It's an accident caused by something getting turned on at the wrong time. Is it any different than, for example, someone turning on the power without knowing that an electrician is currently doing some work, thereby causing him to get electrocuted?
It is, because there are always pedestrians and other cars around the streets. They are more difficult to control especially if you're not looking. I'm pretty confident that I don't kill anybody if I turn on a light switch now. I'm pretty sure something bad would happen if I'd start my car remotely in gear and with no handbrake.
I wonder if this car had an after-market remote start system installed? I can't imagine that an official Lexus system would behave like this. I suppose there could be a defective sensor or something involved, but you'd think it would have sufficiently-tested failsafes.
It sounds weird, even with after-market remote starters you usually have to either cut a cable (or similar) to explicitly tell the unit that it's an automatic car or go through a procedure in manual transmission mode that's designed to prevent remote start while in gear (a usual one is the remote start turning the car off when the door is closed to ensure it's in neutral and only allowing remote start from that state).
I’m always confused when someone parks my car and I find they parked it in first rather than neutral plus the handbrake (High gradients excepted, where both should be used regardless of preference). People that learn it one way will never do it the other.
(Also, yes, the 2002 IS300 was available in stick.)
Anecdotally (UK), I do sometimes park in gear as well as the hand brake and I know others. I evaluate the situation first and use the appropriate combination. It may sound a bit excessive but a mental risk assessment takes seconds.
My UK driving instructor told me I should park with the car in reverse gear if you're pointing down a hill. I was never quite sure of the logic behind that.
Someone above was worried about "running the engine in reverse" when using reverse gear, so I'm guessing the idea is to match the direction the car will roll if something happens.
I have been taught to park cars in first gear and pull the handbrake as well. And along the same line to always check that the car is in neutral before starting it.
Maybe it is not current anymore, but I have always been instilled a certain distrust of handbrakes. :)
I wonder what would be the load compared to a speeding car. Lets say car is standing on 10% incline, first gear, something like three teeth engaged. What is the load to one teeth? Now lets say you have started the car and accelerate it to something like 30km/h in this incline before changing to second gear. What was the load to one tooth in the time of acceleration?
There's basically no compression when an engine isn't running at least at hundreds of RPMs.
It's a non-issue for the gears. You can turn a 4-cylinder crank with your bare hands. There's very little load, you're just overcoming the static friction of bearings, piston rings, and compressing valve springs. At the static to creeping rate we're talking, the cylinder fluids leak right through the piston ring gaps.
If you want to worry about something with regard to statically loading everything, it's a lack of lubrication that should worry you.
The engine isn't maintaining oil pressure when stopped. So you're leaving the crank bearings loaded in one spot while oil slowly squeezes out. "Frictionless" oil film bearings are made of relatively soft metals, so this isn't exactly good for the engine.
Also the gearbox isn't dispersing oil as it does when driving. So the gears are slowly drying up while loaded. I'd be more concerned about the engine bearings though.
I never leave my manual vehicles loaded in gear when off. It's pointlessly hard on the bearings. Starting is already harsh enough in that brief moment before oil pressure builds. Why add insult to injury?
There are oil pressure accumulators on the market in part for maintaining oil pressure when off for friendlier starting of high compression race engines:
The real problem is you're not loading (and testing) the brake before putting the engine in gear.
An off engine is not unable to turn. Its resistance to turning is not constant either. All piston rings leak, even when new. So while you may have observed the engine in first gear holding the vehicle, minutes later the leaking piston rings may have allowed the crank to turn, and vehicle to roll.
The primary holding mechanism should always be the brake, and you need to load it to verify it's functioning and that you've pulled hard enough on the parking brake.
Putting it in gear is just a weak and largely ineffective form of redundancy.
Chocking turned wheels against the curb is much better redundancy (and legally required when parking on hills around here).
Though the engine won't stop it rolling away on a steep hill, it will keep the speed down instead of wildly accelerating. So that can reduce the danger and destruction it causes.
I don't think that's a huge concern. Gear teeth take a ton of abuse from imperfect shifting. I've parked like that for 10 years in a car and first has felt the same as it always has.
i prefer to leave it in gear rather than hand brake (unless on grade) to avoid the handbrake becoming less effective over time as the cable stretches.
this happened in my 2005 mazda 3 and the habit carried over to my 2017 Golf (not sure if the brake design is similar or not, maybe it's not necessary on the vw)
It's a recipe for disaster. You prefer convenience over safety? You better put it in gear and then handbrake. One day my car was in only gear, neutral and a kid made it roll few feets by just playing inside the car. I'm afraid as hell since then.
That's generally not a good idea. Cable stretch is not a problem, it can be adjusted (and generally modern cars often have a self-adjust system for handbrake cable, even for manual handbrakes).
Handbrake should be used to keep it effective (so that the cable moves regularly and does not get stuck). And, if the gear is released accidentally, you still have the brake, and vice versa.
(Myself, I have always parked with handbrake on + gear in 1st or reverse; nowadays with my VW it's pretty automatic because it's DSG and you have to put the selector to P to take the key out, and electric parking brake activates automatically.)
actually my Alltrack has EPB so i dont think there's a cable (or any mechanical linkage) from the brake lever to the caliper. sounds like it's all electronic -> hydraulic. in that case i should probably use it more.
> i prefer to leave it in gear rather than hand brake
> (unless on grade) to avoid the handbrake becoming less
> effective over time as the cable stretches.
Your justification for not using the handbrake for its intended purpose it that it may become less effective in the future? Seems counter intuitive unless I'm missing something...
If you believe your handbrake cable will stretch/break, just check it regularly. It really isn't that expensive to replace (compared to other car maintenance) and there's no harm in being extra cautious in this case.
well the idea is that when you're parked, there's no emergency. but if you need it during an actual emergency and it's less effective than it should be...
I'm feeling conflicted because my driving instructor said that you could and maybe should use handbrake for additional barking power in an emergency, but car's manual says that it shouldn't be used and may be damaged if used while the car is moving..
Do not use the handbrake for emergencies. You don't have antilock brakes with the handbrake and it will probably throw you into an uncontrollable skid rather than slow you down.
