Testing new products is a way for manufacturers to find areas they can improve their products. But Ford’s tests of self-driving cars also revealed one way the automotive industry could be on a path that would make autonomous driving systems less effective than they should be.
Ford noticed fairly early in its development program that its engineers were falling asleep while conducting driverless test rides, Bloomberg reports. The company added more warnings to keep its team awake while inside the car, but found many still were dozing off.
“These are trained engineers who are there to observe what’s happening,” Raj Nair, Ford’s vice president of product development, said, via Bloomberg. “But it’s human nature that you start trusting the vehicle more and more and that you feel you don’t need to be paying attention.”
As a result, Ford decided the driverless car it releases in 2021 won’t require human intervention in certain circumstances, which is the case with Level 3 autonomous vehicles. Instead it will launch a Level 4 vehicle that won’t even have a steering wheel.
While Waymo CEO John Krafcik also reportedly thinks “Level 3 may turn out to be a myth,” most automakers aren’t planning on skipping the conditional autonomy stage. Audi of America’s president, Scott Keogh, said the German automaker is in favor of Level 3 cars, claiming it helps consumers built trust for the technology.
That actually might be the exact opposite of what it will do, however,
“There’s evidence to suggest that Level 3 may show an increase in traffic crashes,” Nidhi Kalra, co-director of the Rand Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty, reportedly said during Wednesday’s U.S. congressional hearing.
One concern is expecting a driver to intervene at a moment’s notice simply isn’t possible. Most Level 3 systems give drivers 10 seconds — some give 30 — to regain control of the wheel, otherwise they pull over. But it’s impossible for a vehicle to sense an impending crash 10 seconds in advance.
It seems many people forget, at highway speeds, you cover the length of one football field per second.
Thumbnail photo via Audi
