Automatic pedestrian avoidance — a mixed blessing?

[unixronin]

Jalopnik reports that the 2010 Volvo S60 will be equipped with an automated system that not only detects pedestrians and cyclists in or entering the vehicle's path, but automatically brakes if necessary to avoid hitting them.

On the face of it, this is an excellent idea.  But in an inner city, I would hope there's an override.  You see, over and above Jalopnik's concern about drivers coming to rely on the automatic pedestrian/cyclist avoidance system, there's one scenario that comes immediately to mind.

Picture this.  You've been into the city for dinner and a movie with your spouse.  On your way home, you pull up to an intersection and stop at the red light.  A figure appears out of the shadows and up to the side of the car.  He brandishes a weapon, be it as simple as a length of iron pipe or a baseball bat, and orders you out of the car.  With no cross-traffic in sight, you quickly step on the gas to get away.

...And nothing happens, because by now his two friends are standing in front of and behind the car.  You see carjackers ... but the car sees only pedestrians, and it won't let you endanger them.

Comments

[hugh_mannity]

In the late '70s I worked for a doctor who drove a blaze orange Volvo wagon.

He had intermittent trouble with it not starting. He'd grab his stuff, get it the car, turn the key and... nothing. So he'd go back into the office (with his stuff) and call his mechanic. The mechanic would show up and the car would start. Sometimes his wife would be able to start it for him.

There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to this. Except that it only ever happened to when he was driving and only when he was on his own.

Eventually I figured it out. Volvo had a sensor installed that wouldn't let you start the car if the driver and front seat passenger didn't have their seatbelts on. When he was dumping his medical bag and a sufficiently large number of books and papers on the front seat, the sensor thought there was a passenger and wouldn't start the car. Of course, just leaving the seatbelt buckled wasn't good enough, there needed to be some tension on it. So we fixed that by running the belt behind the seat back. When he had a passenger, they'd undo the belt, buckle themselves in as normal and on leaving the car, put it back into "pretend passenger" mode.

Stupid safety devices.

[unixronin]

There is such a thing as going too far in efforts to force people to use safety devices that are there for their, and no-one else's, benefit. I personally think that by trying to go to such lengths to protect people from the consequences of their own stupidity, we're not only penalizing those possessed of a modicum of common sense by dumbing everything down in our efforts to make them idiot-proof, we're actively selecting for stupidity.

[hugh_mannity]

Agreed.

And while on the one hand reducing the number and fatality of accidents is a laudable goal, there are some degrees of trauma that should be fatal -- because life after them ain't worth living.

I've seen a good number of people come through the ER who really would have been better off dead. But I've also seen people who survived and overcame enormous odds: One young lady who was knocked off her bike by a taxi (did a U-turn right into her) into the path of a London double-decker bus that ran over her lower back. Crushed pelvis, ruptured spleen, bladder and uterus, shredded colon. She was 6 months in ICU, a dozen or so surgeries -- including a completely reconstructed bladder, large intestine and vagina. She walked out of the hospital after about 9 months. There was a massive crowd of staff there to see her off with flowers and confetti. Her fiance had been in to visit with her every day. Sent her flowers every morning. He gave a couple of cases of champagne to each of the ICU, ER, the ward she'd been on and the PT depts when she left.

She lost a huge amount of her life: a year out of her career, her chance of ever having kids, and a lot of her mobility.

So, I dunno. Cars that don't burst into flames if you look at them funny, tyres that don't explode at 66mph, safety glass so that you don't get your face shredded when an accident showers you in pieces of windscreen, motorcycle brakes that work in the wet, I can get behind all of those.

I just don't want them to start thinking for me. I don't want rearview cameras -- because I think I'm more careful because I have to actively look behind me. I don't want lock-out devices connected to a breathalyser or the seatbelts -- that sort of complexity always ends up going wrong at the worst possible moment. Some days I'm even iffy about automatic transmission. Electric windows: good idea -- you can operate them without any effort. I'm very much on the fence about GPS systems.

[unixronin]

So, I dunno. Cars that don't burst into flames if you look at them funny, tyres that don't explode at 66mph, safety glass so that you don't get your face shredded when an accident showers you in pieces of windscreen, motorcycle brakes that work in the wet, I can get behind all of those.

Yeah. And I like seat belts, though I wish I could get a five-point harness and be legally allowed to use it. But if someone's determined not to use it, fine, let'em select themselves out. Don't go to such lengths to force them to use a safety device they don't want to use that your measures to force them become a problem to other people who already use them anyway.

As for rearview cameras, I don't think they're ready for prime time. Backing up using a 5"-diagonal LCD screen on my dashboard? That does not sound like fun. If you';re going to put the screen there, give me an ultrasonic or millimeter-wave-radar object-warning system that uses that LCD as a display screen and plots objects within, say, fifteen feet of the car. It'll be much more useful.