In an emergency, the handbrake is very unlikely to help. It is likely to put you in a slip. Especially in a car with ABS and traction control, where normal brakes are far more effective.
The only emergency it is useful for is when you really have to pull a 180 right now and tight, as the automated systems do not expect this situation and will relax the brakes while you're deliberately trying to spin. I wouldn't trust even an above average drive with pulling that off - it's not being practiced. Usually it would be a desperation move when there's no space and a head on collision is likely.
I do the same, except for me the reason is to never forget an improperly set hand brake, as the engine can easily overpower the brake and when you do notice or can be too late for a variety of parts. It's either first or neutral (as a reminder of the brake) plus tightly slammed hand brake when at grade.
They’re both reliable, the odds of either mechanism failing with the car at rest are slim. What’s not reliable is remembering to do it and making sure you did it right; doing both helps with that.
That is not true. There are situations where one or the other could fail, especially on a hill. A car in gear can be moved. That is a way how I start an engine for example.
Also depending on weather and temperature the handbrake can fail.
> That is a way how I start an engine for example.
I’ve never seen anyone successfully start an engine from stand-still with it in gear (though I’ve seen people try). You get it rolling in neutral and only then engage the gear to start the engine without a starter or battery.
I've had the car roll when I thought the handbrake was engaged. The pull-levers aren't binary, so sometimes people don't pull them enough (I sometimes get others complaining I pulled it too far and it's difficult for them to release). Other times they seem to get warn down...I've caught people driving with them still engaged.
They’re both reliable, the odds of either mechanism failing with the car at rest are slim. What’s not reliable is remembering to do it and making sure you did it right; doing both helps with that.
Your engine will lose compression over time so it's plausible that it'll roll a bit without the brake engaged.
Handbrakes are generally shit. If you ever have a used car you will notice that the engagement point gets higher and higher for the hand brake. I've had to adjust my handbrake cable to get the engagement point back to a reasonable level, as it was hitting the arm rest and still not holding the car.
If you've ever changed tires on a fwd car and kept it in gear, you will notice you can torque the front tires far harder than the rear, as the front will be held by the engine and the rear wheels can spin surprisingly easily by your own power even when held by the hand brake.
AFAIK in Poland, it's common knowledge among experienced drivers you should park on gear in lieu of handbrake in winter and/or a wet weather, especially if you plan to keep the car parked for more than a couple of hours.
We didn't know it until recently, which is how we ended up with blocked rear wheels after the car stayed parked for a couple of days, one of which was rainy. The process of unlocking the wheels damaged the brakes, so we also ended up with two visits to repair shop (one to hot-fix them before a trip home, another to fix them properly).
I left my first car parked on my sloped drive for 2 weeks while on holiday. When trying to drive it for the first time I found the handbrake seized on. My dad was all “give it more gas” to try and free it while reversing down the drive. Suddenly there was a bang and jolt and the sound of escaping air. The front spring had been pulled until snapped and punctured the tyre...
In that situation I mentioned, our uncle (an experienced driver) helped us unlock the wheels by essentially making the car rock back and forth. Standing outside, I was horrified - I didn't even realize the suspension system has such a large range of motion, and I'm pretty sure that if I tried to reproduce it on a toy car, I'd break it into pieces. But after few minutes of this dance, with two loud bangs, the brake disks let go and the stuck wheels started to rotate.
We drove the car straight to the mechanic after that.
Out of curiosity; why force it if you suspect it of being frozen on? I'd get an extension cord and a hair dryer/heat gun and warm the brake cable/linkages and rear brake assembly. You'd just have to get it warm enough to get an ice fracture started, then the force of actuating the brake should do the rest if it's an old fashioned one.
Just be careful, and make sure your electrical cord is in good condition, and you should be fine. Bonus points in that you get an excuse to nab the Mrs./Ms. hair dryer for a good laugh when someone inevitably sees you giving your car a good blow down.
I'd be incredibly leery of trying to force anything through engine output/mechanical vibration alone. Always try undoing the environmental complication first. It's much less prone to causing costly repairs, and easier to do than it seems. A car cover that goes to the ground, and a beefy enough space heater underneath the cover in the morning might do the trick too. Although winds can make the heat gun/hair dryer + point heating work better.
Brake fluid doesn't freeze, but any water it manages to have pulled out of the air will. In fact if you have too much water in your brake lines from moisture absorption from the atmosphere because you were fiddling with the master cylinder, or using fluid that had a chance to absorb significant moisture, you could get large enough concentrations of water to get some crystallization started. Normally though, hydraulic brake systems in good condition shouldn't have a problem with that. In the unlikely event you do, the amount of ice shouldn't threaten the physical integrity of the system, and warming the brake lines would resolve it. Note that having enough water for that to happen gas probably made your braking sponge though, and you should really flush your brakes at that point when you get a good dry day.
The problem wasn’t cold weather, this was the middle of summer!
They were just stuck on too hard. At that age I didn’t know any better, and my dad who was the one encouraging me to gun it was never that mechanically minded.
Over 10 years later I now do all maintenance and servicing on my cars myself, so yeah if it happened again I would not have been doing that!
Yes, that's true of automatics as well. If you suspect the brake shoe or cabling could get wet and freeze, you should avoid leaving the handbrake engaged.
Classic handbrakes use a braking wire and don't use the hydraulic breaking system (so it's somewhat redundant, actually). Also, the brake fluid is inside the system and can't prevent the brake cylinder or the brake pads from seizing.
Yes, at least in the manual case I described above. The issue is that the braking mechanism itself will get stuck if it's left engaged and then gets wet.
Handbrake can freeze and get stuck in the winter. Unless it's very cold it's best to use first and hand brake as each may fail by themselves leaving the car rolling.I once put on the hand brake and neutral and when I came out of the shop my car had crashed into another car as the hand brake had gotten broken. Now I always use first plus handbrake.
In my experience, at least manual handbrakes tend to freeze in the "brake engaged" position. If it's frozen in the "brake disengaged" position, you won't be able to turn it on, and you definitely notice it (the lever won't budge then).
Not sure how this applies to electric hand brakes, but I would hope they have a sensor to detect if the motor has engaged the brake or if it's just stalled out.
