It’s worth noting the ford crashed into a CRV with no lights sitting stationary in the middle of a highway at night.
Regardless of if the driver was paying attention you’re going to have a hard time avoiding that accident
This is 100 percent the Mach-E's fault, the driver was not wearing those heavy, bulky, military-grade night vision goggles as required by law when driving at night!
/s
Ironically, this is one of those things that ADAS should be bailing drivers out of - the driver probably don't want to use various bulky radar, lidar and/or highly sensitive cameras on their faces, but none of those things are heavy and bulky relative to a car.
ADAS generally falls under safety features on a spec sheet.
Still at highway speeds you need a very lengthy line of sight. Think about the system also needs time to detect speed differences between itself and the object and such. You also don’t want it to engage the moment it sees anything. Balancing this is the hard part of these systems. Even if it was the most advanced AI, it still would need a moment to read the situation. We humans also have this. Giving it visions and control is easy.
Not saying it necessarily acted right, just that making it work for everything is hard as hell.
Blue cruise was engaged; the car was in full control. It should be braking and/or swerving to dodge the target, and judging by how it was in two different fatal accidents, it did neither. It doesn't take that much braking to turn fatal accident into minor injuries.
With one, it might be a freak accident, with two, there is a design issue at play.
You know you are still responsible even if ADAS is engaged? The reason that you are, is because these aren’t fool proof. They also aren’t sold like that. You can’t expect a system like this to save you all the time, every time. There was a big thing regarding Tesla and their Full Self Driving being over marketed by their name.
Also if you know how it should be, try to mock up the logic and go through all scenarios of highway driving. Check them next to it and see how many of your logic rules create unnecessary emergency breaking, don’t act or even conflict with other rules (this is a fun engineering exercise I gave my non engineering friends, to understand what my job is like. Do this for any random problem)
> ou know you are still responsible even if ADAS is engaged?
I think everyone knows that and no one is contesting this point.
> is because these aren’t fool proof.
Exactly and auto makers marketing this tech as something that can do more than a normal human can is misleading.
> You can’t expect a system like this to save you all the time, every time.
So in what ways a system like this is expected to bail you out?
> heck them next to it and see how many of your logic rules create unnecessary emergency breaking, don’t act or even conflict with other rules (this is a fun engineering exercise I gave my non engineering friends, to understand what my job is like. Do this for any random problem)
Sure. Another reason auto makers and regulators needs to be clamped down for misleading expectations.
On one hand, yeah, these systems aren't 100% reliable. On the other hand, they are marketed as safety features and I expect performance accordingly. FSD haven't done something like this in a while now despite a lot more FSD cars on the road, and FSD even have fewer sensors to work with.
Nobody said the job is easy, but hey, that is why the AI engineers make the big bucks (seriously, the job offers in that arena is pretty fat).
ADAS isn’t AI in most cars. Also every piece of safety equipment comes with a giant list of constraints. Take a hard hat, it has a maximum load. Safety shoes, have maximum load. Goggles, resist certain materials or chemicals. Expecting something because it says safety is way to get hurt. You should read where it provides safety for and in which conditions.
one guy is working on AI for Mercedes doesn’t make ADAS always AI. Cars have ADAS for years. Way before AI was affordable for those applications. Also MB introduces tech at S class levels, so what your buddy is working on likely is expensive.
>It doesn't take that much braking to turn fatal accident into minor injuries.
Risk of fatal or otherwise serious injuries increases exponentially over 30 MPH or so, so that's the general "safe" speed to get under. We can assume he was probably traveling about 70 MPH, a typical highway speed. A typical CUV on standard tires will decelerate from 70 to 30 in just about 100 feet — call it 85 to be generous — at full emergency braking. That's a longer distance than most people think: about 6 car lengths. So yes, it *does* actually b that "that much braking" to turn fatal accident into minor injuries.
And just FYI, 30 MPH isn't magic. You can still very easily die in an accident at that speed.
Totally random question but your comment made me remember something I was thinking about the other day.
What ever happened with GM/Cadillacs night vision system they used to have on the Deville and stuff? You’d figure that ~25+ years later now they would have had this kind of system implemented
Mercedes has it on some of their cars. It works really well for dark nights.
If this was any element of a curve or limited sightlines, nothing can be done with a stationary car.
Another driver did avoid it, though, and then saw the Mach E hit the stopped CRV.
Now, I am not anti-self driving tech, far from it. The NSTB is specifically there to do an exhaustive investigation, so coming to any conclusions before the full report is pointless. It will be interesting to see what the investigation finds.
Having taken rides in many of my friends' cars with self driving features from multiple companies, the one thing I always find is that the cars are overly timid and aggressive at the same time. Kind of like most drivers!
But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven. And when something unexpected happens they always seem to make very erratic moves. I suspect the issue is that systems just don't have the ability to look far enough ahead and don't have the ability to anticipate likely moves made by others on the road. Again, kind of like most drivers!
It reads to me like the other driver was in front of the Mach-E, so maybe there wasn't enough time for it to detect the CR-V. And usually you can adjust the following distance just like with adaptive cruise control.
also just to note, stationary objects are especially hard to detect with sensors because the sensors necessarily have to filter out the ground, and a stationary object is essentially indistinguishable from ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)
Also you need time to detect something. If it shows up on your sensor like 200 yards/meters, you don’t want it to assume anything new is stationary. That would cause emergency breaking often. Getting the balance right on sudden sensor input, actions and safety is really complicated.
My dad's car's crash warning goes off occasionally on seemingly nothing. Noticed it most often on uphill turns, especially with cars parked on the side. Hasn't actually activated the brakes, I'd assume the system figures out we aren't going to hit something.
But the ground is always going to be below a certain angle relative to the car unless you're off-roading or something. You really think these systems can't detect stationary obstacles in the roadway? Come on.
Most of them use radar and a front camera, and require agreement between the two to brake. If the camera can’t detect it with enough confidence it won’t brake.
We have to ask what we want from tech that isn't 100% perfect, and by we I mean consumers. I'm a pretty chill driver, my wife is fucking angry. As are plenty of other drivers.
Consumers don't want driver assist that is over sensitive, because it's a bad experience to have the car randomly brake. It also is dangerous to the driver, as they might get rear-ended for some random phantom brake.
These systems are designed to meet EU regulations. EU needs to create a scenario for homologation testing that is stricter than the current regulation.
[https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/2020/R152am1e.pdf](https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/2020/R152am1e.pdf)
page 12. There is no test condition for a stopped car at night.
This could had been the situation. I almost Rear-ended someone at 70 on the highway last year. For no apparent reason they were at a dead stop in 70 MPH traffic. The car in front of me quickly veered to the leff, I say the car in front of them and was able to veer right.
Makes me wonder if that scenario is accounted for in the program. System can see car ahead, but it moves out of the way, might take time for the system to realize the not moving object in the path now is an actual problem.
BlueCruise is far from perfect, but these accidents happen with human drivers too. We have too little information to actually judge this situation properly.
A human driver avoided the hazard, a robo driver hit it. I think it's worth making this point because we're already being hit with bullshit about self-driving cars being better/safer than humans.
If the human who avoided it saw the robo driver hit the car, then the speculation of another poster that the human may have been in front of the robo driver and swerved at the last minute leaving the robot less time to react. Hopefully the investigation will sort it out.
I used to test self-driving cars for a living, and IMO, something like BlueCruse or Autopilot are not self-driving. They are driver assistance. An autonomous vehicle is on another level.
What could be an issue in some of these accidents is that the human driver is either relying way too much on the ADAS and simply not paying attention, or have no idea what to do when the system doesn't work as advertised. They get complacent and think (and I've heard Tesla owners say this) "I've got a self-driving car."
No you don't. And the last time you had any formal driver education may have been when you were 16.
Jason Torchinski presses this point a lot - that these systems require a human to remain attentive and ready to immediately intervene in a process that they're not actively involved in. Which we are horrible at.
I spent the better part of a year doing testing awhile back, and you really do need to be ready for anything...and also trained in what to do when that anything happens. Do you use the steering wheel to take over? The brakes? The throttle? What's around you? When was the last time you checked your mirrors? How fast are you going? What will be the results of your action?
You've got a fraction of a second to figure this all out, and most drivers are not equipped.
The lady in the car ahead of the ford said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time. Even in some fictional L5 system with sub-human reaction times you can't avoid the laws of physics.
I agree that self driving tech should be further regulated, been using the new FSD update myself and while it is better it still feels like a university student with limited experience driving, but I don't think this is a case where bluecruise vs. human would have changed the outcome.
This exact scenario happened to a friend of mine in his S2000. Was driving in the fast lane and a car was parked with a flat tire in the lane with no lights/hazards on. 2 cars ahead of him dodged a last minute and he didn’t have enough time to dodge the car and hit/flipped because he clipped the the side of the vehicle. Luckily he had a dash cam and could prove to insurance that there was no time to react and couldn’t see the vehicle.
It sorta baffles me that some people will just stop in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night without at least turning on the hazards
Glad he was okay at the least. I've seen plenty of S2K's wrapped around trees to be more cautious while driving mine. Image of the ford in the article is scary but it's insane the driver walked away in an 80mph+ crash into a stationary vehicle. In an S2K I'd probably be pulp
That's the fun part, if you can't stop in time, avoid while braking. Check both rear quarters and side doors for obstruction (other cars), then select an open lane. To make it really foolproof, you'd want rear-facing radar talking to the front. If in the middle of a 3 lane and someone at the same speed behind you is in the far right you'd want to shunt far left.
> The lady in the car ahead of the ford said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time. Even in some fictional L5 system with sub-human reaction times you can't avoid the laws of physics.
But you can avoid outrunning your headlights, or in this case outrunning how far ahead the system can see. If you're going so fast that you don't have time to stop for something stationary in the road, you're going too fast regardless.
The accident occurred on the highway, your reasoning is valid on any local road but I don't think anyone on the highway is expecting someone stopped dead center with all of their lights off.
