing people.

[Ari]

foggy said:

Lots and lots of intereting stuff and a great video

Give it time, not too much mind... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Up8m6p8DU

That's brilliant, thank you.

So clearly, (and as the man from Volvo in the video says himself) we don't have self driving cars yet.

However equally clearly, give many users a car that accelerates, brakes and steers for them and they will quickly believe that they do.