Wait, what? I come from a country where 99% of cars are manual, and you are taught to always park in both first gear and put the handbrake on. One of these can fail independently of the other and the car still won't roll if you do that.
The assumption is that the handbrake could snap and if the car is on any sort of incline being in first gear will prevent it from sliding. If it wouldn't slide without a handbrake then you don't need to use it in the first place.
My 2002 Maxima (manual) used the rear disk brake as the e-brake (unlike most other cars that have a separate drum e-brake). The issue there is that as the car cooled off, the disk contracted and the e-brake would lose grip.
Learned the hard way when I saw my car in the middle of the street one day. Left it in gear every time after that.
In gear is fine. The engine wouldn't be able to turn over. You'd need a serious hill, like 45*, to have a car bump start without gaining speed in neutral first.
Depends on the car. Our '81 VW camper is loosy-goosy enough that without the parking brake it will creep its way down our angled-but-not-anywhere-near-45-degrees driveway. On any kind of an incline, I don't trust the compression leakage on even a new car. But that's for manuals that rely on engine compression to to hold them in place. Automatics (at least the ones I've torn apart) have a pin to lock the transmission, and not rely on rolling up against engine compression.
So, you only have single point of failure (parking brake) holding your car back from rolling down the road? No, leave it in gear when you park. I mean, why wouldn't you leave it in gear? If you think you're saving wear on something, you're probably wrong.
I took for granted that the right way is in first and with the handbrake on, because with a typical FWD car, I believe the handbrake stops the rear wheels and the engine's inertia stops the front wheels.
A manual transmission would've stalled the engine the first time it hit, but it sounds like the car moved and hit the guy once, others saw and pushed it backwards, and then it moved forwards and hit the guy again.
In San Francisco signs dictate you do three things: curb your wheels, park in gear, set the parking brake. Hasn't failed me yet. If I'm facing uphill I'll usually leave the car in reverse instead of first though.
Sounds like he's talking about manual transmission--in an automatic, you can't take out the keys if it's in drive (nor would you want to, as "park" is better for parking)
If I'm worried about the car rolling, I don't particularly want it turning the engine backwards.
In terms of ratios I don't give it much thought. On pretty much every car I've driven first gear is shorter than reverse (typically first is > 4:1 vs reverse at < 4:1).
> It's unclear why the car would have rolled forward, since the remote system is not supposed to work unless the vehicle has been placed in park.
> "I've never heard of this happening before," a police spokesperson told Gothamist.
> Multiple inquiries to Lexus were not returned.
I hope a software bug that missed checking for neutral in an avoidable edge-case isn't what's responsible for the young man's life. Lexus should respond to add clarity as to what really happened.
Given the year of the vehicle, this is probably an after-market remote starting kit.
These are simple radio devices hard wired into the ignition, and can be purchased for $100 on Amazon. There's little to no software involved at all.
What is the point of remote start anyway? Heating up the engine? That is wasteful. Cooling down via airco? Open the Windows and wait 30 seconds or disconnect the airco system from the engine altogether as a design choice and add a bit beefier accumulator. I seriously do not get why you need it. Maybe someone can enlighten me
Edit: completely forgot about really cold winters...
The point is heating up the car so it's warm when you get inside. I don't have this feature and I live in the northern US. In the winter the car is freezing for the first 3 minutes as there is no heat until the engine warms up. Being able to start the car from the other side of the parking lot would increase my comfort by a large amount.
Cars in EU usually have an auxiliary heater as an option you can purchase. This safely preheats the car, it’s a heater running on car’s fuel, but without the need to start the engine. They have remote and scheduled starts.
Or 15, or 30 or more; and not paying attention to driving as well as you could because of the extreme discomfort of having to do so in double-digit below freezing temperatures.
I should have taken picture of my Chrysler today before I used remote start. The windows are all frozen and white, you cannot even see through them before either car gets warm or I scrap it with plastic tool.
Sometimes it's even challenging to open the doors, because they are all frozen.
I get that not everyone gets the white snow christmas, but some do :)
It's not only iced windows, but iced car. It might rain while its 40* and go below freezing over night, then the next morning as you are rushing to work you find your car and your $80 cabin-window cover entombed in 2 inches of ice. I hope your ice scraper wasn't in the car.
One winter my car was encased in ice and I couldn't access it for 3 days until the sunlight melted it enough where I could pick at the ice with my tool.
> An owner's manual cautions: “NEVER remotely start the engine if you are unaware of the circumstances surrounding the vehicle as it may cause a life-threatening situation for those located in the vehicle’s vicinity.”
The police should investigate if the car system has been modified. That car was going to have a collision with the car in front of it, even if the boy was not there so something is very wrong here. I am no lawyer and we have not heard the other angles of the story but it seems plausible that someone is liable for this car behaving strangely
Thanks, that turns this from a very serious concern to a much smaller one.
I thought it was a Tesla that somehow completely failed to see a pedestrian and then to stop when it made contact, which would have terrible implications for the rest of the fleet.
That is true, but if it's a 2002 model and this first happened now, I perceived it to be a low-probability event.
I don't mean to downplay the seriousness of this bug, I'm just saying it doesn't have as catastrophic implications as it would if this happened in a state-of-the-art Tesla.
I'm unaware that anything to the contrary is happening. There's just the added public opinion and media backlash, which is always fair. Tesla doesn't get a free pass.
Just to be clear, the numbers in the parent comments were "3 per year" and "101 per day", so the ratio there is 12288:1.
There are approximately 250e6 registered vehicles in the US, so if all the Tesla-related fatalities are those "3 per year" (which seems unlikely to me; it assumes that there are no Teslas involved in fatal accidents when the automatic driving stuff is not engaged) to be disproportionate there would have to be only ~21000 Teslas on the roads. There are close to an order of magnitude more than that at this point.
This site seems to be an interesting aggregation of Tesla deaths:
https://www.tesladeaths.com/
It claims 29 deaths in the US from Teslas in 2019; 3 are from accidents where auto pilot use was claimed.
Part of me is tempted to say the operator because people should demand documentation for how their cars work and shouldn’t just accept abstractions and hand wavy explanations.