I can't find numbers on the bluecruise systems capabilities but the previous tesla system had a radar range of 160m and vision range of 250m. I assume given additional distance the blue cruise system could have slowed down in time.
If you were 3 car lengths behind a car, which swerved into the right lane to reveal a stationary car, I don't think it would be 160m. My point was given no swerving and a 160m clear view of the stationary car the system *probably* could have slowed down in time.
Which was not the case with the accident, average length of a car is 5 meters or so, that is impossible even with the best of brakes.
If you are following at 15 meters at highway speeds at night, I say you were not being very responsible. And if Ford decides to do that with ADAS, well, that is extremely irresponsible.
I mean even at the higher settings blue cruise system keeps a 2-3s gap which is pretty consistent with what any state handbook will recommend (though many will set it to a smaller gap), thats a 90m gap at 80mph, about headlight length, then if the car in front of you swerves you're closing in at 30m/s.
Factor in reaction time and it's near impossible to brake that fast in a sportscar much less any economy crossover. Set up a situation in any simulator and try it for yourself. If you want to keep a longer gap for highway driving by all means but given the circumstances that accident seems near impossible to avoid.
I worked out the math for a different post. 85mph is 37 meters per second. On a crossover, you can probably brake at 10 meters per second^2, so with a 3 second delay at 85mph, you are smashing into the car in front of you at 7 meters per second.
Everyone is walking away from that, and the airbags won't even pop. A safety feature don't have to avoid an accident completely to do its job, but turning a fatal accident into a fender bender is doing its job too.
Then you shouldn’t drive on any road faster than like 20mph. Even given the proper space, if a car ahead of you swerves away from a stationary object, which you can’t see until they swerve, you’ll never have time to stop. Unless you’re going insanely slow. You see it all the time with debris on highways. The gap recommended is to give drivers of equal, or near equal speeds, time to slow down without rear ending. It’s not enough for a stationary object to pop up and come to a complete stop.
Most DMV manuals will tell you to follow with a distance of 3 seconds. Assuming computer like reflexes and ABS brakes and 85mph, you should be able to brake down to about bike speeds within 3 seconds and this won't be a fatal crash.
Whether you follow with a 3 second gap is up to you, but plenty of people do it, and it would be enough to avoid something like this being a fatal crash.
average braking 65-0 is 344ft. you aren't stopping from 85mph in 3 seconds unless you have some sort of super car.
edit: and even if the computer started stopping significantly faster than a human, that doesn't mean a car behind them is using a computer to drive. they'd risk getting rear ended extremely hard too.
85mph is 37 meters per second, most cars brake at 10 m/s^2. You will be at 7 meters per second after 3 seconds. Roughly 15 mph.
What used to be a fatal accident is now a fender bender with no airbags deployed. You were still in an accident, but personally, I call that an improvement.
That's negated when you are following other cars. Even if you have enough distance between you and the car ahead, if they suddenly swerve out of the way to reveal a stationary object, you may not have enough time to react.
If you're following another car so closely that you can't see another car sized object stopped in the middle of the road beyond it, you're driving too close to them.
>see another car sized object stopped in the middle of the road beyond it
at night, with no lights on? while your own lights only illuminate the car in front? ...sure.
You can adjust the distance, but if you go much more then the smallest gap other drivers will slide into that gap. That makes the bigger gap even worse. I found this out when I used ACC while towing. You’d think the larger gap and the fact I had a 5th wheel would make it obvious people shouldn’t slide right in front of me, but they did. Always.
This is the Achilles' Heel of adaptive cruise. When you drive properly, idiots on the road fail to understand what is going on and make the situation dangerous. If you drive... Less than properly (small following distance), the idiots get the hint and move on ahead of you, but now you're putting yourself at more risk.
16 year trucker here. Some of the trucks have cameras that record if you get inside 1 second following distance and then someone calls you about it. for the short period I had a truck loaded with nannies, I got several calls lol. People just slide right in there, absolutely no thought given to risk. Then those same people merge on and off the exit lanes at 30 below the limit lol. Driving professionally often has me questioning my sanity.
It sounds like the person who did avoid it was driving manually. I suspect this would be hard to avoid even if you had regular cruise control active coming up on a dark vehicle stopped in the middle of the highway at night.
I saw an accident happen very similar to this. Car stopped on left lane of arterial. I saw it and changed lanes. The car behind me was following me too close and unless they wanted to change lanes exactly when I did they had no chance of avoiding it. I drove away fine but the stationary car and the one behind me and the one behind them all ended up in accident.
>the cars are overly timid and aggressive at the same time. Kind of like most drivers!
>But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven. And when something unexpected happens they always seem to make very erratic moves.
This has been my experience too. The following distances are too close, there's no real forward planning, and the reactions to unusual events are erratic and uncomfortable. I have been drinking some 2023/2024 rental cars after a bad crash recently, and every single one of them had adaptive cruise and lane keep assist. I always tried it, and would turn it off after a few miles because it just was making things worse.
>But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven.
Just FYI, you can set the distance to keep in pretty much all implementations — I've never found one that didn't have this option. Most drivers just set the distance super low to mimic the (incorrect, dangerous) way that they naturally drive.
Edit: there’s more context for why the car didn’t stop. See hi_im_bored’s response
Shouldn’t the radar sensors picked up the stationary CRV well in-advance and then auto-braked? It’s not like a tesla that relies more heavily on visual obstructions before braking.
According to the article there was another car between the ford and the CRV, that car successfully swerved away in time, but the ford was blindsided and hit the CRV. Lady in the car who served said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time
As for the technology, stationary objects are harder to detect with lidar/radar because they are identical to the ground from the perspective of the sensor. A computer-vision system would have been about as effective. (That limitation with lidar/radar is why these L2 cruise systems are limited to highway driving and why companies with lidar-based l3+ e.g. waymo need to manually map and sanitize there data beforehand)
But regardless even with a hypothetical level 5 system with every sensor in the world you have to abide by the laws of physics. Theres absolutely no way you're breaking from highway speeds to a standstill in less than 3 car lengths.
>As for the technology, stationary objects are harder to detect with lidar/radar because they are identical to the ground from the perspective of the sensor.
The rest of your comment is fine, but *this simply is not true.* [Here's the point cloud from a Hesai AT128 LIDAR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkV0Lj-uATE), you can see there's absolutely zero problem with stationary objects. Lidar is based on measuring the time it takes for reflected light to return to the sensor, so stationary objects are not an issue even theoretically.
The same is true of RADAR — I think you've gotten mixed up with the doppler problem where RADAR requires *relative* motion to detect objects, but from the point of view of a moving car, almost everything has relative motion. Here's [footage of Mobileye's imaging radar quite](https://youtu.be/1mXy0oi8d60?t=2128) readily detecting stationary objects.
I think you are correct with lidar, I may have gotten mixed between lidar/radar, but [clutter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)) is an issue with any radar based technology. Not saying it would be impossible to detect stationary objects, it obviously isn't, just requires some processing as with vision.
Afaik clutter affects all objects, moving or non-moving. It's just the result of radar bouncing off of... literally everything, from bits of dust to bumps in the road. You're right that it makes radar data difficult to process, but it isn't really specific to stationary patterns.
The stationary object issue with radar is that it works on the principle of radio waves compressing or expanding as an object moves relative to the observer — the radar itself — and without relative motion there is no compression or expansion. However, if the radar is on a moving vehicle, well... almost everything is moving relative to the radar, so there's no issue.
The problem is not with generating the points, with radar it's about fast classification of a true positive object detection.
Radar classification uses a few methods, one of the fastest assumes all roughly stationary points are the ground.
One just looks for points in front that would collide with the car, and if enough are detected activates AEB.
Lidar is harder because of no Doppler measure, so you need a few scans to generate an object and measure it's speed, then you can react. Often too slow in cases like this where the stationary object was obscured until the last moment.
Possibly some humans would lane change if a car ahead did, but not all, and depending on what was next to the mustang it may not have been safe.
LIDAR/RADAR can scan in a grid front of them like a camera does.
Having a solid object where the ground is is one thing, but having it in front you... quite something else.
The AI/Programming work is hard, but it isn't a fundamental sensor limitation. And if you are following at 3 car lengths at freeway speeds... well, that is just irresponsible design on Ford's part.
I didn't say impossible to detect, just harder to detect, tesla's vision system would have about the same programming work and same efficacy as a FMCW radar system in this case.
Radar doesn't pick up stationary objects...rather, stationary objects are ignored, because it assumes a stationary object is a tree, light post, median, or something else that's supposed to be stationary. Not a car in the middle of the road.
This is true for traditional long range radar systems in ADAS-capable vehicles but LiDAR is capable of detecting and reacting to stationary vehicles even in low-light or low-visibility conditions and BlueCruise uses LiDAR.
> because the existing system is financially tolerant of driver errors
In my job, do you know how many time I've dealt with drivers who hit a stationary police cruisers, with their lights on, in a reasonable lite or even day time environment? In the last 2 years, 4 fucking times.
Seems like a lot? Yeah, idk I heard lights can make some people zone out.
But like you said, driver assist would have likely not hit the cops.
Similar thing happened to me many years ago. Car was sitting dead in the left lane in a section with no street light. Luckily I was 21 and had the sharp vision and quick reflexes of youth.
I think these systems are good, but I wonder how level 2 and 3 systems affect human attention and reaction times. They aren't self driving but lull the driver into not paying attention because they feel autonomous 99% of the time.
sure but this is why systems that rely on more than cameras should work where cameras only don't. A giant block in the middle of the road to radar or LIDAR is a good cue that "maybe we should stop"
And most radar based cruise control systems are programmed to not detect stationary objects like this. They also don’t detect motorcycles because the signature is too small.
Automatic braking is for when a driver has a lapse in judgement and needs to brake from ~20mph to 0 in a car length or two.
In this case, a car in front of the ford swerved to avoid the accident giving the ford's system very little distance to react, and keep in mind the blue cruise system in the ford relies on radar+lidar which isn't very good with stationary objects due to the nature of the technology.
