Do these platforms like BlueDrive and FSD not constantly survey the distance of objects in front of and around you? Or do they still rely on visuals like tail lights?

Every radar system has this issue. It’s basically the same thing that caused that Tesla to run into the side of a semi so many years ago. The semi was stationary (relative to the road direction) so if the radar saw it probably ignored it.

I’ve never heard of a system that uses the cameras. Except Tesla since they removed the radar I guess. No one else seems to.

I’m guessing (but didn’t check!) Subaru also has the radar too.

Doesn’t help in this situation though.

Radar typically applies to the ACC system while camera applies to LKAS or lane centering. Rarely are the two connected. FSD and comma.ai are probably the only systems which combine the two.

That might be true for some vehicles only.

Subaru EyeSight cameras (there are 2x front cameras and 1x rear camera) are also used to detect moving and stationary objects, and it will engage the emergency braking if, e.g., you are driving or reversing into a wall. Lane detection can be disabled on Subaru cars, yet the EyeSight will continue to scan surroundings and be ready to start breaking.

As of this year, the EyeSight is available even on Subaru BRZ 2nd gen with the manual transmisson.

How does it manage that? Is the clutch electrically controlled?

According to this video, breaks will be applied automatically, even if it is in neutral or if the engine stalls: https://youtu.be/8WIydvZZ23I

FSD is inferring distance of objects as it has no direct measurements. It's a real challenge in darkness since camera is a passive sensor and it has to rely on visual cues. I believe BlueCruise is using a radar, but I'm not sure how robust it is.

Edit: looked at a Mach e and it uses dual cameras behind the rear view mirror so likely intel’s mobile eye platform

Sometimes, you do everything right and the Universe tries to destroy you anyway.

Modern cars also always detect low light and crank up the dashboard brightness. There’s no longer a good clue to the driver that they forgot to turn the headlights on.

Drivers that have switched their headlights to the off position, the DRLs are "bright enough" to drive and not notice your headlights are off.

I see them very often, and for some reason a large portion of them are Hyundai. Maybe because the dash light, button backlights are independent of the headlights, so there's no real indication inside that your lights are not on, except the switch position.

As you mentioned, this mode is incredibly difficult to figure out your in.

What we don’t have is mandated automatic headlights. I remember there was a discussion recently about requiring automatic headlights or maybe not automatically increasing the brightness of the dash when it’s dark out. But I don’t remember what happened with it.

Because for most countries in the world that have sun bright sun most of the year it is totally ridiculous. Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria. Greece, Italy, Thailand, Filipines, Mexico...

Those countries have ridiculous daylight saving time changes because countries in the North believed this hack was a good idea.

The darkness Canadians experience in Winter and low sun in Summer are conditions in Norther countries other countries do not have.

I'm curious to know where this list came from. Argentina, Morocco, Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines do not use DST.

Spain, Greece and Italy do use DST, as members of the EU I believe they are obliged to do so.

Not everyone drives an up-to-date vehicle and TBH, some vehicle owners do not care that they are a hazard, regardless of what the law requires. Here in Austin, when the police get in a snit, they just stop enforcing the law and even when they're not in a snit about something, there are parts of town where traffic laws are traffic suggestions. All of this makes for a somewhat hazardous driving environment at times.

Blind curves, peaking hill ascents, and backed up interstate exits immediately come to mind where peek-a-boo rear ends become a serious risk.

That said none of this matters if the object or vehicle in front of the following car is stopped. The radar system will ignore it as part of the background.

Stop it.

So that we can all not adhere to the "maximum" speed signs on the highway to the degree that we prefer :)

I was a passenger while a friend was driving once and he said "I'm already going fast enough. Nobody should be going faster than me anyway." So there's one mentality.

But the light changed before they made the turn and they became stuck in the middle of the intersection once they lost the protected left ...

So now they're sitting in the "going straight" lane where you wouldn't expect a stopped car. The car in front of me changes lanes without really slowing down, and the FSD prediction model didn't pick up that the stopped car was stopped. I can't really blame it, it took me half a second to figure it out as well and by that time I was hard on the brakes.

I apologize for any flame wars this creates, since people find driving to be deeply personal and any findings which may criticize their driving habits is generally frowned upon.