No one would do that if they could though. No manufacturer would share it if they were asked either since it could “leak IP” and so the reality is that won’t happen and the manufacturer should probably be responsible.
The operator. People seem to have forgotten that when they get in their car they are driving heavy machinery and have a great deal of power and responsibility. They take it for granted.
After all, the operator deployed the autonomous vehicle and should be responsible for what it does. If they aren't familiar with its capabilities and risks, they should not deploy such a vehicle unless they are willing to bear the responsibility for whatever it might do. Until such a time autonomous vehicles have free will and can be held accountable for their actions, the operator who deployed it assumes that accountability.
This isn't even a new concept. If I let my dog loose in the park and it bites someone, I'm responsible for it. We don't hold dogs responsible for their actions, we hold the owner who "deployed" it responsible.
I'll cede that things are a little murkier when manufacturers are pushing OTA updates to vehicles that change their behavior. But there's no reason the operator and the manufacturer can't share responsibility at a split decided in court.
One day we won't be able to drive at all, it will be all self driving, and at that point, you'll no longer be able to do anything to avoid an accident. That would shift the default responsibility to the manufacturer and then split it with the owner if he bear a bit of responsibility too (like missing maintenance).
You forget that we live in a society where we need people to use cars. Nothing force you to have a dog, nothing force you to let him loose either in a park. I hope one day it will no longer be a necessity and public transit will replace that need, but sadly, in most cities, it's pretty far from being able to.
I don't think they are saying "Most people shouldn't drive cars" so much as "We need to make irresponsible driving much more of a big deal."
It seems like people don't take their responsibilities as drivers very seriously while pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cyclists are being killed and maimed as a result. All without much consequence to the drivers who create such an unsafe condition. Then when you ask motorists to drive responsibly they rage out at you trying to shift blame to someone else.
> I don't think they are saying "Most people shouldn't drive cars" so much as "We need to make irresponsible driving much more of a big deal."
I don't see how you could interpret my comment as believing that was the subject.
I'm not arguing about people not taking responsibility either. I'm arguing that one day, we will no longer even have enough control over a car to be able to be responsible for it.
In the current state of "self-driving car" (which is closer to a fancy cruise control) I believe you are entirely responsible for it.
> You forget that we live in a society where we need people to use cars.
Even if this is completely true, it does not absolve the driver of any responsibility, so I don't really see the point of bringing it up.
> One day we won't be able to drive at all, it will be all self driving, and at that point, you'll no longer be able to do anything to avoid an accident.
When this day comes, who the operator is may change, but there is still an operator somewhere deploying and managing these vehicles to hold accountable. If the taxi you're riding in is involved in a collision, you're not responsible.
> Even if this is completely true, it does not absolve the driver of any responsibility, so I don't really see the point of bringing it up.
It does if your only choice is using it or not.
Being responsible is about making choice to reduce risk. If you are required to use a car to sustains the current society and you have no control over the risk of the car, how can you be the one responsible for what it does?
> When this day comes, who the operator is may change, but there is still an operator somewhere deploying and managing these vehicles to hold accountable.
My point is that this "operator" will be the manufacturer.
> If the taxi you're riding in is involved in a collision, you're not responsible.
Thanks for the perfect example to support my case. At one point owning a car will be just like going into a taxi. You wouldn't be responsible for an accident caused by the taxi driver, why would you be if it was a virtual one? Sure if you still had a wheel, but that's certainly not the future we are going toward.
Just because you aren't driving you still control the car. You press start and control the route, and I expect self driving cars to have an emergency brake and laws require you to be present and focused to drive on the road, in contrast to the SV dream of sleeping/passed out drunk and delivered by your car. You still get a dui on a horse even if you are passed out on top and the horse is walking itself home.
However if self driving cars aren't individually owned and are run by a transit agency, then the responsibility shifts to the agency who turned on the car. Just like when a train or buss hits a car.
We also don't need to use cars even in cities with poor transit. Most people's car trips are biking distances. Everyone can also own a moped and enjoy 100mpg, easy parking, and experience less congestion than what the 20 foot car introduces to a city. Driving a car is a choice.
> I expect self driving cars to have an emergency brake
An emergency brake isn't the end of all sadly.
> laws require you to be present and focused to drive on the road
Sure, I'm not arguing the current state of self driving car (which I wouldn't really call self driving car, but more like fancy cruise control, on the Volt they called it adaptive cruise control, which make more sense). I'm arguing about the future without a wheel to drive. It's not happening right now, that's for sure, but Google is working on it and there's no
> You still get a dui on a horse even if you are passed out on top and the horse is walking itself home.
You still can act on a horse though, what made you unable to control it is your consumption (which is your responsibility not to). In a self driving car without a wheel, you no longer have any control, even if you wanted to. It may have an emergency brake, but that's can only do so much. In a world where going on a horse would cause you to be inebriated, you wouldn't get a DUI for riding one ;).
> We also don't need to use cars even in cities with poor transit. Most people's car trips are biking distances. Everyone can also own a moped and enjoy 100mpg, easy parking, and experience less congestion than what the 20 foot car introduces to a city.
Where do you live? Have you lived outside of there? In most cities you still need a car. Sorry for the accusation but theses sentences made it seems like you never lived outside of there. I'm close to Montreal in Quebec, even my car yesterday had trouble in some streets, believe me, even though we are lucky to have some amazing bike lane here, biking distance get thrown out of the window for the next 4 months. Walking is much slower right now, a moped would be actually illegal. I traded 2 hours of transit a day to 30 minutes by buying a car. I know so many people that currently do more than 2 hours a day, and that's in a city with a relatively good public transit in a pretty dense area.
Inside most cities, you still need a car. Without cars, you couldn't support the current society. You are free to disagree that our current way of living is alright, but sadly, we can't change that easily and it will certainly not happen before self driving car become the norm.
That's a good point about the horse. I suppose you'd be fine. I'd love to just crawl into a car and have it zip me home if I end up sick after a bar!
I live in LA but grew up on the east coast. I'm not sure about Canada, but 50 percent of trips in the U.S. are 4 miles or less (1). 4 miles at a comfortable biking pace translates to 20 minutes, which is pretty doable on a bike (not to mention good cardio). On a bike you don't really experience traffic either, in fact it's almost better to bike when cars aren't moving during rush hour.