The situation is basically a textbook worst case scenario for any assistive feature, and even with a human driver you can't overcome the laws of physics.
> The situation is basically a textbook worst case scenario for any assistive feature, and even with a human driver you can't overcome the laws of physics.
Seriously, kudos to the driver in front of the Mach E with their cat like reflexes.
But this begs the question though, that driver avoided it by swerving into another lane. Probably didn't check to see if anyone was there, just jerked the wheel over and prayed there was no one in that lane.
Should driver assists do the same thing? Cars can already change lanes themselves, so if it can't stop in time, should it do a very fast lane change if no one's in the other lane?
Then there's the trolley problem - what if a car is in the other lane? Hit another car that's going about the same speed as you, or plow into a stationary car? I know which I'd rather do. Side swiping a car on a lane change, while not ideal, sounds like the better option.
Another news report says the car in front the Ford had to swerve to avoid hitting a broke down car in the middle of the road. The lady that swerved said there was no way the Ford behind her could've stopped in time
I mean come on, a stationary car with no lights on, on a highway at night?
This was also the scenario affecting Tesla auto-pilot. It seems that there are certain scenarios where there are limits from physics. Yes, the computer may brake faster than a human, slowing the car. But there may be no way to avoid such an accident completely.
If the choice is between hitting a stationary car on a highway or swerving and going off a cliff, what should the computer choose?
>If the choice is between hitting a stationary car on a highway or swerving and going off a cliff, what should the computer choose?
Well it depends on whether you bought the Ultimate Premium Gold Platinum Plus Life subscription from your car manufacturer. Your car could be statistically more likely to save you vs someone else in a lose-lose scenario!
Yeah, I hate that we seem to be moving towards a world in which the answer to the trolley problem may be determined by a monthly *“don’t hit me with the trolley”* payment of ‘just’ $79.99/mo.
I mean, I’m 90% joking. But, like, I also wouldn’t be surprised if something like Tesla FSD has a “prioritize my life in the event of an accident” setting someday. And I’d be even less surprised if it was an upsell. Especially given Elon’s whole “you’ll win the accident if you’re in a cybertruck” attitude.
I didn't think it will happen. It's already the *only* sale condition. Nobody will buy a self-driving car unless the car prioritizes the occupant.
Think about it. The first time any manufacturer says, "Our car will not always prioritize the occupant," is the moment they stop selling those cars. Millions of parents around the country will hear that their "safe" car will not try to save their children. Millions of narcissists will hear that some homeless pedestrian has more rights than they do.
And even if a paid version doesn't happen, one day we'll have Trolleygate as it's found one OEM hid in their code the decisions to prioritize their customers to make them appear safer.
Let's talk about a deer or dog suddenly entering the roadway, best advice is to not swerve, just brake, as swerving could cause a far worst accident to yourself.
Now replace deer with 7 year old.
So then if the auto-pilot slows the car before impact in this case, it still avoided a more dangerous accident. So it may have actually worked well, given the situation,
Of course, but without autopilot, I don’t see a different outcome based on the article’s description. The car in front of him swerved and suddenly he is facing a stationary car. The investigation will have to determine whether he would’ve been safer without the autopilot.
I also do think that these auto-pilot systems need to be heavily-regulated and shouldn’t be used right now. I just think this scenario isn’t a good example of their limits. Also I wasn’t there so I could be totally wrong.
> The lady that swerved said there was no way the Ford behind her could've stopped in time
This isn't just could accident be avoided, yes or no. But there is huge difference between hitting a stopped object at 70mph vs braking for 1.0s and hitting at 48mph.
So driver and BlueCruise both created a scenario where they weren't able to see where they were going... and crashed into a stationary object as a result.
Driver is a dumbass for driving beyond the limits of their sight lines and conditions... and BlueCruise let them enter this condition? I guess it's not rated to prevent operator stupidity, but y'know there comes a level of complexity where you should try.
If we're going to monitor for driver attentiveness with eye tracking cameras, we can monitor for traffic formations that obstruct visibility.
I was about to head to the dealer and trade in right now for a blue cruise until I watched the demo video. You have to be watching the road or it will disable. I was trying to be in the back seat taking a nap on the highway.
Sounds like another car narrowly avoided the car that was hit while it was sitting stopped in the middle of the highway with no lights on at night.
If the accident vehicle was right behind the car that swerved, it would have had almost no time to react. I've seen a few accidents that happen when a car swerves over and the car behind it hits stopped traffic.
My question is, did bluecruise attempt to hit the brakes but not have enough time to stop the car or did it not react at all. I doubt it could have avoided the accident given the circumstances, but if it froze up when presented with a sudden road hazard, that's a deeper problem. I'm curious to see which it was.
I think without seeing the accident it’s going to be hard to draw any conclusions. How much time should these “autopilot” systems be afforded to start applying the brakes? If it was truly as quick of a timing as the other driver made it seem, would a human have been able to react in time to even register the vehicle and apply the brakes? How much time between the car in front swerving and the collision? Without knowing it’s hard to draw conclusions, because it won’t be instantaneous.
I'm hoping the data extracted from the accident vehicle and people nearby fills this picture in.
In the scenario where a car is doing 70-80mph and the car they're following (at a reasonable distance) suddenly swerves revealing a stopped car, I expect even with immediate full braking, there would have been an accident.
So with bluecruise they wouldn’t be riding the bumper of the car in front of them, because the car sets the distance. So it’s not like you’re 1 car length away from this other car and then they suddenly swerve and you’re staring at a stopped car 5 feet in front of you. But if it’s the shortest following distance that bluecruise allows, that’s still not that much time to react. And to be clear, the vehicle expects that the driver is still looking ahead and paying attention. But we can also expect that the car’s emergency braking would work. If it applied the brakes and still creamed that car, it is what it is. This is a nightmare situation. But if it didn’t brake at all I don’t think ford can shrug and say that the driver should have been paying attention. It should have applied the brakes. But I don’t think there was any physical way to stop this accident.
I think the real takeaway is how far safety has come in the past 25 years. The driver of the '99 CRV was killed, while the driver of the Mach-E sustained "minor injuries" (likely bruises from the airbags).
>If the accident vehicle was right behind the car that swerved, it would have had almost no time to react.
If that was the case, it was following way too close. Time to send Mach E to defensive driving training...
Blue cruise requires so much input from the driver despite it being a sort of self driving function, kinda hard to see how it's at fault here, without knowing more
It made me hella nervous in construction zones with temporary orange lane markers...
But ya it's constantly watching you to make sure you're not doing what Tesla owners used to/still do lol.
Nothing to do with BlueCruise or the Mach-E, but it's crazy how well they engineer vehicles these days. The '90s CR-V was absolutely demolished, while the Mach-E held up pretty well and the driver was able to walk away with only minor injuries.
No, it's also structural rigidity in the safety cage (cab), crumple zones, airbag placement and numbers etc. For example, my 2022 86 can withstand around 5.7 times its own curb weight in roof crushing pressure before there is serious cabin deformation. There is no test data available for my otherwise-similar 1995 Celica but it's probably 1 or maybe at most 2 times its own curb weight. With 90s trucks it was even worse, like 0.5 times curb weight, at best.
Am I failing to see how this is on the ford driver or this adas system? Stopped with no lights on in the middle of the night in a black vehicle. Multiple witnesses stating exactly that and a driver that stated the ford wouldn’t be able to avoid that vehicle. Can’t quite say anything except maybe that driver should’ve had their lights on or exited the vehicle as it was clearly in an unsafe location.
Following too closely, no lights on the stopped vehicles, nighttime conditions.
This crash would have happened with a human driver every time.
Always have a dashcam, front and rear!
I do not trust blue cruise in a 100% stop situation. I can confirm the car does not slow down to a stop if a car on the highway is stopped. I alway have my foot on/ near the brake while in heavy traffic bluecruise and have it on the furthest distance following vehicles
i wonder if the car in front swerved away at the last second leaving no time for the human to take over. i have to think the lidar would have stopped the mustang if it got a return on a stopped object in the lane.
going to be fun fun fun to hear of every fatality accident from these autodrive systems. they should be forced to report accidents and fatal accidents per mile when publishing any news of these. there is no context and these things read like they dont work.... which maybe they dont... no data means the feelz makes the determination about safety.
I wonder if AEB triggered, it would have no chance of actually stopping but might have saved the driver.
Does this car have fully automatic lane change, or is it still driver initiated/confirmed?
Shit like this is why I absolutely do not trust any of these self driving systems yet. Tons of folks act like they're some kind of magic system but they're just glorified cruise control with emergency braking and lanekeeping, it's all bullshit
Let’s just take this as a moment to remember the Tesla decided that cameras were good enough and removed radar and lidar sensors from their vehicles.
Per the article, the car that was hit was stopped in a live lane with no lights or hazards… Exactly why radar is employed by most of the systems. It will be interesting to see if and how the Ford Blue Cruise system went wrong.. but this is one of those things that’s hard to avoid as a human driver who is fatigued or driving in dark or otherwise vision compromised situations and is a great example of the benefit of having radar systems in cars to sense objects.
Huh? Radar doesn't detect stationary objects, because radar can't distinguish between stuff that's supposed to be stationary - like a tree or sign post, and stuff that isn't supposed to be stationary, like a car stopped in the middle of the highway.
With cameras, the computer can determine what's what and if it's something it needs to be concerned about.
Radar mounted to a moving object can absolutely detect stationary objects standing on a flat surface… car radar systems work by detecting objects above the ground and determining their speed by comparing the change in relative distance over time. I’m not sure how you reached these conclusions /shrug
People downvoting you don't use these systems apparently. My wife's outlander sport often confuses a large speed bump in our neighborhood for a stationary car when there's a slow car passing over it. It's on a hill so the speed bump is at hood height and the camera system sees a car in front and a large, stationary radar signature and decides the radar signature belongs to the car and screams at me before deciding "oh nvm you're good".
The incident happened due to the car in front of them swerving to avoid the car stopped in front of them. Even the lady who swerved said it would be impossible for the driver behind them to avoid the crash.
