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Comment by Veritio | Hacker News Reader

Do you consider an automatic emergency break as less reliable than it helps?

Because we do have a lot of numbers on cars were there is a computer in-between. Which should indicate to me that it is safer to drive with one instead of without one.

Like just yesterday (I'm driving a new car) I thought about emergency breaking automatic vs. manual and I actually feel safer knowing that the car can potentially break faster.

In the brochure of my mother's potentially future car, it actually advertise emergency breaking with emergency steering to drive left or right. I also found that quite good to have as it should be able to determine much faster if it can evade and where to evade.

Or do you mean this different?

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> I thought about emergency breaking automatic vs. manual and I actually feel safer knowing that the car can potentially break faster.

For me, the knowledge that some other engineer designed a system that is a complete black box (from my perspective), which can arbitrarily stop my car with incredible braking force is terrifying.

What happens if the emergency braking system decides to have a bug while you are exiting the freeway at 75mph?

I do share your concern... but somehow I (perhaps naively) feel there is a big difference between regulatory mandates like emergency braking, that all manufacturers in the EU has known and planned for since more than 15 years, and stuff like Teslas FSD-beta which is a disaster to happen running on our streets.

My concern is if the engineers were qualified and allowed to follow proper protocol for designing safety critical systems.

Also consider the budgets these engineers have to work with now. If cars had an average unit cost measured in 7-9 figures (i.e. like a Boeing 777), I would have substantially more trust in everything involved.

Yeah, Boeing is a solid example of that whole large budget == safe mentality.... Maybe in 2022 exclusively.

There's not a simple relationship between cost of the end product and the budget for developing safety-critical systems. There are only ~1600 777s ever built. The development costs for automotive systems are amortized over millions of units.

I have no idea what the budgets actually are, and it's fine if you don't trust certain kinds of automation in cars. In fact my 2020 Toyota with lane-keeping assistance tried to drive me off the freeway at 80mph three times last week. (I probably should have stopped trying it after the second time, but I was kind of morbidly fascinated at that point. As it steered me firmly towards the grassy median, it also started beeping urgently to tell me that it wasn't a good idea.)

All that cost, and they still screwed up with the 737MAX...

I've written about this before on HN, I had a late model C class Mercedes that decided to emergency brake on the surface of a small bridge sending the car into a spin, the same thing happened in a turn when there was a large sign present.

In both cases the error seems to have been related to the radar picking up a return and interpreting that as an imminent frontal collision when there was absolutely no reason for that. I had the vehicle checked out, they said it was performing to spec so I sold it. No more Mercedes for me.

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