Even if people just biked while the weather was nice, it would make a huge difference for congestion and the environment, and would drive public support for better bike infrastructure to make it even easier. It's damn cheap to paint a bike lane, compared to other transit plans after all.
You clearly did not read any of the article. If the manufacturer installs a button that turns the car on but also turns off the parking brake, there can be no safe operation of that button. The manufacturer is clearly fully liable.
I don’t feel like this really makes for a sound argument. It reads like an appeal to personal responsibility. A dog doesn’t have, say, an implied level of safety from a manufacturer as something that doesn’t kill people. I don’t think the dog analogy holds well enough.
I don’t want personal responsibility. I want to not get killed by an autonomous vehicle, period, and I say hold the party responsible whose responsibility more likely prevents my death. For me, that leans toward the manufacturer. If that bankrupts manufacturers because their devices kill people, fantastic, that just opens the market wide for autonomous vehicles that don’t kill people.
In this case it's automated in the sense that cruise control or garage door remotes are automation. From what I understand the car must have malfunctioned; ie. Starting in gear or having the the shift so loose that it vibrated into gear are both behaviors that it should not exhibit.
I don't think that sort of abstract question is useful. Forget autonomous vehicles for a second: if a driver runs someone over because they fell asleep they're at fault, if a driver runs someone over because their brakes failed the manufacturer's at fault.
Who's at fault if a bullet that automatically travels forwards after the owner activates it with a button on a gun winds up piercing the body of someone else and killing them? The person who activated the bullet or the manufacturer?
This isn't about AI, it's a simple dumb case "guy presses button that makes metal move. Metal crushes pedestrian". There should be no doubt about who's wrong, and it's not a moral question.
Naturally if the starting was a failure of the remote start system it's the manufacturer, but still not really a moral discussion, just plain old product failure.
It might be total coincidence, but both cars were 2002 Lexus IS300s. Additionally, I was unable to find any evidence that the 2002 IS300 had remote start as an available option. So I'm wondering if this was an enthusiast and an aftermarket part.
It's a good question. Wikipedia tells me that the rate of deaths per 100K vehicles is about 14 in the US. As a point of comparison, selling raw, unpasteurised milk is prohibited in most UK states. It has a death rate of about 1 per million drinkers.
Of course laws are not always rational, but somewhere in there someone has decided that the death toll/benefit trade off for cars is worth it and for raw milk is not. It might be surprising, but I actually would rather have it the other way around, but I think there is considerable room for reasonable disagreement.
You would also need to factor in how many deaths per year are avoided because of cars. I'm thinking specifically of emergency vehicles (ambulances, police cars, etc) but I'm sure other the argument can be made for other vehicles as well.
No one advocating against cars thinks emergency vehicles should be removed. Emergency vehicles would be aided by the removal of cars from streets since pedestrians and cyclists are able to clear the space easily for emergency vehicles unlike a road full of cars.
Detecting collisions reliably is actually really hard - especially minor collisions against soft things like people.
I predict that if self driving cars do get widely deployed, the number of 'hit and runs' they do because they couldn't detect they had collided will be very high, even if the overall accident rate is low.
I don’t believe that. The 360 degree view provided by multiple cameras makes measuring proximity to close objects easy. Look at sentry mode recordings, it’s very obvious on the feed when a person touches the car.
The difference is the current details seem to indicate there's nothing Lexus-specific at play here. It was almost certainly an aftermarket remote starter system.
Several bystanders managed to push the car backwards, police said, but "in the course of doing so, the vehicle rolled forward once again and pinned the pedestrian between the two vehicles once more."
...and with even more force, since the car now had a bit more distance to build up some speed. One wonders whether he would've survived if they had left him there, and it was the second blow that killed him, since the fact that they were able to push it back suggests it was probably an automatic left in neutral with nothing more than the idle torque. If it was a manual, stopping it or pushing it backwards would've already stalled the engine. I suppose another lesson here is that if you ever have to push a car out of the way, chock the wheels afterwards, or otherwise try to prevent it from moving again.
After having your legs crushed and someone freeing you, I would imagine your first action would be to sit down.
Then the person pushing the car back gets tired (since they are pushing against an automatic cars 'creep' torque converter), and the car comes back at you again, this time crushing your head.
The creep you're referring to in an automatic is in drive (or other modes besides park and neutral). Neutral functions similarly to neutral on a manual transmission car.
There's no solid coupling, but in neutral the viscous drag through the clutches (especially when the fluid is cold) is often enough to transmit some force to the output shaft; and as anyone who has pushed around vehicles on a flat level surface would know, it doesn't take that much force to start a car rolling. However, stopping one that's moving even very slowly with no actual power behind it is surprisingly hard due to the inertia alone (I've manually moved around cars in a shop before, and had my fair share of bumps and bruises --- no crushes, fortunately.)
Yes to the chocks, although it's worth noting that in a crush situation you should aim to remove the crushing object within 15 minutes. Any later than that and you risk killing the casualty through crush syndrome.[0]
Emergency Medical Technician here (from France). Disclaimer: I'm just speculating as I have no specific knowledge of what happened in this particular accident.
Depending on the height of the bumpers involved, I would suspect several possible problems: one or both femoral arteries severed; or both femurs fractured; or the pelvis fractured; or some combination of these.
Even if the arteries were untouched, fractures of both femurs or the pelvis cause life threatening blood loss as these are heavy bones which have major vascularisation (to allow blood cells generated in the marrow to enter the blood stream). A closed femur fracture is a 1000 mL to 1500 mL loss of blood (per femur). An open femur fracture is double that. A pelvic fracture can go to 5000 mL (approximately the total volume of blood in the average adult male).
In the field, major lower limb arterial bleeding can be controlled with tourniquets; femur fractures can be somewhat reduced with traction splints; pelvic fractures can be somewhat stablised with pelvic compression devices... However all of these scenarios are bad news for the patient and require rapid evacuation and surgical intervention (ideally in less than 1 hour from the time of injury) to have a chance of saving the person's life. RIP and condolences to patient's family.