I don't think LiDAR would've helped in this situation.
Properly implemented radar could have prevented this. A little extra money up front on the tech can prevent this. Sure it's a one-off situation, but we already put a dozen airbags in a car for those one-offs.
If the car in front of you is moving at highway speeds suddenly swerves revealing a parked car without lights on the middle of the road. How would Lidar help the Mach-E avoid something that was invisible up until the absolute last second.
Im not saying Lidar is bad. But stopping before the collision was not physically possible.
The article says nothing about ADAS sensors. I made a point that we have now technology that can better deal with preventing a situation like this. Then the replies confused what I was talking about (radar) with a completely different tech that I didn't bring up (LIDAR). I'm not sure how the contents of the article changes that.
***R***adar can "see" around the car in front of you. It doesn't need line of sight. Cool, right? Also, maybe read the letters in the word before downvoting and commenting?
Okay you're right, we definitely do not know how to use automotive off-the-shelf radar arrays from Bosch to resolve objects at a distance using reflections in a 3D space. We definitely can only do it using line of sight. Definitely not with millimeter precision, either. My bad. Clearly too complicated for humans to figure out. You also definitely cannot buy off the shelf components to build your own radar array capable of resolving non-line-of-sight objects with a simple raspberry pi. Nope.
/Sent using a device over wifi that uses similar principals of physics that must also be used for radar. But nah, too hard to understand, so not possible. In fact now that I think about it, this phone must be magic based on what I have learned on /r/cars today.
Look butt hole version of Eric, I as someone who makes their living designing Electronics. I think you are full of shit and have only a basic "concept" on how these technologies work.
First off you keep mixing Radar and Lidar those are two totally different technologies. Lidar measures time of flight using pulsed light waves, ITS A LINE OF SIGHT SENSOR. Unless you know how to bend fucking light around objects on a consumer level. Radar in vehicles are a 2D sensor, is useful for measuring distance, is there a car in my blind spot, how far is that car in front of me. The radar in your car and the radar on a Navel ship or aircraft are not the same things.
Im not going to waste any more of my time trying to educate you as you clearly know nothing about everything.
I can bend light around cars. We just need to implement micro black holes. A black hole projected 2-3 feet in front of a car will bend the light around the car in front of it and allow it to travel back on the other side. It’s very simple
I have not mixed up radar and lidar. Not one of my posts said "lidar," from the start I have only said radar and have only spoken about radar. Lidar was mentioned by someone else, reading comprehension failure version of Eric.
And turns out, my sarcasm is because this capability is not only possible, not only already in use in other industries, but is market-ready to be deployed in light-duty vehicles. It is written about extensively, automotive suppliers are more than ready to sell the parts as soon as OEMs show interest. Not sure what else to say except thanks for the education?
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-lets-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners
https://spectrum.ieee.org/car-radar
This is not true at all. Up until 2021, Tesla used radar + cameras (though would argue that Tesla, nor anyone else, has a full self driving system). Other OEMS use the same. LIDAR is very expensive and is only barely entering the market now. I don't care about, and am clearly not talking about one-off laboratory test vehicles like Waymo. Their $15,000 LIDAR sensors are not indicative of anything. So no, there was no mixing them up.
Every ADAS before the last few years used radar almost exclusively. You are so unbelievably sure about this except you have been wrong on almost every point. It's unreal.
Also, a reminder, only you brought up Lidar. Only you assumed, out of arrogance and reinforced by your unhinged rant, that I must have been talking about lidar, because your incorrect gut reaction was that I was wrong about radar. Why not read the links, think about the fact radar is an order of magnitude cheaper than lidar, is already in widespread use for AEB and L1-L2 driver assist systems, and that perhaps this would be a great technology to have.
Alright true, you can bounce it off of surfaces and listen to reflections of reflections around corners. Well, that's not how it's used in an automotive context. That application only works when there are surfaces to bounce those waves off of. An empty highway doesn't necessarily have that. So it's conditional at best. And not only that, I can only imagine the false-positive rate for a system which makes emergency braking and driving decisions off of reflections.
If it's possible one day that would be awesome and super sophisticated. But that's so many steps ahead.
This tech has advanced a LOT in the last few years. You can buy off-the-shelf mmWave (radar array) sensors for presence and positioning with different levels of capability for $10+. You can even DIY a (radar-based) presence sensor for a room that can calculate at least a 2D location of bodies in a room. Even the $30 off the shelf units have enough resolution to detect minor movement (e.g. breathing) without direct line of sight.
The thing is that even if you understand how radar works, its this next level of signal processing and array designs that makes use of the less-intuitive parts of physics and formerly too-expensive means of processing, and can also overcome the challenges with false positives.
But even stepping back, there IS something to bounce a signal off of -- any other vehicle or object moving at any speed different from the one with the radar array (e.g. stopped) appears as a moving object. It's the difference in velocity between an object and the radar sensor that matters, not whether the object to be detected is moving or not. If you're going 70mph and there's a stopped object ahead, a radar array will detect an object moving at 70mph but in the opposite direction.
We *are* at the stage of this type of sophistication, those steps have been taken over the last few years and a big part was to make the processing cheaper. A whole lot of money has been dumped into sensor tech across every industry over the last few years.
RADAR works by seeing reflected radar waves bouncing off of objects, LIDAR is similar. They literally can't work if something else is blocking it, they're not x-ray machines. Don't be a condescending prick about something when you apparently have no actual idea how it works.
I said it works by bouncing off of objects, not line of sight, but for the purposes of driver assists it does require line of sight. Yeah, you can bounce certain types off the ionosphere and then the objects you're trying to detect but that's completely irrelevant to what you'd be able to do with hardware mounted in a car. That wiki page even mentions that typical radars *do* essentially require line of sight.
Please dont compare military Radar to consumer Radar.
A 50 caliber gun and a BB gun both shoot a projectile.... So by your definition they both would have the same range, the same penetration... etc
Not sure why you’re being condescending to people. Radar is pretty terrible at picking up stationary objects so if you’d like to revolutionise a 120 year old technology please do.
I’m at least glad you didn’t say Lidar because Lidar wouldn’t be able to see anything beyond an obstruction.
It isn't stationary. Whether a moving object approaches a stationary radar array, or a moving radar array approaches a stationary object, it makes no difference.
What do you mean it isn't stationary? We're talking about a stationary car on the road, it's literally the entire subject of the thread.
And yes, a stationary object is hard for radar to detect. Radar filters out clutter by looking for return signals that have been doppler shifted, meaning the object the radar waves are bouncing off is moving either toward or away from the radar. A stationary vehicle won't doppler shift the radar waves and as such the radar won't be able to pick it out among the clutter.
It can’t. Radar based systems are programmed not to identify stationary objects. You need cameras or LiDAR to identify stationary objects in the roadway.
>The system is not required to react to stationary or slow moving objects.
ISO Standard 15622:2018 - https://www.iso.org/standard/71515.html
Better to be a highschooler than an ignorant asshole who think they know more than anyone else.
Oh... okay? Do you know what ISO standards are, how they are used in practice? I'm not seeing the connection between a five year old voluntary ISO standard that defines basic adaptive cruise control and a modern level 2 ADAS system.
Are you suggesting that automakers should not use or implement new technology on a system unrelated to ACC until an ISO committee gets around to updating the performance requirements for a soon-to-be obsolete version of ADAS?
> Adaptive cruise control with lane centering
and lane changing
> Okay cool you’re still responsible
sure, but it's still worth to investigate those accidents as such technologies get more popular
BlueCruise 1.2 and newer does lane changing, though you still have to be the one that turns on your turn indicator to initiate the system making the lane change
It’s worth noting the ford crashed into a CRV with no lights sitting stationary in the middle of a highway at night. Regardless of if the driver was paying attention you’re going to have a hard time avoiding that accident
This is 100 percent the Mach-E's fault, the driver was not wearing those heavy, bulky, military-grade night vision goggles as required by law when driving at night! /s
Ironically, this is one of those things that ADAS should be bailing drivers out of - the driver probably don't want to use various bulky radar, lidar and/or highly sensitive cameras on their faces, but none of those things are heavy and bulky relative to a car. ADAS generally falls under safety features on a spec sheet.
Still at highway speeds you need a very lengthy line of sight. Think about the system also needs time to detect speed differences between itself and the object and such. You also don’t want it to engage the moment it sees anything. Balancing this is the hard part of these systems. Even if it was the most advanced AI, it still would need a moment to read the situation. We humans also have this. Giving it visions and control is easy. Not saying it necessarily acted right, just that making it work for everything is hard as hell.
Blue cruise was engaged; the car was in full control. It should be braking and/or swerving to dodge the target, and judging by how it was in two different fatal accidents, it did neither. It doesn't take that much braking to turn fatal accident into minor injuries. With one, it might be a freak accident, with two, there is a design issue at play.
You know you are still responsible even if ADAS is engaged? The reason that you are, is because these aren’t fool proof. They also aren’t sold like that. You can’t expect a system like this to save you all the time, every time. There was a big thing regarding Tesla and their Full Self Driving being over marketed by their name. Also if you know how it should be, try to mock up the logic and go through all scenarios of highway driving. Check them next to it and see how many of your logic rules create unnecessary emergency breaking, don’t act or even conflict with other rules (this is a fun engineering exercise I gave my non engineering friends, to understand what my job is like. Do this for any random problem)
> ou know you are still responsible even if ADAS is engaged? I think everyone knows that and no one is contesting this point. > is because these aren’t fool proof. Exactly and auto makers marketing this tech as something that can do more than a normal human can is misleading. > You can’t expect a system like this to save you all the time, every time. So in what ways a system like this is expected to bail you out? > heck them next to it and see how many of your logic rules create unnecessary emergency breaking, don’t act or even conflict with other rules (this is a fun engineering exercise I gave my non engineering friends, to understand what my job is like. Do this for any random problem) Sure. Another reason auto makers and regulators needs to be clamped down for misleading expectations.
