Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

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Why emergency braking systems sometimes hit parked cars and lane dividers

Recent Tesla Autopilot crashes hold a lesson for the whole industry.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/06/why-emergency-braking-systems-sometimes-hit-parked-cars-and-lane-dividers/

Timothy B. Lee - 6/8/2018, 11:23 AM

The National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday provided new details about a March crash in Mountain View, California, that claimed the life of engineer Walter Huang. The Model X had its Autopilot driver assistance system engaged, and, according to the NTSB, the car "began a left steering movement" seven seconds before the crash that put it on a collision course with a concrete lane divider. Then, in the last three seconds before the crash, "the Tesla’s speed increased from 62mph to 70.8mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected."

This isn't the only recent case where Autopilot steered a Tesla vehicle directly into a stationary object—though thankfully the others didn't get anyone killed. Back in January, firefighters in Culver City, California, said that a Tesla with Autopilot engaged had plowed into the back of a fire truck at 65mph. In an eerily similar incident last month, a Tesla Model S with Autopilot active crashed into a fire truck at 60mph in the suburbs of Salt Lake City.

A natural reaction to these incidents is to assume that there must be something seriously wrong with Tesla's Autopilot system. After all, you might expect that avoiding collisions with large, stationary objects like fire engines and concrete lane dividers would be one of the most basic functions of a car's automatic emergency braking technology.

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Superior awareness is not enough. Driver assist and autonomous systems need precise position and path data to understand when stationary objects are and are not a threat. Otherwise, even if they are safer in many situations, they will not be as good as human drivers in situations involving threat recognition and judgement.