I agree the victim was probable pinned at knee level for the initial trauma. However according to the article, bystanders were able to push the car back and then it rolled forward again pinning the victim a second time. Given that he had just (probably) had his knees injured, it's possible he was much lower to the ground during the second impact: if he were sitting or crouching, then he could have suffered pelvic, abdominal, or thoracic injury, all of which are life threatening. Anyway, all of this is speculation without confirmed details.
One added datapoint (not sure how accurate, but it sounds consistent): according to a BBC report of the incident [1], "Mr Kosanovich was taken to hospital with severe trauma to his torso and legs".
He didn't accuse anyone- he simply wondered whether it could have been the second impact that was fatal. Even if it were, that's still not an accusation, just an unfortunate accident.
If it was a manual the car wouldn't have even been able to start. If you are in gear the clutch needs to be disengaged to start the car, otherwise the engine can't spin as it's connected to the wheels through the transmission. That's why if you bump start a manual you need to get the car rolling in neutral with some speed first, to make the engine spin when you put the car in gear and engage the clutch.
A manual could start in neutral without the clutch, but if it somehow slipped into gear (don't see how that's possible without someone forcing the stick), it would stall immediately.
That is the reason why in Europe this feature is strictly forbidden. Even blue light vehicles needed to be started explicitly with the driver in seat and the driver has to follow a procedure if he wants to leave and lock the car with engine running. In blue light vehicles a running engine will support the blue light to run longer like when the car is used as a blocker in an accident situation on a highway.
Tesla’s “summmon” feature, which allows the vehicle to be moved/parked remotely from an app, does work in Europe.
However, it’s functionality is greatly reduced compared to the US version, and requires the operator to be standing nearby with a line of sight to the vehicle.
Oh, but does work and may work are two different beasts entirely, and Tesla specifically is notorious in disregard for the latter: "you could do this, but don't, wink wink wink."
as an owner of a model 3, this feature is not for the faint of heart and nothing I would dare use in a crowded parking lot if ever other than a party trick.
for me it just shows how far off autonomous driving really is, I swear a roomba could navigate a parking lot better and quicker. currently the driving features are best confined to limited access roads; interstates
That's not true, at least in Germany. Idling your engine to heat up the car is not allowed (if you want to heat up your car you need an auxilliary heater which is sold as an option or as aftermarket modification), so most car brands do not offer remote start. But European Cadillacs offer that feature, and if you import an US model, you can also have it.
What is the reason for this? I do this every morning the car has frozen over... I turn on the engine, heating, AC, windshield heating, back windows heating, "keep the air inside"-switch and go back inside for 3-5 min.
This illustrates a problem with German traffic laws. It is often cheaper to park somewhere where it is prohibited than paying regular price for a spot.
I always do this, but when I try to pull out of the drive the windows all steam up. Meaning I'm now sat in my car for 5 minutes waiting for them to clear anyway.
(I'm very much against wiping the insides of the windows as the smearing can make driving at night very dazzling)
I start my car, put on the heater and airco. Start scratching my windows clean and by the time I'm done my car has warmed up enough for the windows not to fog up. :)
1. Emissions, catalytic converters and such will not reach full operating temp, so it dumps a lot more emissions than when it's up to operating temp. Diesels were even worse in this regard cause the particulate filter plugs up when idling and then needs to trigger fuel wasting regen cycles.
2. Engine wear/damage. Oil pressures usually don't come up enough to properly lubricate components on the engine while cold idling for long periods of time. (Like, after the rpm's settle back down) This adds unnecessary wear. Should really only run an engine long enough to bring up initial oil pressure and then take it easy in it until it's up to full operating temp. (This is because parts expand at different rates, so pushing a cold engine hard will oftentimes blow seals)
> Oil pressures usually don't come up enough to properly lubricate components on the engine while cold idling for long periods of time.
I haven't seen this in practice. In fact, I see the opposite. My 2003 350z has an oil pressure gauge, and when it's idling while cold (say, < 40 degrees F), the pressure is actually higher than it is when cruising on the highway once it's warmed up.
I attribute this to the oil being "thicker" when cold.
On a really cold start, the pressure goes well beyond 60 PSI until the RPMs taper back down from around 1500 to the normal cold idle of ~1000, at which time it drops a bit.
This is mostly correct observation with an incorrect conclusion. Oil pressures under load will be higher until oil temps come up. This is due to decreasing viscosity that improves the fuel flow. It still remains though that slower moving pump moves less oil (the volume doesn't change with temperature, just how quickly it falls back to the pan) and less oil even with a higher pressure may not provide adequate lubrication.
The other major issue that specifically effects cold idling is that the ECM is going to increase the amount of fuel dumped into each cylinder, past what gets completely burned. This leads to problem called 'quench' that leaves gasoline behind on the walls of the cylinder after combustion. This will mix with the oil on these areas and actually dissolve it over time.
Not the parent poster, but I remote start my car so I don't have to sit inside it while it warms up enough to be able to drive. Is this not a thing anymore? I was always taught to warm the car up in cold weather so that the oil has had a chance to fully lubricate the engine so that you don't damage it if you have to accelerate quickly for whatever reason. Besides, I have to wait for the windows to defrost anyway. So why not let the car do that while I'm getting my coat on and shutting off the lights in the house and whatnot?
In older cars with worse tolerances and bad oil this was a major issue. Newer cars without carburetors ensure the proper fuel mixture even when cold. And multi viscosity oils ensure lubrication even when cold.
Performance will still be worse and wear higher than a warm engine. But there’s no reason you can’t let it warm up on the way. Growing up in Canada it was always body rust not the engine that ultimately did the cars in anyways.
Apparently in many new cars the electric heaters aren't good enough for colder climates, because these engines don't have factory options (or physical accomodation) for an electric heater that would heat the coolant - a lot of the heat is wasted to outside air and heating the engine exterior when the heater is tacked on the side of the engine. And they work with the same limited amount of power as the older ones.
Not everyone. It is a very small minority where I live.
I don't even see people letting their cars idle while scraping, which was the norm 15 years ago. I think the info has spread that it is bad for your engine and the environment. And newer cars don't need it at all.
I have to idle my 2015 car in the winter so that the windows don’t fog up.
