I'm really skeptical about swerving as an evasive maneuver. It's complicated to get that right. But yes, if it didn't at least slam the brakes then something went badly wrong.
Maybe you can't prevent an accident, but you can at least reduce momentum and demonstrate that your system was working correctly.
You can (and should!) brake and swerve at the same time. Unless you are driving an oldtimer, the car is capable of doing that.
In my driving lessons I got told to
swerve for humans. Pedestrians and cyclists are the least protected participants in traffic. If you swerve and hit another car, the resulting crash will cause a lot of damage, but injuries to humans will likely be much less severe, if they even happen.
Animals, especially small ones are a different matter. Using the same argument, it is better to risk hitting the animal than risking sverving into other traffic.
Yes and no. The very action of braking will reduce available grip for the swerve. However, ABS and stability control mean you are at least quite unlikely to lose control if you try to do both at the same time. And of course, in this case, only a mild swerve would have been required, and adding braking would help scrub speed in the event that the obstacle moves in a manner that your swerve does not avoid.
There are so many variable here. If you are travelling at 30kmph and swerve into the path of a car going the opposite direction at 80kmph, that's a massive crash.
Why didn't the human hit the brake? I don't understand how this is even news to be honest. There was a human in the driving seat and he failed to stop just like the computer.
Probably the human wasn't paying close attention. That is the problem with level 3-4 automated vehicles: a human who is not in primary control of the vehicle has trouble paying attention and is unable to take over control quickly if it is needed.
That's why I think vehicle automation development follow the path where the computer is not in primary control of the vehicle and can take over quickly when needed. Unlike humans, computers don't have trouble paying attention.
Ultimately, we have to design systems for the humans that actually exist, not some hypothetical superhuman. If it's not safe for actual humans to use then it's not safe full stop. It's not like this is some new issue; it's one of the main reasons why experts have been pessimistic about the prospects of self-driving cars and why existing car companies have been reluctant to deploy heavy automation in the field.
I think he's blaming the folks who put level 3-4 vehicles on the road presumably knowing full well that said human inattention would put people at serious risk of injury and death in the car's edge cases.
> Computers have better reaction times than humans. Forcibly braking is a simple maneuver.
The question isn't about the MHZ speed of a computer or the theoretical reaction time but the lack of reaction by the computer in the actual real world. It doesn't matter if this is a sensor failure, a software bug, or a slow reaction by a computer. The result is the same. A person died.
From the article:
*"... the lack of braking or swerving whatsoever is alarming and suggests that the system never anticipated the collision.”
Swerving is a better way to avoid a collision, but braking would have at least reduced the severity.
Of course, this all presumes you can quickly analyze the situation and conclude that it is safe to swerve (which, in theory, the computer can do far faster than a human can).
Maybe you can't prevent an accident, but you can at least reduce momentum and demonstrate that your system was working correctly.