How to Prevent Crashes With "Smart" Cars That Detect Obstacles

[Richard Allen]

Woah a whole 10 mph.... Are you the angry grandpa in the caddy?
Cellphones and idiots putting on their make up cause accidents, not 10 mph.

Ya I know, where I live if your driving 10mph over then your driving safer because that is how fast everybody else is going.

No one is 100% perfect, I'm an extremely attentive driver (I get yelled at cause ignore people, especially on long trips) and I have had close calls. The fact is when you drive as much as people do mistakes will happen. People can reduce these but only computers will eliminate them. A computers "eyes" are much much better then ours as is it's reaction speed and it's ability to calculate the best result of actions.

Yes a computer has a better reaction speed and its ability to calculate the best result may be good but incredibly flawed. From the sounds of it this system detects other cars with this system and can warn of potential accidents. The problem is that it is still up to the human to prevent the accident and that wont happen with shitty drivers. Hell I could see somebody avoiding an accidnt with another car but instead driving into a ditch or a telephone poll because the device told them to.

A computers eyes are only as good as the guy who programed them, which means they are fatally flawed.

Not being argumentive because you are right, this system is flawed since it relies on other cars to provide it data. The google system (it's the one I'm most familiar with) actually uses sensors on the car, and could easily be extend to create a mesh network of each cars data (this is the ultimate goal I would guess) that prevent that from happening since the car can tell on it's own that it's about to drive into another moving object.

I listening to a friend on an article he read (sry I didn't catch it so it will have to remain word of mouth) about how some of the developers were talking about a no avoidance situation where the car knows, that it's going to be hit no matter what it does. The system then gets out of avoidance mode and into crash your car with least impact mode. No driver can or will be able to do this on the level of a computer we're just not built for it.

And yes software does have flaws and can only be as good as the person designing it but humans can only be as good as our reflexes. Software undergoes an iterative process and is continuously improving and the fact that the alpha software that is just now being developed is several magnitudes safer (again, I'm lacking with links but I'm pretty sure there are 0 crashes in 2 years with over 2000 vehicles(numbers probably are off but I can assure you that the results are pointing to a clear trend here)) is enough for me to feel safe to relie on. Even more so when these hit the market.

Let me put it this way if Audi can put a 2400hp vehical with a computer in it up pikes peak (famous off road mountain climb) 2 years ago then getting these things on the road won't be an issue.