If there was a way to get the defrost to turn on at full blast with hot temps and not running the car I would be all for it.
Wait, that makes no sense in the context of the above argument.
For the windows to fog up, you need to sit in the car right? How long do you need to sit in your car until they fog up? Why are you sitting in your non-moving car for so long? And how often does that happen?
In our cars it takes about 10 minutes in cold winter before the fog comes up when around 2 people sit in it, unless it is raining and we just jumped in wet a minute ago. And it's gone a minute after starting the AC again. And one is a small car 2 week short of being 20 years old.
From this viewpoint I cannot possibly understand your reasoning? Are you trying to find an excuse to disable Start/Stop?
> For the windows to fog up, you need to sit in the car right?
False. In autumn, when temperatures are low and winter comes (minuses) the humidity is really high. I can't tell you exactly what must happen, but I'v had fogged windows in the morning.
In Scandinavia, very many (probably a clear majority) of cars are equipped with 230 V heaters. There's a connector in the front of the car, you plug the car into an electric socket which has a timer. It goes on in the morning an hour before you plan to leave, and heats up the engine block (heating resistor in the coolant) and optionally there's a Schuko socket in the front passenger's feet and you can plug a heater with a fan there, so that the inside of the car is warm and dry. Both the engine and the cabin heaters range from 600 to 1200 watts.
On my region I see it all the time during cold Winter mornings.
Throughout the years living here, I have learned that following every law by the book, is more a stereotype foreigners have about Germany than how things actually work.
Is it actually bad for the engine? I presumed that stressing a cold engine while driving is worse than just letting it idle. I have a 2018 car and it gives a warning light if the engine is cold. At the very least it makes scraping take half the time.
Yes, according to the manufacturer of one of my cars, idling the cold eninge should be avoided - considerate driving quickly after starting the cold engine should be considered instead.
The argumentation in the manual is that the car won't reach operational temperatures for a longer time while idling. New efficient motors apparently idle very efficiently (surprise?), which generates not enough heat.
I see. My old 2000 acura would idle another 1000 rpm higher when it was cold, maybe to warm it up faster. Some new cars seem to shut off completely at a stop until you hit the throttle.
Electric cars do not have warm engines so it's likely that auxiliary heaters will be more commonplace as idling an electric car means nothing. I'm sure it will drain battery somewhat to keep the inside warm
Weird, my car (2018 model) is from a german company and was originally sold in germany and it certainly lets you remotely start the engine in order to heat up the car.
> That is the reason why in Europe this feature is strictly forbidden.
Source please?
I live in Europe and first time I hear such a thing. Yeah, I'v got my drivers license a while ago already, but no-one has mentioned not even whispered that such a law exists.
And how many people have been killed between two cars because someone forget to pull the parking brake on a hill? A lot more than this way I am guessing.
As anticar as I am in general (thinking of the last post I engaged in), this was my first reaction. It may be new technology but failures happen all the time. I guess the difference here is it was in fact human error that did this than a technical failure AND the person wasn't present and couldn't see it. I'm trying to think of an analogous situation with old technology, the "parking brake on a hill" is closer to a failure of the brake + an human error that is one of neglect. The autostart is an error that on the other hand requires human action, not neglect, so may be that's why it feels different. This whole thought process conjures up arguments around the trolley problem.
Both cars from 2002 tells me the onwers are probably friends, members of the same club, car modders, etc. A remote start on a 2002 is almost certainly an aftermarket add-on. And to move while/after starting, it was almost certainly a manual transmission. And incorrectly installed. Auto-start on manual trans cars require the vehicle be in neutral with the parking brake on.
Just watched a Def Con video where Jmaxxz
self-installs a remote-start system. Lots of interesting details about what could have gone wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8SG2V3n4-U
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 258 ms ] thread(Also, yes, the 2002 IS300 was available in stick.)
The handbrake can start slipping when the brakes cool and the car could roll, so both are necessary, especially on a hill.
Maybe it is not current anymore, but I have always been instilled a certain distrust of handbrakes. :)
It's a non-issue for the gears. You can turn a 4-cylinder crank with your bare hands. There's very little load, you're just overcoming the static friction of bearings, piston rings, and compressing valve springs. At the static to creeping rate we're talking, the cylinder fluids leak right through the piston ring gaps.
If you want to worry about something with regard to statically loading everything, it's a lack of lubrication that should worry you.
The engine isn't maintaining oil pressure when stopped. So you're leaving the crank bearings loaded in one spot while oil slowly squeezes out. "Frictionless" oil film bearings are made of relatively soft metals, so this isn't exactly good for the engine.
Also the gearbox isn't dispersing oil as it does when driving. So the gears are slowly drying up while loaded. I'd be more concerned about the engine bearings though.
I never leave my manual vehicles loaded in gear when off. It's pointlessly hard on the bearings. Starting is already harsh enough in that brief moment before oil pressure builds. Why add insult to injury?
There are oil pressure accumulators on the market in part for maintaining oil pressure when off for friendlier starting of high compression race engines:
https://www.cantonracingproducts.com/accusump
An off engine is not unable to turn. Its resistance to turning is not constant either. All piston rings leak, even when new. So while you may have observed the engine in first gear holding the vehicle, minutes later the leaking piston rings may have allowed the crank to turn, and vehicle to roll.
The primary holding mechanism should always be the brake, and you need to load it to verify it's functioning and that you've pulled hard enough on the parking brake.
Putting it in gear is just a weak and largely ineffective form of redundancy.
Chocking turned wheels against the curb is much better redundancy (and legally required when parking on hills around here).
this happened in my 2005 mazda 3 and the habit carried over to my 2017 Golf (not sure if the brake design is similar or not, maybe it's not necessary on the vw)
So was it in gear or was it in neutral?
Handbrake should be used to keep it effective (so that the cable moves regularly and does not get stuck). And, if the gear is released accidentally, you still have the brake, and vice versa.
(Myself, I have always parked with handbrake on + gear in 1st or reverse; nowadays with my VW it's pretty automatic because it's DSG and you have to put the selector to P to take the key out, and electric parking brake activates automatically.)
> (unless on grade) to avoid the handbrake becoming less
> effective over time as the cable stretches.
