[pdonis]

> The other comments here make ‘automatic emergency braking’ sound like a really good idea

That's because those other comments all assume that "automatic emergency braking" will only do exactly what it's supposed to do and will never make a mistake. But any sensible person knows that's not going to happen. These systems will make mistakes, and some of those mistakes will cause harm. So you can't just make a blanket claim that such systems are good. You have to actually look at the data and balance the harm they avoid by doing what they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do it, against the harm they cause when they make mistakes.

The obvious next question is, does the proposed rulemaking here consider the consequences of the system making mistakes? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, with just one qualifier. The claims about crashes prevented and lives saved are not net savings, accounting for harm done by the system making mistakes; those claimed numbers assume the systems will always perform perfectly and will never cause any harm, only prevent it. The one qualifier is that the proposal does include two "false positive" tests to try to spot systems that brake when they're not supposed to. But there is no analysis given to show why those particular false positive tests were picked or why they would justify the extremely high level of confidence in the systems not making errors that the rest of the proposal shows.

[hnick]

I think there is one other aspect to consider. Over here at least, generally if someone rear ends you it's always their fault. The law says they were not maintaining a safe following distance. So from the perspective of the manufacturer they would probably say such mistakes should not by themselves cause problems unless someone else is breaking the law, no different to a human tapping the brakes because they thought they saw a kid about to run on the road but it was just a jacket stuck on a tree.

You should be safe and free to brake without deep introspective thought, without fear of causing an accident. The real world is not that simple but that's how the law is generally setup.

And as a further point they'd probably say that if that person following had such a system, there's also less chance they'd rear-end you in turn. I was wary of the systems in my own car, but after 6 months of driving they are far more reliable than I'd feared and I'm quite impressed.

[pdonis]

> from the perspective of the manufacturer they would probably say such mistakes should not by themselves cause problems unless someone else is breaking the law

The kinds of mistakes described elsewhere in this thread have not been of the form "system mistakenly brakes my car and someone behind me rear-ends me because they were following too close". So your comments, while valid for that particular scenario, do not appear to be relevant to what other posters are concerned about.

[sobriquet9]

It's not only rear ending. The main road near my house has a sharp left turn with a sign on the side of the road. I occasionally get a BRAKE! warning there, probably because AEB mistakes that sign for a car in front of me. On a wet road, stepping on the brakes when the car is turning can easily result in understeer, which is particularly dangerous in that spot because of the large boulders nearby.

[hnick]

Yeah I was just adding to the things to consider. In my case it has never really confused inanimate objects, the worst was a curved road and a car coming "right at me" which was just at an angle. But it was a temporary slowdown due to cruise control, nothing major.

Car reviews are largely useless fluff - a real analysis of the differences between brands for this kind of thing could actually be useful.

[jacquesm]

That matches one of my two faulty EAB experiences nearly perfect.

[skykooler]

I don't care if the law says the person who rear-ends me is technically at fault; I don't want to get rear-ended in the first place. If I can't control the driving of the car behind me, at least I'd like to be able to control my car to prevent the possibility of such a situation.

[boringuser2]

This is a solved engineering problem domain: use redundancy. There's a reason air travel is safe despite using many intricate safety technologies.

[HPsquared]

Redundancy doesn't work for design errors. You would need two diverse systems that have to agree before applying the brakes. This would also increase the "false negative" rate. It's a balance.

[boringuser2]

Why do you think these are design errors?