Volvo Safety Demo Goes Poorly 34
Lanxon writes "At a demonstration of Volvo's new collision warning system in Sweden this week, Wired got first-hand experience (and video) of what happens when it goes badly wrong. The new Volvo S60, due for release later this year, was fired out of Volvo's testing tunnel at around 30MPH, and the collision detection system should have kicked in, bringing the car automatically to a halt before hitting the truck in its path. It didn't. Instead, the brand new car ploughed into the back of the truck in front of us, and indeed the world's press who had gathered in Sweden to see the collision detection system in action."
The future? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why I'm afraid of cars in the future. They'll have all these safety features, people will forget how to drive (even the little bit they know) and rely on the car, and things will go wrong.
FTA:
"had a human been driving, he or she would have noticed the system was not operating correctly"
And they would have ignored it. Like every check engine light in the world that no one cares about.
Down with automation! (Score:4, Interesting)
An excellent demonstration...of why automation should never attempt to take control of a car. Software errors, hardware failures, unreliable sensor technology, and an endless supply of unforeseeable situations mean that automation simply cannot be reliable.
Example: Our car has collison sensors - in heavy snowstorms, they warn us continually of imminent crashes with snowflakes.
Re:The future? (Score:1, Interesting)
Like it or not, automotive technology is headed toward fully autonomous vehicles. And the result will be safer roads. Once these systems are perfected (or perfected to within a few hundredths of a percent of perfection), the statistical likelihood of an accident due to malfunction will be infinitesimal compared to the statistical likelihood of an accident due to the fact many humans are complete fucking idiots behind the wheel. The sooner we remove these people from any equation involving my safety on the road, the better. And this is coming from somebody who is a "car guy" who loves driving.
Other advantages - such as the ability to safely increase traffic densities by 100% or more - are just icing on the cake.