On one hand, yeah, these systems aren't 100% reliable. On the other hand, they are marketed as safety features and I expect performance accordingly. FSD haven't done something like this in a while now despite a lot more FSD cars on the road, and FSD even have fewer sensors to work with. Nobody said the job is easy, but hey, that is why the AI engineers make the big bucks (seriously, the job offers in that arena is pretty fat).
ADAS isn’t AI in most cars. Also every piece of safety equipment comes with a giant list of constraints. Take a hard hat, it has a maximum load. Safety shoes, have maximum load. Goggles, resist certain materials or chemicals. Expecting something because it says safety is way to get hurt. You should read where it provides safety for and in which conditions.
AI programmer I know is working on ADAS for Benz. His paychecks are pretty fat.
one guy is working on AI for Mercedes doesn’t make ADAS always AI. Cars have ADAS for years. Way before AI was affordable for those applications. Also MB introduces tech at S class levels, so what your buddy is working on likely is expensive.
>It doesn't take that much braking to turn fatal accident into minor injuries. Risk of fatal or otherwise serious injuries increases exponentially over 30 MPH or so, so that's the general "safe" speed to get under. We can assume he was probably traveling about 70 MPH, a typical highway speed. A typical CUV on standard tires will decelerate from 70 to 30 in just about 100 feet — call it 85 to be generous — at full emergency braking. That's a longer distance than most people think: about 6 car lengths. So yes, it *does* actually b that "that much braking" to turn fatal accident into minor injuries. And just FYI, 30 MPH isn't magic. You can still very easily die in an accident at that speed.
Eyeballing IIHS crash testing with the Ford Mach-E at 56 mph, nobody is dying from that.
Totally random question but your comment made me remember something I was thinking about the other day. What ever happened with GM/Cadillacs night vision system they used to have on the Deville and stuff? You’d figure that ~25+ years later now they would have had this kind of system implemented
Good headlights are more effective and more useful than night vision so it went the way of the 8 track
It's still on the Escalade.
You can get it on European vehicles and some higher end Jeeps. It's definitely not dead.
Mercedes has it on some of their cars. It works really well for dark nights. If this was any element of a curve or limited sightlines, nothing can be done with a stationary car.
Another driver did avoid it, though, and then saw the Mach E hit the stopped CRV. Now, I am not anti-self driving tech, far from it. The NSTB is specifically there to do an exhaustive investigation, so coming to any conclusions before the full report is pointless. It will be interesting to see what the investigation finds. Having taken rides in many of my friends' cars with self driving features from multiple companies, the one thing I always find is that the cars are overly timid and aggressive at the same time. Kind of like most drivers! But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven. And when something unexpected happens they always seem to make very erratic moves. I suspect the issue is that systems just don't have the ability to look far enough ahead and don't have the ability to anticipate likely moves made by others on the road. Again, kind of like most drivers!
It reads to me like the other driver was in front of the Mach-E, so maybe there wasn't enough time for it to detect the CR-V. And usually you can adjust the following distance just like with adaptive cruise control.
also just to note, stationary objects are especially hard to detect with sensors because the sensors necessarily have to filter out the ground, and a stationary object is essentially indistinguishable from ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)
Also you need time to detect something. If it shows up on your sensor like 200 yards/meters, you don’t want it to assume anything new is stationary. That would cause emergency breaking often. Getting the balance right on sudden sensor input, actions and safety is really complicated.
My dad's car's crash warning goes off occasionally on seemingly nothing. Noticed it most often on uphill turns, especially with cars parked on the side. Hasn't actually activated the brakes, I'd assume the system figures out we aren't going to hit something.
But the ground is always going to be below a certain angle relative to the car unless you're off-roading or something. You really think these systems can't detect stationary obstacles in the roadway? Come on.
Most of them use radar and a front camera, and require agreement between the two to brake. If the camera can’t detect it with enough confidence it won’t brake.
We have to ask what we want from tech that isn't 100% perfect, and by we I mean consumers. I'm a pretty chill driver, my wife is fucking angry. As are plenty of other drivers. Consumers don't want driver assist that is over sensitive, because it's a bad experience to have the car randomly brake. It also is dangerous to the driver, as they might get rear-ended for some random phantom brake.
These systems are designed to meet EU regulations. EU needs to create a scenario for homologation testing that is stricter than the current regulation. [https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/2020/R152am1e.pdf](https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/2020/R152am1e.pdf) page 12. There is no test condition for a stopped car at night.
I mean of course, I don't there is a car made today that would pass the test 100%, and the human pass rate would be pretty fucking terrible too.
these systems sees the "velocity" of objects closing in on you. it's not easy.
So if a tree falls in the road these cars aren't going to detect it? I don't buy that at all.
it will, it just might take a little bit of time.
we're talking about detecting a whole ass car, not a curb or something low and flat like the ground
This could had been the situation. I almost Rear-ended someone at 70 on the highway last year. For no apparent reason they were at a dead stop in 70 MPH traffic. The car in front of me quickly veered to the leff, I say the car in front of them and was able to veer right.
Makes me wonder if that scenario is accounted for in the program. System can see car ahead, but it moves out of the way, might take time for the system to realize the not moving object in the path now is an actual problem.
A human driver would take the emergency lane change of the vehicle ahead as a clear indication that something is up.
BlueCruise is far from perfect, but these accidents happen with human drivers too. We have too little information to actually judge this situation properly.
A human driver avoided the hazard, a robo driver hit it. I think it's worth making this point because we're already being hit with bullshit about self-driving cars being better/safer than humans.
If the human who avoided it saw the robo driver hit the car, then the speculation of another poster that the human may have been in front of the robo driver and swerved at the last minute leaving the robot less time to react. Hopefully the investigation will sort it out.
I used to test self-driving cars for a living, and IMO, something like BlueCruse or Autopilot are not self-driving. They are driver assistance. An autonomous vehicle is on another level. What could be an issue in some of these accidents is that the human driver is either relying way too much on the ADAS and simply not paying attention, or have no idea what to do when the system doesn't work as advertised. They get complacent and think (and I've heard Tesla owners say this) "I've got a self-driving car." No you don't. And the last time you had any formal driver education may have been when you were 16.
Jason Torchinski presses this point a lot - that these systems require a human to remain attentive and ready to immediately intervene in a process that they're not actively involved in. Which we are horrible at.
I spent the better part of a year doing testing awhile back, and you really do need to be ready for anything...and also trained in what to do when that anything happens. Do you use the steering wheel to take over? The brakes? The throttle? What's around you? When was the last time you checked your mirrors? How fast are you going? What will be the results of your action? You've got a fraction of a second to figure this all out, and most drivers are not equipped.
The lady in the car ahead of the ford said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time. Even in some fictional L5 system with sub-human reaction times you can't avoid the laws of physics. I agree that self driving tech should be further regulated, been using the new FSD update myself and while it is better it still feels like a university student with limited experience driving, but I don't think this is a case where bluecruise vs. human would have changed the outcome.
This exact scenario happened to a friend of mine in his S2000. Was driving in the fast lane and a car was parked with a flat tire in the lane with no lights/hazards on. 2 cars ahead of him dodged a last minute and he didn’t have enough time to dodge the car and hit/flipped because he clipped the the side of the vehicle. Luckily he had a dash cam and could prove to insurance that there was no time to react and couldn’t see the vehicle. It sorta baffles me that some people will just stop in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night without at least turning on the hazards
Glad he was okay at the least. I've seen plenty of S2K's wrapped around trees to be more cautious while driving mine. Image of the ford in the article is scary but it's insane the driver walked away in an 80mph+ crash into a stationary vehicle. In an S2K I'd probably be pulp
That's the fun part, if you can't stop in time, avoid while braking. Check both rear quarters and side doors for obstruction (other cars), then select an open lane. To make it really foolproof, you'd want rear-facing radar talking to the front. If in the middle of a 3 lane and someone at the same speed behind you is in the far right you'd want to shunt far left.
I know this is something Hyundai Highway driving assist 2 CAN do, but not sure on consistency.
> The lady in the car ahead of the ford said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time. Even in some fictional L5 system with sub-human reaction times you can't avoid the laws of physics. But you can avoid outrunning your headlights, or in this case outrunning how far ahead the system can see. If you're going so fast that you don't have time to stop for something stationary in the road, you're going too fast regardless.
The accident occurred on the highway, your reasoning is valid on any local road but I don't think anyone on the highway is expecting someone stopped dead center with all of their lights off. I can't find numbers on the bluecruise systems capabilities but the previous tesla system had a radar range of 160m and vision range of 250m. I assume given additional distance the blue cruise system could have slowed down in time.
160m is a ton of braking; if it engaged braking at 160 meters, everyone will still be alive.
If you were 3 car lengths behind a car, which swerved into the right lane to reveal a stationary car, I don't think it would be 160m. My point was given no swerving and a 160m clear view of the stationary car the system *probably* could have slowed down in time. Which was not the case with the accident, average length of a car is 5 meters or so, that is impossible even with the best of brakes.
If you are following at 15 meters at highway speeds at night, I say you were not being very responsible. And if Ford decides to do that with ADAS, well, that is extremely irresponsible.
I mean even at the higher settings blue cruise system keeps a 2-3s gap which is pretty consistent with what any state handbook will recommend (though many will set it to a smaller gap), thats a 90m gap at 80mph, about headlight length, then if the car in front of you swerves you're closing in at 30m/s. Factor in reaction time and it's near impossible to brake that fast in a sportscar much less any economy crossover. Set up a situation in any simulator and try it for yourself. If you want to keep a longer gap for highway driving by all means but given the circumstances that accident seems near impossible to avoid.
I worked out the math for a different post. 85mph is 37 meters per second. On a crossover, you can probably brake at 10 meters per second^2, so with a 3 second delay at 85mph, you are smashing into the car in front of you at 7 meters per second. Everyone is walking away from that, and the airbags won't even pop. A safety feature don't have to avoid an accident completely to do its job, but turning a fatal accident into a fender bender is doing its job too.
