How To Make The Obvious Sound Scary
from the say-what-now? dept
We’ve had plenty of stories about how people over-relying on computers have made some pretty big mistakes. It’s pretty natural. People expect computers to be right. It’s obviously good to not blindly trust computers, but is it really so silly to expect an automation system to do what it’s supposed to do? The Raw Feed points us to a fairly sensational claim that adaptive cruise control systems, designed to help drivers avoid accidents, can dull the driver’s senses in a real emergency situation — making it sound as though these “safety” systems can make driving more dangerous. However, the details point out how ridiculous this claim really is. What the researchers did was make the adaptive cruise control fail. Any driver, obviously, is expecting that it would work — so why is it surprising, in any way, that they would react late? They expected the system to work, and it didn’t. That’s not “dulling the driver’s senses,” it’s a system failure. The real issue is making sure that (a) these systems rarely fail or (b) when they do fail, the drivers are clearly and quickly alerted to that fact, so that they can override it with their own controls.
Comments on “How To Make The Obvious Sound Scary”
No Subject Given
Can the system always know it’s going to fail? Fair enough if something in the system itself has stopped working, but what about conditions outside the vehicle?
Remember the demo that turned into a three-merc-pileup because the system wouldn’t work in the warehouse where they were demoing it…? seems to me the same system is just as likely to fail when you’re going through a tunnel, or an underpass, or snow / hailstorms, or who-knows-what else. Can the system reliably predict conditions where it’s going to fail like this? I don’t think so.
I’d love a system like this, but I would never rely on it! I’d keep driving the car just as if the system wasn’t installed, and hopefully the one or two times I’m distracted and _could_ have had an accident this thing will kick in and save my ass.
Re: No Subject Given
No system can be 100% failsafe, however with redundant parallel systems you can reduce the chance of failure dramatically. An independent system that monitors key areas for failure can also help.
However, such redundant systems do raise the cost dramatically.
Re: No Subject Given
What you should fear even more than the system failing is the alert system failing. I often thought of a small light on the dashboard that could tell you if your brake, turning, etc. lights were out, and then I realized that you’d become reliant on it and if THAT light burned out, you’d never know unless someone told you. That’s not so bad unless it’s alerting you to a major malfunction.
Besides, there are reasons we drive versus taking a bus, cab, train, etc. and that’s so we can remain in control of what we do and where we go. If someone doesn’t want to take responsibility for their driving at all times, they should use another form of transportation.
Belgium
In Belgium they’ve even gone as far as to completely forbid the operation of any cruise control since 2003 I think, after a few accidents (most notably with trucks) were blamed on “the driver not paying attention because he had his cruise control on”
cruise control
If you think the driving is being taken care of automatically, you won’t pay as much attention, just as you dont when someone else is driving. It’s absurd to expect people to monitor something as closely when they’re generally not required to take any action.
No Subject Given
I have known people who actually think that cruise control was more like auto-pilot, and would steer the car for them. Needless to say, they didn’t have their lisence for very long.
Re: No Subject Given
Everything is beta. Nothing has ever been tested by millions plain and simple. So unless it’s been used in a mass society you can’t possibly know all it’s bugs. Then when the source gets out….
No Subject Given
Cuise-control is inherently dangerous. I agree that it doesn’t “dull the senses”, per se. All it does is allow one to not focus on foot-work, especially adaptive cruise control. You still have to watch the road, steer, and otherwise drive defensively.
However, many people invoke cruise-control for the wrong reason. Personally, I activate it because holding my foot on the gas hurts on a long trip. Unfortunately, other people activate it because they expect a long, monotonous trip and want to relax. You simply can’t activate cruise control to relax, as that’s going to kill someone. Driving requires your full attention, with or without cruise control.
Having said that, and knowing that people WILL use cruise control for the wrong reasons, adaptive cruise control is a good thing. However, the original article’s point about it “dulling the driver’s senses” is a good one, if a little off the mark. As Mike mentions, the issue is not alertness, but reaction time due to the driver not expecting failure. The driver can be fully alert and looking for danger, but in order to detect failure of the adaptive cruise control system, the driver must witness it not slowing down, which will rob even the best driver of valuable reaction time.
I have mixed opinions. Given responsible drivers, redundant systems, and quality monitoring and alerting, it’s a step forward. But given lazy drivers who use it when they would be best served by choosing not to drive at all, it’s an accident waiting to happen.
I may not have passed the law that Belgium did were I in charge, but I won’t argue with it either.
Re: The right reason?
What’s a good reason to invoke cruise control? I typically use it to maintain a constant speed. It allows me to focus on the conditions on the road and, if the road is level, I don’t have to monitor the speedometer. It’s one less thing to have to deal with… I can instead give a little more attention to my side view mirrors, my rear view mirror, and the cars that I am approaching.
Anything can be abused, though. It’s not auto-pilot, and it won’t react to an emergency situation–you’ll have to apply your own brakes.
Re: Re: The right reason?
Unfortunately the problem is inherent in normal human psychology. It is almost impossible not to ‘switch-off’ our attention, when we are not immediately involved in an attention-action feedback loop type situation. I remember reading about a technical diver talking about rebreathers (which are fundamentally complicated diving systems which can fail in about a million unpredictable ways). He argued the paradox that is was safer to have a faulty and failure-prone rebreather than a reliable one, because it increased vigilance, and meant it wouldn’t bite you on the ass once you’d taken it for granted!!
psychology
Unfortunately the problem is inherent in normal human psychology. It is almost impossible not to ‘switch-off’ our attention, when we are not immediately involved in an attention-action feedback loop type situation. I remember reading about a technical diver talking about rebreathers (which are fundamentally complicated diving systems which can fail in about a million unpredictable ways). He argued the paradox that is was safer to have a faulty and failure-prone rebreather than a reliable one, because it increased vigilance, and meant it wouldn’t bite you on the ass once you’d taken it for granted!
thats like saying...
…relying on your brakes is dangerous.
disable someone’s brakes and when they crash, say “see, they were driving too fast and assuming the brakes would stop them.”
No Subject Given
I was dating a girl and on a roadtrip, she turned on the cruise control and then proceeded to sit Indian-style (is that term derogatory?) on the seat. I told her to pull over so I could drive. She was completely baffled about why that was so dangerous.
She was dumped for being a moron soon after…
How about auto-steering?
The article only touched lightly on it, but auto-steering seems even more dangerous than braking/cruise control. AFAIK, most of the current models use the road markings and painted lines to tell if the car is in the middle of a lane.
So what happens if you’re driving down one of those back roads where it’s not maintained well and the lines are barely visible? Also, are they blinded by headlights from oncoming cars? Can they change lanes for you?
Just curious.