[SystemSafety] Interesting new publication about safety for autonomous vehicles
Olwen Morgan
olwen at phaedsys.com
Wed Jul 10 12:21:10 CEST 2019
All,
A bit of a rant:
Not strictly about autonomous vehicles (although there may be
connections) but I thought I'd air this recent experience:
A month ago I had to rent a car for almost three weeks. Enterprise gave
me a Misubishi Eclipse Cross. Here are some of my experiences with it:
1. The LED instrument panel is the most visually cluttered I've seen
in any road vehicle.
2. The central console is not turned in towards the driver as it is
on Saabs. This means that you have to stretch to operate the topmost,
leftmost touch screen control - with the result that your right hand
tends to drop and you start steering to the right.
3. Both wing mirrors have built-in orange LED lights that illuminate
to warn of vehicles approaching your blind spot. The driver's side one
is so far to the edge of peripheral vision that you don't notice it when
you are looking ahead. The light of the passenger side mirror is
completely outside the range of (my) peripheral vision.
4. The lumbar support in the driver's seat is next to useless
(although I admit that I'm demanding in that respect owing to an old
chest injury and back trouble).
So far, then: Cr at p HMI design and underwhelming physical ergonomics. ...
But it goes on and gets more interesting:
5. The adaptive cruise control works very well on major roads and
will keep you at a safe distance from the vehicle in front but ... it
has sensors that look to the side of the car and cause brakes to be
applied if the system thinks you might hit something to either side.
This causes it to react to the outward turn of a cycle wheel when you
are 1.5 metres wide of the cyclist on an otherwise clear road. Result:
Sharp and startling braking.
6. The car has all-wheel control. With adaptive cruise control
engaged, it will actually accelerate into bends and continue
accelerating as it goes round them.
7. If you brake as you approach a roundabout, the cruise control
disengages. That's fine but going round one particularly poorly surfaced
roundabout, the bumping made me accidentally trip the control to restore
cruise control, whereupon the car accelerated into the roundabout
8. The user manual is an inch thick and reading it I never discovered
how to engage the speed limiter (or even whether the controls for it
were actually working correctly). Hence I used cruise control as a
substitute when otherwise I might not and discovered the infelicitous
behaviours described above.
and, unrelated to the electronic systems:
9. Despite the diesel engine, it struggled to achieve 40mpg fuel
economy ... :-((
This is not an autonomous vehicle yet it still has behaviours that to my
mind are dangerous. If we cannot get non-autonomous vehicles right, WTF
are we doing investing billions in developing autonomous ones?
End of rant.
regards to all,
Olwen
More information about the systemsafety
mailing list