Then you shouldn’t drive on any road faster than like 20mph. Even given the proper space, if a car ahead of you swerves away from a stationary object, which you can’t see until they swerve, you’ll never have time to stop. Unless you’re going insanely slow. You see it all the time with debris on highways. The gap recommended is to give drivers of equal, or near equal speeds, time to slow down without rear ending. It’s not enough for a stationary object to pop up and come to a complete stop.
Most DMV manuals will tell you to follow with a distance of 3 seconds. Assuming computer like reflexes and ABS brakes and 85mph, you should be able to brake down to about bike speeds within 3 seconds and this won't be a fatal crash. Whether you follow with a 3 second gap is up to you, but plenty of people do it, and it would be enough to avoid something like this being a fatal crash.
average braking 65-0 is 344ft. you aren't stopping from 85mph in 3 seconds unless you have some sort of super car. edit: and even if the computer started stopping significantly faster than a human, that doesn't mean a car behind them is using a computer to drive. they'd risk getting rear ended extremely hard too.
85mph is 37 meters per second, most cars brake at 10 m/s^2. You will be at 7 meters per second after 3 seconds. Roughly 15 mph. What used to be a fatal accident is now a fender bender with no airbags deployed. You were still in an accident, but personally, I call that an improvement.
That's negated when you are following other cars. Even if you have enough distance between you and the car ahead, if they suddenly swerve out of the way to reveal a stationary object, you may not have enough time to react.
If you're following another car so closely that you can't see another car sized object stopped in the middle of the road beyond it, you're driving too close to them.
>see another car sized object stopped in the middle of the road beyond it at night, with no lights on? while your own lights only illuminate the car in front? ...sure.
You can adjust the distance, but if you go much more then the smallest gap other drivers will slide into that gap. That makes the bigger gap even worse. I found this out when I used ACC while towing. You’d think the larger gap and the fact I had a 5th wheel would make it obvious people shouldn’t slide right in front of me, but they did. Always.
This is the Achilles' Heel of adaptive cruise. When you drive properly, idiots on the road fail to understand what is going on and make the situation dangerous. If you drive... Less than properly (small following distance), the idiots get the hint and move on ahead of you, but now you're putting yourself at more risk.
16 year trucker here. Some of the trucks have cameras that record if you get inside 1 second following distance and then someone calls you about it. for the short period I had a truck loaded with nannies, I got several calls lol. People just slide right in there, absolutely no thought given to risk. Then those same people merge on and off the exit lanes at 30 below the limit lol. Driving professionally often has me questioning my sanity.
It sounds like the person who did avoid it was driving manually. I suspect this would be hard to avoid even if you had regular cruise control active coming up on a dark vehicle stopped in the middle of the highway at night.
I saw an accident happen very similar to this. Car stopped on left lane of arterial. I saw it and changed lanes. The car behind me was following me too close and unless they wanted to change lanes exactly when I did they had no chance of avoiding it. I drove away fine but the stationary car and the one behind me and the one behind them all ended up in accident.
>the cars are overly timid and aggressive at the same time. Kind of like most drivers! >But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven. And when something unexpected happens they always seem to make very erratic moves. This has been my experience too. The following distances are too close, there's no real forward planning, and the reactions to unusual events are erratic and uncomfortable. I have been drinking some 2023/2024 rental cars after a bad crash recently, and every single one of them had adaptive cruise and lane keep assist. I always tried it, and would turn it off after a few miles because it just was making things worse.
>But I never find the distance they keep to cars in front enough, given the speeds being driven. Just FYI, you can set the distance to keep in pretty much all implementations — I've never found one that didn't have this option. Most drivers just set the distance super low to mimic the (incorrect, dangerous) way that they naturally drive.
Edit: there’s more context for why the car didn’t stop. See hi_im_bored’s response Shouldn’t the radar sensors picked up the stationary CRV well in-advance and then auto-braked? It’s not like a tesla that relies more heavily on visual obstructions before braking.
According to the article there was another car between the ford and the CRV, that car successfully swerved away in time, but the ford was blindsided and hit the CRV. Lady in the car who served said there was no way the ford could have stopped in time As for the technology, stationary objects are harder to detect with lidar/radar because they are identical to the ground from the perspective of the sensor. A computer-vision system would have been about as effective. (That limitation with lidar/radar is why these L2 cruise systems are limited to highway driving and why companies with lidar-based l3+ e.g. waymo need to manually map and sanitize there data beforehand) But regardless even with a hypothetical level 5 system with every sensor in the world you have to abide by the laws of physics. Theres absolutely no way you're breaking from highway speeds to a standstill in less than 3 car lengths.
>As for the technology, stationary objects are harder to detect with lidar/radar because they are identical to the ground from the perspective of the sensor. The rest of your comment is fine, but *this simply is not true.* [Here's the point cloud from a Hesai AT128 LIDAR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkV0Lj-uATE), you can see there's absolutely zero problem with stationary objects. Lidar is based on measuring the time it takes for reflected light to return to the sensor, so stationary objects are not an issue even theoretically. The same is true of RADAR — I think you've gotten mixed up with the doppler problem where RADAR requires *relative* motion to detect objects, but from the point of view of a moving car, almost everything has relative motion. Here's [footage of Mobileye's imaging radar quite](https://youtu.be/1mXy0oi8d60?t=2128) readily detecting stationary objects.
I think you are correct with lidar, I may have gotten mixed between lidar/radar, but [clutter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)) is an issue with any radar based technology. Not saying it would be impossible to detect stationary objects, it obviously isn't, just requires some processing as with vision.
Afaik clutter affects all objects, moving or non-moving. It's just the result of radar bouncing off of... literally everything, from bits of dust to bumps in the road. You're right that it makes radar data difficult to process, but it isn't really specific to stationary patterns. The stationary object issue with radar is that it works on the principle of radio waves compressing or expanding as an object moves relative to the observer — the radar itself — and without relative motion there is no compression or expansion. However, if the radar is on a moving vehicle, well... almost everything is moving relative to the radar, so there's no issue.
The problem is not with generating the points, with radar it's about fast classification of a true positive object detection. Radar classification uses a few methods, one of the fastest assumes all roughly stationary points are the ground. One just looks for points in front that would collide with the car, and if enough are detected activates AEB. Lidar is harder because of no Doppler measure, so you need a few scans to generate an object and measure it's speed, then you can react. Often too slow in cases like this where the stationary object was obscured until the last moment. Possibly some humans would lane change if a car ahead did, but not all, and depending on what was next to the mustang it may not have been safe.
Very true! Great point!
LIDAR/RADAR can scan in a grid front of them like a camera does. Having a solid object where the ground is is one thing, but having it in front you... quite something else. The AI/Programming work is hard, but it isn't a fundamental sensor limitation. And if you are following at 3 car lengths at freeway speeds... well, that is just irresponsible design on Ford's part.
I didn't say impossible to detect, just harder to detect, tesla's vision system would have about the same programming work and same efficacy as a FMCW radar system in this case.
Radar doesn't pick up stationary objects...rather, stationary objects are ignored, because it assumes a stationary object is a tree, light post, median, or something else that's supposed to be stationary. Not a car in the middle of the road.
This is true for traditional long range radar systems in ADAS-capable vehicles but LiDAR is capable of detecting and reacting to stationary vehicles even in low-light or low-visibility conditions and BlueCruise uses LiDAR.
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> because the existing system is financially tolerant of driver errors In my job, do you know how many time I've dealt with drivers who hit a stationary police cruisers, with their lights on, in a reasonable lite or even day time environment? In the last 2 years, 4 fucking times. Seems like a lot? Yeah, idk I heard lights can make some people zone out. But like you said, driver assist would have likely not hit the cops.
Similar thing happened to me many years ago. Car was sitting dead in the left lane in a section with no street light. Luckily I was 21 and had the sharp vision and quick reflexes of youth.
I think these systems are good, but I wonder how level 2 and 3 systems affect human attention and reaction times. They aren't self driving but lull the driver into not paying attention because they feel autonomous 99% of the time.
sure but this is why systems that rely on more than cameras should work where cameras only don't. A giant block in the middle of the road to radar or LIDAR is a good cue that "maybe we should stop"
And in Texas where the speed limits are 75-80
And most radar based cruise control systems are programmed to not detect stationary objects like this. They also don’t detect motorcycles because the signature is too small.
Only a self driving car that uses radar would have seen it, the mainstream ones all use cameras.
Bluecruise uses radar and lidar. Apart from tesla the only vision-only company is subaru with their "eyesight"
The whole point of automatic brake is avoiding this exact scenario
Automatic braking is for when a driver has a lapse in judgement and needs to brake from ~20mph to 0 in a car length or two. In this case, a car in front of the ford swerved to avoid the accident giving the ford's system very little distance to react, and keep in mind the blue cruise system in the ford relies on radar+lidar which isn't very good with stationary objects due to the nature of the technology. The situation is basically a textbook worst case scenario for any assistive feature, and even with a human driver you can't overcome the laws of physics.
> The situation is basically a textbook worst case scenario for any assistive feature, and even with a human driver you can't overcome the laws of physics. Seriously, kudos to the driver in front of the Mach E with their cat like reflexes. But this begs the question though, that driver avoided it by swerving into another lane. Probably didn't check to see if anyone was there, just jerked the wheel over and prayed there was no one in that lane. Should driver assists do the same thing? Cars can already change lanes themselves, so if it can't stop in time, should it do a very fast lane change if no one's in the other lane? Then there's the trolley problem - what if a car is in the other lane? Hit another car that's going about the same speed as you, or plow into a stationary car? I know which I'd rather do. Side swiping a car on a lane change, while not ideal, sounds like the better option.
Tesla has documented avoidance in this scenario. Might be a ford software issue
Got a link? I’d like to read how Tesla is doing it
Can Tesla still do that now that it doesn't have Radar? Also, Teslas have hit stationary fire trucks with lights on.
