Slamming the brakes on the highway, interstate, autobahn is dangerous for the driver behind you. In some countries (maybe all) it's illegal to to this without an immediate danger. The car may see a sign on the side of the highway as "in your path" simply because the road is curving and the car can't tell that there's a radius and the sign is outside it.
Between RADAR, LIDAR, and cameras I'm sure there's a hardware setup that can adequately resolve the issue but that would be too expensive. Most manufacturers don't pretend their cars are self driving. But one stands out, with Musk insisting the car is fully self driving, safer than a human driver, and ready for prime time except for pesky regulation. It is not and it will not be for a long time. They can probably self drive in less than 1% of driving conditions and even then they won't do it successfully 100% of the time. The only reason the statistics don't look much worse is that most drivers aren't suicidal and will keep saving the situation when the car shows that even driving straight between to painted lines is a challenge for a computer.
> Slamming the brakes on the highway, interstate, autobahn is dangerous for the driver behind you. In some countries (maybe all) it's illegal to to this without an immediate danger. The car may see a sign on the side of the highway as "in your path" simply because the road is curving and the car can't tell that there's a radius and the sign is outside it.
I'm asking for a gradual slowdown, not slamming on the brakes.
There wasn't even a curve here. The lane went straight and visibly into the stationary object.
The whole thing about the "car doesn't know" part is that... the car doesn't know. The car just sees an object that just sat there the whole time with speed 0 and is programmed to assume that is a stationary object on the side of the road. Which is the likeliest explanation on a highway. Without LIDAR the car can't do more than either keep braking for every object on the side of the road, then get back up to speed once it realizes it's safe (however long that may take), or just take stationary objects as "most likely not in my pass, will ignore". By the time they realize a collision is imminent it's too late to do more than slow down a bit.
Adaptive cruise control has one selling point: it maintains speed automatically thus providing more comfort. If your car keeps slowing down (or stop) for such objects then nobody would use it. Which is why it's programmed as such, for better or worse. Don't forget that the driver is still driving, the so called "fully self driving" is just a collection of driver assists that require constant attention since they can and will make fatal mistakes even in the simplest driving conditions.
There are points in the road where it's a bit unclear the exact path you will take. This is not one of them. The car has an extremely clear line of sight to the lane, enabling it to know that there are no curves before the obstacle.
Just like "emergency braking is bad" shouldn't remove the option of slowing down, "car can't always tell where the lane goes" shouldn't exclude using precise lane information when it is available.
Between RADAR, LIDAR, and cameras I'm sure there's a hardware setup that can adequately resolve the issue but that would be too expensive. Most manufacturers don't pretend their cars are self driving. But one stands out, with Musk insisting the car is fully self driving, safer than a human driver, and ready for prime time except for pesky regulation. It is not and it will not be for a long time. They can probably self drive in less than 1% of driving conditions and even then they won't do it successfully 100% of the time. The only reason the statistics don't look much worse is that most drivers aren't suicidal and will keep saving the situation when the car shows that even driving straight between to painted lines is a challenge for a computer.