> Certainly a human driver could have easily made this mistake.
except a human driver in front of the Mach-E did see the car and avoided it successfully.
that's why cars with driver assist features are supposed to be using radar to detect obstacles.
im not familiar with the Mach-E's feature here that's referred to as "handsfree". Usually these features are supposed to make sure the driver is still in control of steering at all times, like the Ioniq 5. I'm probably going to be a teeny bit more wary of Mach-Es on the road if they are using a not totally reliable radar detection system.
except a human driver in front of the Mach-E did see the car and avoided it successfully.
That makes it harder for the car behind. The Mach-E is following a moving car, which is blocking the view of the stopped car. She swerves out of the way, and the situation goes from everything normal to disaster in half a second. A difficult situation for humans or autonomous system.
The Mach E just shouldn't have been following the way it was. Autonomous systems need to maximize their road information, not follow social trends (i.e. not follow closely on the highway at the sacrifice of visibility)
That can be true, while also being true that a moving car in front of you can better see an obstacle while obscuring it from the car behind. I’m just saying that the car in front that avoided it was in a different visibility situation to respond than the following car.
BlueCruise hands free is truly hands free. You do not need to keep hands on the wheel at all. It can steer on its own and handle the throttle. It will not change lanes without the driver signaling. It just keeps going forward in its lane at the set speed subject to the car in front.
It uses the radar, GPS, laser highway maps, and the car’s camera system to do the driving.
There is a camera directly behind the wheel monitoring the driver at all times. You don’t need your hands on the wheel but if you look away for more than a few seconds it will disengage.
Also notice I mentioned laser highway mapping. It is only available on premapped divided highways that have no crossings, only on ramps and off ramps. Some areas will not be supported when they have otherwise would be due to a sharp bend or the number of cars entering and leaving the road there, or if the sensor data doesn’t match the maps (construction/etc).
I’d say it’s a very well designed system from a safety perspective. It does its best to ensure it only runs when it’s capable in areas pre-determined to be within its capabilities.
But it’s still level 2. The human has to be engaged.
If the car in front of it was driving like normal and swerved away from the stopped CRV late, the Ford wouldn’t have even known that CRV was there until the other car swerved out of the way. I’m not aware of any ADAS system that can interpret what a sudden swerve might mean. And no system has radar that can safely detect a stopped vehicle.
This is a situation it was never designed to handle and why the driver is required to pay attention the whole time.
If it was on at the time then either the human was paying attention and didn’t do anything or they had very recently looked away. Unfortunately at TX highway speeds a few seconds is a lot of ground.
Automotive radars often ignore stationary objects because they have trouble differentiating between a car parked in a lane vs. a car parked on the side of the road vs. an overhead metal road sign. If they didn't ignore stationary objects they would be slamming on the brakes in the middle of the freeway all the time.
except a human driver in front of the Mach-E did see the car and avoided it successfully.
that's why cars with driver assist features are supposed to be using radar to detect obstacles.
im not familiar with the Mach-E's feature here that's referred to as "handsfree". Usually these features are supposed to make sure the driver is still in control of steering at all times, like the Ioniq 5. I'm probably going to be a teeny bit more wary of Mach-Es on the road if they are using a not totally reliable radar detection system.