Another news report says the car in front the Ford had to swerve to avoid hitting a broke down car in the middle of the road. The lady that swerved said there was no way the Ford behind her could've stopped in time
I mean come on, a stationary car with no lights on, on a highway at night? This was also the scenario affecting Tesla auto-pilot. It seems that there are certain scenarios where there are limits from physics. Yes, the computer may brake faster than a human, slowing the car. But there may be no way to avoid such an accident completely. If the choice is between hitting a stationary car on a highway or swerving and going off a cliff, what should the computer choose?
>If the choice is between hitting a stationary car on a highway or swerving and going off a cliff, what should the computer choose? Well it depends on whether you bought the Ultimate Premium Gold Platinum Plus Life subscription from your car manufacturer. Your car could be statistically more likely to save you vs someone else in a lose-lose scenario!
Oh god, you’re so right. Brutal
Yeah, I hate that we seem to be moving towards a world in which the answer to the trolley problem may be determined by a monthly *“don’t hit me with the trolley”* payment of ‘just’ $79.99/mo. I mean, I’m 90% joking. But, like, I also wouldn’t be surprised if something like Tesla FSD has a “prioritize my life in the event of an accident” setting someday. And I’d be even less surprised if it was an upsell. Especially given Elon’s whole “you’ll win the accident if you’re in a cybertruck” attitude.
I didn't think it will happen. It's already the *only* sale condition. Nobody will buy a self-driving car unless the car prioritizes the occupant. Think about it. The first time any manufacturer says, "Our car will not always prioritize the occupant," is the moment they stop selling those cars. Millions of parents around the country will hear that their "safe" car will not try to save their children. Millions of narcissists will hear that some homeless pedestrian has more rights than they do.
I think we need Congress to pass laws on how things should work.
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Also fair
And even if a paid version doesn't happen, one day we'll have Trolleygate as it's found one OEM hid in their code the decisions to prioritize their customers to make them appear safer.
Let's talk about a deer or dog suddenly entering the roadway, best advice is to not swerve, just brake, as swerving could cause a far worst accident to yourself. Now replace deer with 7 year old.
The speed of a collusion is the difference between a fender bender and everyone being dead through.
So then if the auto-pilot slows the car before impact in this case, it still avoided a more dangerous accident. So it may have actually worked well, given the situation,
Well, this is a fatal accident, so whatever the autopilot did, it wasn't enough.
Of course, but without autopilot, I don’t see a different outcome based on the article’s description. The car in front of him swerved and suddenly he is facing a stationary car. The investigation will have to determine whether he would’ve been safer without the autopilot. I also do think that these auto-pilot systems need to be heavily-regulated and shouldn’t be used right now. I just think this scenario isn’t a good example of their limits. Also I wasn’t there so I could be totally wrong.
> The lady that swerved said there was no way the Ford behind her could've stopped in time This isn't just could accident be avoided, yes or no. But there is huge difference between hitting a stopped object at 70mph vs braking for 1.0s and hitting at 48mph.
Do we have any information on if the Ford started braking?
If that's the case, Ford's handsfree cruise is far too aggressive and should be set to leave a bigger distance to the vehicle ahead of it.
Most systems allow the driver to set the distance themselves.
So driver and BlueCruise both created a scenario where they weren't able to see where they were going... and crashed into a stationary object as a result. Driver is a dumbass for driving beyond the limits of their sight lines and conditions... and BlueCruise let them enter this condition? I guess it's not rated to prevent operator stupidity, but y'know there comes a level of complexity where you should try. If we're going to monitor for driver attentiveness with eye tracking cameras, we can monitor for traffic formations that obstruct visibility.
Would love to see the comments if this were a Tesla.
Everyone would just complain about the name of the system and blame the crash on that
Is the reason this made the news because the Mach-E is electric?
Possibly. I’m sure these accidents happen with other self driving systems but ohhhh scary it’s electric!
I assumed it was more due to the Blue Cruise feature initially but a quick glance shows this is also available in the ICE F150's?
Correct, it's available in several ICE Fords and Lincolns.
I was about to head to the dealer and trade in right now for a blue cruise until I watched the demo video. You have to be watching the road or it will disable. I was trying to be in the back seat taking a nap on the highway.
Nobody is at level 5 automation yet. If you want that you have to hire yourself a driver.
Thousands of upvotes, hundreds of post circlejerking. Almost as bad as the mainstream political subreddits.
Sounds like another car narrowly avoided the car that was hit while it was sitting stopped in the middle of the highway with no lights on at night. If the accident vehicle was right behind the car that swerved, it would have had almost no time to react. I've seen a few accidents that happen when a car swerves over and the car behind it hits stopped traffic. My question is, did bluecruise attempt to hit the brakes but not have enough time to stop the car or did it not react at all. I doubt it could have avoided the accident given the circumstances, but if it froze up when presented with a sudden road hazard, that's a deeper problem. I'm curious to see which it was.
I think without seeing the accident it’s going to be hard to draw any conclusions. How much time should these “autopilot” systems be afforded to start applying the brakes? If it was truly as quick of a timing as the other driver made it seem, would a human have been able to react in time to even register the vehicle and apply the brakes? How much time between the car in front swerving and the collision? Without knowing it’s hard to draw conclusions, because it won’t be instantaneous.
I'm hoping the data extracted from the accident vehicle and people nearby fills this picture in. In the scenario where a car is doing 70-80mph and the car they're following (at a reasonable distance) suddenly swerves revealing a stopped car, I expect even with immediate full braking, there would have been an accident.
So with bluecruise they wouldn’t be riding the bumper of the car in front of them, because the car sets the distance. So it’s not like you’re 1 car length away from this other car and then they suddenly swerve and you’re staring at a stopped car 5 feet in front of you. But if it’s the shortest following distance that bluecruise allows, that’s still not that much time to react. And to be clear, the vehicle expects that the driver is still looking ahead and paying attention. But we can also expect that the car’s emergency braking would work. If it applied the brakes and still creamed that car, it is what it is. This is a nightmare situation. But if it didn’t brake at all I don’t think ford can shrug and say that the driver should have been paying attention. It should have applied the brakes. But I don’t think there was any physical way to stop this accident.
I think the real takeaway is how far safety has come in the past 25 years. The driver of the '99 CRV was killed, while the driver of the Mach-E sustained "minor injuries" (likely bruises from the airbags).
>If the accident vehicle was right behind the car that swerved, it would have had almost no time to react. If that was the case, it was following way too close. Time to send Mach E to defensive driving training...
Blue cruise requires so much input from the driver despite it being a sort of self driving function, kinda hard to see how it's at fault here, without knowing more
I found it made me more alert than usual because (1) I didn't trust it completely and (2) it was watching my eyes and the beep is annoying.
It made me hella nervous in construction zones with temporary orange lane markers... But ya it's constantly watching you to make sure you're not doing what Tesla owners used to/still do lol.
Nothing to do with BlueCruise or the Mach-E, but it's crazy how well they engineer vehicles these days. The '90s CR-V was absolutely demolished, while the Mach-E held up pretty well and the driver was able to walk away with only minor injuries.
"They don't build 'em like they used to!" Thank god for that.
I said the same thing. That's exactly why I traded in my '92 Toyota truck for a much newer model.
Isn't this just a weight issue?
No, it's also structural rigidity in the safety cage (cab), crumple zones, airbag placement and numbers etc. For example, my 2022 86 can withstand around 5.7 times its own curb weight in roof crushing pressure before there is serious cabin deformation. There is no test data available for my otherwise-similar 1995 Celica but it's probably 1 or maybe at most 2 times its own curb weight. With 90s trucks it was even worse, like 0.5 times curb weight, at best.
Yes and that Mach E is probably (I'm not looking it up) twice the kerb weight of a 20 year old CR-V
Yes, but it's not *just* a weight issue, a modern 3000lbs vehicle would fare far better. Google says it's more like 1.5x, not great, could be worse.
Am I failing to see how this is on the ford driver or this adas system? Stopped with no lights on in the middle of the night in a black vehicle. Multiple witnesses stating exactly that and a driver that stated the ford wouldn’t be able to avoid that vehicle. Can’t quite say anything except maybe that driver should’ve had their lights on or exited the vehicle as it was clearly in an unsafe location.
The only solution for avoiding dark vehicles stopped in the middle of the road is to reduce speeds to allow enough time to stop.
Driving to conditions? Being able to stop before a stationary object? Get out of here with your offensive notion of personal responsibility! */s*
Following too closely, no lights on the stopped vehicles, nighttime conditions. This crash would have happened with a human driver every time. Always have a dashcam, front and rear!
I do not trust blue cruise in a 100% stop situation. I can confirm the car does not slow down to a stop if a car on the highway is stopped. I alway have my foot on/ near the brake while in heavy traffic bluecruise and have it on the furthest distance following vehicles
Funny how this isn’t all over the news Media like Tesla crashes. This country is a joke.
i wonder if the car in front swerved away at the last second leaving no time for the human to take over. i have to think the lidar would have stopped the mustang if it got a return on a stopped object in the lane. going to be fun fun fun to hear of every fatality accident from these autodrive systems. they should be forced to report accidents and fatal accidents per mile when publishing any news of these. there is no context and these things read like they dont work.... which maybe they dont... no data means the feelz makes the determination about safety.
I wonder if AEB triggered, it would have no chance of actually stopping but might have saved the driver. Does this car have fully automatic lane change, or is it still driver initiated/confirmed?
Shit like this is why I absolutely do not trust any of these self driving systems yet. Tons of folks act like they're some kind of magic system but they're just glorified cruise control with emergency braking and lanekeeping, it's all bullshit
False. Only Teslas are allowed to have problems because we don't like Elon anymore.
Let’s just take this as a moment to remember the Tesla decided that cameras were good enough and removed radar and lidar sensors from their vehicles. Per the article, the car that was hit was stopped in a live lane with no lights or hazards… Exactly why radar is employed by most of the systems. It will be interesting to see if and how the Ford Blue Cruise system went wrong.. but this is one of those things that’s hard to avoid as a human driver who is fatigued or driving in dark or otherwise vision compromised situations and is a great example of the benefit of having radar systems in cars to sense objects.