The main reason I almost always have adaptive cruise control on is so that it keeps me at a safe braking distance from cars in front of me but I've found that most people do not care.

Just yesterday there was a corolla that was following a school bus so closely i'm sure it could sniff the bus' ass. That driver was one hard brake away from being decapitated by the school bus bumper.

They were rightly annoyed. It’s also a hefty fine if you’re caught doing this.

This usually happens when you are approaching a city and are going to get a new lane or two pretty soon anyways.

I was the last in line, going at the exact same speed as the cars in front of me, just leaving enough space. Why would I switch lanes?

Plus it was leading to an exit anyway…

https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

Also: there was someone in front of me going the same speed, I just left a big gap

And it can be very confusing to the vehicle behind you.

With the full map and destination time in front me, I don't feel the urge to game the system (or maybe I'm just getting old).

>> The majority of the roads that aren't highways do not have lanes.

> I fail to see the relevance of this comment?

... you don't see how roads lacking lanes applies to the efficiency of merges and lane changes?

1. As traffic builds and distance between cars decreases, the flow becomes susceptible to "shock waves". (Just search Youtube for "traffic shockwave" for an example. I think it happens when someone taps their brakes and the next car behind them has to brake a little harder ans so on down the line until traffic comes to a complete stop.

2. As a commuter and occasional weekend driver I recognized two traffic patterns. During normal commutes, the same drivers drive the same routes every day and most settle into a pattern of maintaining speed, remaining in lane, moving to merge and so on in harmony with other drivers. There is the occasional outlier, driving slower than everyone else or weaving in and out and trying to get ahead by weaving and passing in whatever lane momentarily has space. On weekends I see drivers who are unaccustomed to the driving situation and simply don't mesh well with other traffic. Even though there is generally less traffic, it does not flow as well. There is more lane changing and stuff like crossing three lanes to get to an exit because they forgot where they needed to exit.

Excess traffic is a problem and unfortunately we seem to be able to overfill the available capacity any time it is increased.

When I worked in downtown Chicago I was very happy to be able to take commuter rail to work rather than to have to drive, but those options seem to be more the exception than a regular option. That's a different discussion.

Stopped car in unexpected place.

1 car in front of your vehicle, between you and the stopped car.

Assuming the car in front of you switches lanes around the stopped car with 1 car length of space between it and the stopped car.

So 2 car lengths + your personal gap for you to slow down.

So you could be going no faster than 20mph worst case (0 personal gap).

The issue is that the car in front of you doesn't need to stop, so can potentially "suck you in" at an unsafe speed, before you realize you'll need to come to a complete stop (assuming your lane change is blocked).

I think it is the only time though that I've been faced with a stationary car suddenly appearing where I wouldn't expect one, and that's very different to the car in front needing to slam on the brakes with whom you can share some stopping distance.

fwiw 6 seconds at 45mph is 120 meters. That we can comfortably go that far in 6 seconds is a modern marvel, but it's also 20 car lengths.

I'm almost hesitant to believe that any car on the market has good enough sensors to do 6 seconds. That is a very long distance at highway speeds.

Quote: "For example, if you drive at 56 mph (90 km/h), the distance is maintained as follows: Distance 4 - approximately 172 feet"

172 feet at 56 mph is 2.1 seconds.

Not saying that you are wrong (maybe a recent model has better cruise control), but I think most people vastly overestimate the adaptive cruise controls in their cars and ~4 seconds would, for reference, vastly outperform 2023 Tesla Y in that aspect.

I always drive setting four and it keeps a very comfortable amount of distance. I think something is incorrect here because I definitely get at _least_ three seconds, or maybe I'm counting too fast.

Thanks for looking into this & being friendly!

40mph is 58 feet per second, so that’s less than a second to

Your “rule of thumb” is AT BEST highly misleading.

Typical humans take about 250ms to react, and that’s before you actually do anything. There’s 15ft (at least) gone before you even touch the pedal.

I appreciate your attitude here. Mine is opposite. Dangerous driving injures, maims, and murders both perpetrators and innocents alike. Criticise bad driving loudly and often. You might save lives. I had to tell my mother in law that her daughter, my wife, lost her life in a road traffic accident. There are few aspects to serious road traffic accidents that are not horrific, and speaking up may save lives. Every year, 1.19 million people die as a result of a road traffic accident. Between 20 to 50 million people suffer non-lethal injuries, many of those leading to disability.[1]

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

People speeding through the 30 mph limit in my village boils my blood like nothing else and I’m one of those parents who shouts at traffic on the school run, even driven by people I know. This has likely cost me a few invitations to the pub but I don’t care.

