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Comment by sheetjs | Hacker News Reader

Related technologies that sit somewhere between cruise control and self-driving cars in terms of automation (I only have personal experience with older versions of the BMW and MB systems, and the situation has clearly improved in the last few years):

- BMW active cruise control will automatically adjust if you get too close to the car in front of you

- Infiniti cars will stop themselves if they detect obstructions in the direction of motion (rear and forward)

- Ford cars can perform the motions of parallel parking

- Mercedes-Benz cars warn you when you drift into the next lane

Other car manufacturers have related technologies.

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> - Infiniti cars will stop themselves if they detect obstructions in the direction of motion (rear and forward)

I wonder if that can be disabled? Otherwise, an Infiniti would be a poor choice of vehicle for escaping a zombie apocalypse, or more realistically for making some types of emergency maneuvers (e.g. "I need to get away from a threat, and to do so I need to go over the median or through a small barrier"). Sure, it's the one-in-a-million case, but nonetheless it'd be ridiculous if there was no way to override it even for emergencies.

If I were designing such a system, I imagine that I'd only apply it in a certain throttle range that could be described as "cruise" or so, and disable it near full throttle, maybe with a bit of additional input that sees if you're currently adding throttle and takes that as "I don't want to stop right now, really". I have no clue if that's how they really build it....

If so, I bet the guy who got to code the 'ramming speed' override had fun doing it.

Going backwards, you'd always want to stop (little Timmy ran behind the car in the driveway). Going forward, outside of unrealistic hypotheticals, I think you always want to stop. How many pedestrians get hit walking across the street because somebody turning a corner didn't see them?

I think most of those are a little more capable than that, it's mostly a question of which aspects of automation their playing up.

EX: A high end Acura with adaptive cruse control will also automatically break if it detects an unavoidable collision.

Still, I think we are better off focusing on assistive driving systems like blind spot warning, stability assistance, etc than slightly better forms of cruse control.

In fact this technology exists and is quite common in higher end vehicles. The terms are Adaptive Cruise Control (keep same distance with the vehicle in front) and Lane Assist (keep the car within the white lines, as long as the curve is <Xdeg). All JLR vehicles have it as option, as do the larger Audis. Even Ford offer it as an option on the Kuga (which is their highend SUV in Europe).

I worked on the systems for both JLR and Ford, the former even have an option where cameras read signposts to adapt the speed (falling back on GPS info if none were visible).

The newer Mercedes-Benz system will actually steer the car to keep it following the car in front, while in slow enough traffic (< 37 MPH).

Mercedes-Benz has a very nice product, but it's not hands-free. There's a huge difference.

That's the point here. Drivers will be tempted into a false feeling that the car is driving itself, just because it accelerates, decelerates and steers. MB has the same functionality, and I actually worry that it would cause even more distracted driving.

I think people probably said that about cruise control when it was introduced, and that turned out okay.

Define "okay." Cruise control has gotten "stuck" at 50mph[0], and electronic throttle control has left the throttle open disregarding user input[1].

So yeah, it's not some apocalyptic, universally-agreed failure that happens every day, but people have actually been killed[2] because the machine did something the driver wouldn't have done if they were in full control. (Maybe it's "compensated" for by deaths that were prevented by having cruise control -- I suppose we can't know for sure.)

[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1236020/Horror-ride-...

[1] http://embeddedgurus.com/state-space/2014/02/are-we-shooting...

[2] http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319903

I believe that's only for legal reasons. When the laws get sorted out MB looks to be in a great position.

My boss has one of the new Infiniti's and it also automatically stays within your lane if the car starts drifting on its own.

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