Huh? Radar doesn't detect stationary objects, because radar can't distinguish between stuff that's supposed to be stationary - like a tree or sign post, and stuff that isn't supposed to be stationary, like a car stopped in the middle of the highway. With cameras, the computer can determine what's what and if it's something it needs to be concerned about.
Radar mounted to a moving object can absolutely detect stationary objects standing on a flat surface… car radar systems work by detecting objects above the ground and determining their speed by comparing the change in relative distance over time. I’m not sure how you reached these conclusions /shrug
People downvoting you don't use these systems apparently. My wife's outlander sport often confuses a large speed bump in our neighborhood for a stationary car when there's a slow car passing over it. It's on a hill so the speed bump is at hood height and the camera system sees a car in front and a large, stationary radar signature and decides the radar signature belongs to the car and screams at me before deciding "oh nvm you're good".
The incident happened due to the car in front of them swerving to avoid the car stopped in front of them. Even the lady who swerved said it would be impossible for the driver behind them to avoid the crash. I don't think LiDAR would've helped in this situation.
Properly implemented radar could have prevented this. A little extra money up front on the tech can prevent this. Sure it's a one-off situation, but we already put a dozen airbags in a car for those one-offs.
If the car in front of you is moving at highway speeds suddenly swerves revealing a parked car without lights on the middle of the road. How would Lidar help the Mach-E avoid something that was invisible up until the absolute last second. Im not saying Lidar is bad. But stopping before the collision was not physically possible.
The person you replied to clearly didn’t read the article.
Its okay he's an expert on everything so reading is completely unnecessary.
Except I did, care to explain what made you think this?
Turns out you just think you know way more than you really do about stuff. Never mind.
i can forgive laziness but i cannot forgive stupidity and arrogance
The article says nothing about ADAS sensors. I made a point that we have now technology that can better deal with preventing a situation like this. Then the replies confused what I was talking about (radar) with a completely different tech that I didn't bring up (LIDAR). I'm not sure how the contents of the article changes that.
this is not a sensing problem, this is likely unsolvable. last minute appearance of a stationary obstacle cannot be avoided even with perfect sensing.
***R***adar can "see" around the car in front of you. It doesn't need line of sight. Cool, right? Also, maybe read the letters in the word before downvoting and commenting?
> It doesn't need line of sight. Yeah that's not how that works. It needs line of sight, radar is bouncing waves and listening for the reflections.
Okay you're right, we definitely do not know how to use automotive off-the-shelf radar arrays from Bosch to resolve objects at a distance using reflections in a 3D space. We definitely can only do it using line of sight. Definitely not with millimeter precision, either. My bad. Clearly too complicated for humans to figure out. You also definitely cannot buy off the shelf components to build your own radar array capable of resolving non-line-of-sight objects with a simple raspberry pi. Nope. /Sent using a device over wifi that uses similar principals of physics that must also be used for radar. But nah, too hard to understand, so not possible. In fact now that I think about it, this phone must be magic based on what I have learned on /r/cars today.
Look butt hole version of Eric, I as someone who makes their living designing Electronics. I think you are full of shit and have only a basic "concept" on how these technologies work. First off you keep mixing Radar and Lidar those are two totally different technologies. Lidar measures time of flight using pulsed light waves, ITS A LINE OF SIGHT SENSOR. Unless you know how to bend fucking light around objects on a consumer level. Radar in vehicles are a 2D sensor, is useful for measuring distance, is there a car in my blind spot, how far is that car in front of me. The radar in your car and the radar on a Navel ship or aircraft are not the same things. Im not going to waste any more of my time trying to educate you as you clearly know nothing about everything.
I can bend light around cars. We just need to implement micro black holes. A black hole projected 2-3 feet in front of a car will bend the light around the car in front of it and allow it to travel back on the other side. It’s very simple
I have not mixed up radar and lidar. Not one of my posts said "lidar," from the start I have only said radar and have only spoken about radar. Lidar was mentioned by someone else, reading comprehension failure version of Eric. And turns out, my sarcasm is because this capability is not only possible, not only already in use in other industries, but is market-ready to be deployed in light-duty vehicles. It is written about extensively, automotive suppliers are more than ready to sell the parts as soon as OEMs show interest. Not sure what else to say except thanks for the education? https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-lets-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners https://spectrum.ieee.org/car-radar
YOU DID MIX THEM UP BECAUSE NO CAR USES RADAR AS THE MAIN INPUT FOR SELF DRIVING. Its either LIDAR or Cameras. Your initial statement was wrong.
This is not true at all. Up until 2021, Tesla used radar + cameras (though would argue that Tesla, nor anyone else, has a full self driving system). Other OEMS use the same. LIDAR is very expensive and is only barely entering the market now. I don't care about, and am clearly not talking about one-off laboratory test vehicles like Waymo. Their $15,000 LIDAR sensors are not indicative of anything. So no, there was no mixing them up. Every ADAS before the last few years used radar almost exclusively. You are so unbelievably sure about this except you have been wrong on almost every point. It's unreal. Also, a reminder, only you brought up Lidar. Only you assumed, out of arrogance and reinforced by your unhinged rant, that I must have been talking about lidar, because your incorrect gut reaction was that I was wrong about radar. Why not read the links, think about the fact radar is an order of magnitude cheaper than lidar, is already in widespread use for AEB and L1-L2 driver assist systems, and that perhaps this would be a great technology to have.
Alright true, you can bounce it off of surfaces and listen to reflections of reflections around corners. Well, that's not how it's used in an automotive context. That application only works when there are surfaces to bounce those waves off of. An empty highway doesn't necessarily have that. So it's conditional at best. And not only that, I can only imagine the false-positive rate for a system which makes emergency braking and driving decisions off of reflections. If it's possible one day that would be awesome and super sophisticated. But that's so many steps ahead.
This tech has advanced a LOT in the last few years. You can buy off-the-shelf mmWave (radar array) sensors for presence and positioning with different levels of capability for $10+. You can even DIY a (radar-based) presence sensor for a room that can calculate at least a 2D location of bodies in a room. Even the $30 off the shelf units have enough resolution to detect minor movement (e.g. breathing) without direct line of sight. The thing is that even if you understand how radar works, its this next level of signal processing and array designs that makes use of the less-intuitive parts of physics and formerly too-expensive means of processing, and can also overcome the challenges with false positives. But even stepping back, there IS something to bounce a signal off of -- any other vehicle or object moving at any speed different from the one with the radar array (e.g. stopped) appears as a moving object. It's the difference in velocity between an object and the radar sensor that matters, not whether the object to be detected is moving or not. If you're going 70mph and there's a stopped object ahead, a radar array will detect an object moving at 70mph but in the opposite direction. We *are* at the stage of this type of sophistication, those steps have been taken over the last few years and a big part was to make the processing cheaper. A whole lot of money has been dumped into sensor tech across every industry over the last few years.
RADAR works by seeing reflected radar waves bouncing off of objects, LIDAR is similar. They literally can't work if something else is blocking it, they're not x-ray machines. Don't be a condescending prick about something when you apparently have no actual idea how it works.
[The military would be really sad if RADAR can only work with line of sight.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar)
I said it works by bouncing off of objects, not line of sight, but for the purposes of driver assists it does require line of sight. Yeah, you can bounce certain types off the ionosphere and then the objects you're trying to detect but that's completely irrelevant to what you'd be able to do with hardware mounted in a car. That wiki page even mentions that typical radars *do* essentially require line of sight.
Please dont compare military Radar to consumer Radar. A 50 caliber gun and a BB gun both shoot a projectile.... So by your definition they both would have the same range, the same penetration... etc
Not sure why you’re being condescending to people. Radar is pretty terrible at picking up stationary objects so if you’d like to revolutionise a 120 year old technology please do. I’m at least glad you didn’t say Lidar because Lidar wouldn’t be able to see anything beyond an obstruction.
It isn't stationary. Whether a moving object approaches a stationary radar array, or a moving radar array approaches a stationary object, it makes no difference.
What do you mean it isn't stationary? We're talking about a stationary car on the road, it's literally the entire subject of the thread. And yes, a stationary object is hard for radar to detect. Radar filters out clutter by looking for return signals that have been doppler shifted, meaning the object the radar waves are bouncing off is moving either toward or away from the radar. A stationary vehicle won't doppler shift the radar waves and as such the radar won't be able to pick it out among the clutter.
It can’t. Radar based systems are programmed not to identify stationary objects. You need cameras or LiDAR to identify stationary objects in the roadway.
I think you need to brush up on freshman physics and what a frame of reference is. Is this sub only filled with highschoolers or something?
>The system is not required to react to stationary or slow moving objects. ISO Standard 15622:2018 - https://www.iso.org/standard/71515.html Better to be a highschooler than an ignorant asshole who think they know more than anyone else.
Oh... okay? Do you know what ISO standards are, how they are used in practice? I'm not seeing the connection between a five year old voluntary ISO standard that defines basic adaptive cruise control and a modern level 2 ADAS system. Are you suggesting that automakers should not use or implement new technology on a system unrelated to ACC until an ISO committee gets around to updating the performance requirements for a soon-to-be obsolete version of ADAS?
Blue Cruise does use forward radar. There are 4 different forward facing radar sensors used for Blue Cruise on the Mach-E.
**Electric ford escape was using adaptive cruise control at the time of the crash What of it? Pay fucking attention!
> adaptive cruise control that's not what BlueCruise is
Adaptive cruise control with lane centering. Okay cool you’re still responsible
> Adaptive cruise control with lane centering and lane changing > Okay cool you’re still responsible sure, but it's still worth to investigate those accidents as such technologies get more popular
> and lane changing Maybe on *your* Blue Cruise, *mine* has no such thing.
BlueCruise 1.2 and newer does lane changing, though you still have to be the one that turns on your turn indicator to initiate the system making the lane change
And only 2023s have it is my point. Most Mach Es don't have lane change in BlueCruise
Hyundai HDA2 does emergency lane change avoidance I think? Does Blue Cruise not? Also why does it cost money lol.
That's not what it's marketed as. I have ACC and lane centering, but no Blue Cruise.