"Road Traffic Collision" is encoded in the applicable laws.

If you open enough space ahead of you for a car, someone will cut in. Driving too closely isn't something only you can do something about.

In fact, because of the aforementioned behaviour, it's safer to drive too close because it's far more dangerous for a car to cut in in front of you because he perceives "enough" space to do so.

This is not correct, stopping distance scales as the square of speed. The distance you'd need to stay from the vehicle in front to be able to stop if it magically came to an instantaneous stop is far, far larger than anyone will reasonably keep.

The stopping distance at 65mph, including reaction time, is at least 300ft. That's ~20 car lengths, not 6.5 that your formula would yield. If conditions are wet, your tires are not in great shape, or you're not paying attention, it's going to be much longer.

The solution is typically to swerve with the other car, but sometimes that’s not possible.

It should be impossible to accelerate. None but maybe the most high-output engines should have enough power to overcome the car’s brakes. Aerodynamic drag is not quite a rounding error, but I don’t imagine it counts for a whole lot in this scenario in comparison.

But they said it's FSD who's following too closely.

I'd expect automated system should react even better, because it pays attention constantly. That's the whole point, especially when it's called "Full".

It's not even a question of "taking back control". You're expected to be in control of the vehicle.

For example, most cars prevent fiddling too much with its entertainment system while driving, even though drivers are expected to not do that while driving.

To me, it seems like this is where a computer should be a million times better. It might take me or you a half second to figure out whats happening, but software should be able to immediately detect that a car is stopped in front of you.

This shouldnt be a problem at all with a LiDAR based system, but I can see how a camera system might have trouble with it (possibly indicating that LiDAR should still be used for at least the near future)

When I hit the brake, it was already max engaged by the car, probably .5 seconds ahead of me.

I managed to stop, but the car behind me had to steer into the side to avoid hitting me in the rear.

I figured it that day that a proper emergency brake system in the car is worth the money!

Edit: I always drive with the max distance to the next car when on autopilot.

This. Also the Tesla Model 3 max-distance setting is really not big enough for my taste, especially for winter driving. I have a feeling that it does not even satisfy the legal requirement of 1,5 seconds we have here.

- obstructing the rear driver's ability to assess forward traffic conditions, especially if the leading vehicle is larger and/or has dark tinted glass; and

- posturing for insufficient clearance/time to safely react to an abrupt change in forward obstacle speed upon surprise discovery.

The tailgater pejorative is what drivers are most likely familiar with; implied risks are much easier to internalize when framing the scenario from this oft encountered context. It's just one possible path towards the conditions and outcomes being discussed, which is what really matters.

Sure, this might naively beg the question: Was the BlueCruise vehicle tailgating as a typical driver might characterize?

If yes, then the outcome should be unsurprising, and it makes me wonder how such an operating mode is even permitted.

If no, then it begs the even harder question of whether the automation tech is operationally mature enough to safely handle such a common known unknown.

I was following a 'Luton van' (Which is like a small truck body on a normal 3.5tonne class long wheel base van chassis, you might call it a small box truck in the US). Incidentally Luton Vans are not allowed to go 70mph on a dual carriageway, they are limited to 60. I couldn't see past at all due to his wide body, so I was following at a safe distance and matching his speed at 70mph. Suddenly he swerved into the overtaking lane and I was met by a queue of stationary traffic! I knew this road well and stationary traffic would not normally be backed up this far. I braked very hard and felt the ABS rattle. I had just enough time to realise that there was a narrow gravel shoulder on this section I could turn into if needed, but the car grabbed just in time to not need that option. It was one of the scariest things to happen to me on a road. If I had been tailgating the truck I would not have had nearly enough time to stop and it would have caused a really nasty accident as I would have hit a stationary car into a line of stationary cars. I don't see how lidar, radar or cameras could have helped much, except to have reduced the reaction time slightly perhaps? It probably would not have been able to judge that the shoulder was a good alternative option.