Your justification for not using the handbrake for its intended purpose it that it may become less effective in the future? Seems counter intuitive unless I'm missing something...
If you believe your handbrake cable will stretch/break, just check it regularly. It really isn't that expensive to replace (compared to other car maintenance) and there's no harm in being extra cautious in this case.
The only emergency it is useful for is when you really have to pull a 180 right now and tight, as the automated systems do not expect this situation and will relax the brakes while you're deliberately trying to spin. I wouldn't trust even an above average drive with pulling that off - it's not being practiced. Usually it would be a desperation move when there's no space and a head on collision is likely.
Also depending on weather and temperature the handbrake can fail.
I’ve never seen anyone successfully start an engine from stand-still with it in gear (though I’ve seen people try). You get it rolling in neutral and only then engage the gear to start the engine without a starter or battery.
Your engine will lose compression over time so it's plausible that it'll roll a bit without the brake engaged.
And parking brakes by themselves are some of the most fail prone systems in the cars.
If you've ever changed tires on a fwd car and kept it in gear, you will notice you can torque the front tires far harder than the rear, as the front will be held by the engine and the rear wheels can spin surprisingly easily by your own power even when held by the hand brake.
We didn't know it until recently, which is how we ended up with blocked rear wheels after the car stayed parked for a couple of days, one of which was rainy. The process of unlocking the wheels damaged the brakes, so we also ended up with two visits to repair shop (one to hot-fix them before a trip home, another to fix them properly).
We drove the car straight to the mechanic after that.
Just be careful, and make sure your electrical cord is in good condition, and you should be fine. Bonus points in that you get an excuse to nab the Mrs./Ms. hair dryer for a good laugh when someone inevitably sees you giving your car a good blow down.
I'd be incredibly leery of trying to force anything through engine output/mechanical vibration alone. Always try undoing the environmental complication first. It's much less prone to causing costly repairs, and easier to do than it seems. A car cover that goes to the ground, and a beefy enough space heater underneath the cover in the morning might do the trick too. Although winds can make the heat gun/hair dryer + point heating work better.
Brake fluid doesn't freeze, but any water it manages to have pulled out of the air will. In fact if you have too much water in your brake lines from moisture absorption from the atmosphere because you were fiddling with the master cylinder, or using fluid that had a chance to absorb significant moisture, you could get large enough concentrations of water to get some crystallization started. Normally though, hydraulic brake systems in good condition shouldn't have a problem with that. In the unlikely event you do, the amount of ice shouldn't threaten the physical integrity of the system, and warming the brake lines would resolve it. Note that having enough water for that to happen gas probably made your braking sponge though, and you should really flush your brakes at that point when you get a good dry day.
They were just stuck on too hard. At that age I didn’t know any better, and my dad who was the one encouraging me to gun it was never that mechanically minded.
Over 10 years later I now do all maintenance and servicing on my cars myself, so yeah if it happened again I would not have been doing that!
Not sure how this applies to electric hand brakes, but I would hope they have a sensor to detect if the motor has engaged the brake or if it's just stalled out.
Learned the hard way when I saw my car in the middle of the street one day. Left it in gear every time after that.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/B79ANK/san-francisco-california-st...
If I'm worried about the car rolling, I don't particularly want it turning the engine backwards.
In terms of ratios I don't give it much thought. On pretty much every car I've driven first gear is shorter than reverse (typically first is > 4:1 vs reverse at < 4:1).
> "I've never heard of this happening before," a police spokesperson told Gothamist.
> Multiple inquiries to Lexus were not returned.
I hope a software bug that missed checking for neutral in an avoidable edge-case isn't what's responsible for the young man's life. Lexus should respond to add clarity as to what really happened.
Edit: completely forgot about really cold winters...
If this isn't the epitome of a first world problem... Imagine the man power, resources and money spend so that we can avoid being cold for 3 minutes.
Sometimes it's even challenging to open the doors, because they are all frozen.
I get that not everyone gets the white snow christmas, but some do :)
No more iced or snow-covered windows.
> An owner's manual cautions: “NEVER remotely start the engine if you are unaware of the circumstances surrounding the vehicle as it may cause a life-threatening situation for those located in the vehicle’s vicinity.”
I thought it was a Tesla that somehow completely failed to see a pedestrian and then to stop when it made contact, which would have terrible implications for the rest of the fleet.
Not really, this means there is a whole bunch of cars like this already in the wild and people being unaware of this.
I would guess this car has had some kind of aftermarket fiddling...
They pushed the car away from the kid, did they just let it roll back up on him? I doubt it, it's more likely the vehicle was in gear.
I don't mean to downplay the seriousness of this bug, I'm just saying it doesn't have as catastrophic implications as it would if this happened in a state-of-the-art Tesla.
There are approximately 250e6 registered vehicles in the US, so if all the Tesla-related fatalities are those "3 per year" (which seems unlikely to me; it assumes that there are no Teslas involved in fatal accidents when the automatic driving stuff is not engaged) to be disproportionate there would have to be only ~21000 Teslas on the roads. There are close to an order of magnitude more than that at this point.
This site seems to be an interesting aggregation of Tesla deaths: https://www.tesladeaths.com/ It claims 29 deaths in the US from Teslas in 2019; 3 are from accidents where auto pilot use was claimed.
No one would do that if they could though. No manufacturer would share it if they were asked either since it could “leak IP” and so the reality is that won’t happen and the manufacturer should probably be responsible.
After all, the operator deployed the autonomous vehicle and should be responsible for what it does. If they aren't familiar with its capabilities and risks, they should not deploy such a vehicle unless they are willing to bear the responsibility for whatever it might do. Until such a time autonomous vehicles have free will and can be held accountable for their actions, the operator who deployed it assumes that accountability.
This isn't even a new concept. If I let my dog loose in the park and it bites someone, I'm responsible for it. We don't hold dogs responsible for their actions, we hold the owner who "deployed" it responsible.
I'll cede that things are a little murkier when manufacturers are pushing OTA updates to vehicles that change their behavior. But there's no reason the operator and the manufacturer can't share responsibility at a split decided in court.
You forget that we live in a society where we need people to use cars. Nothing force you to have a dog, nothing force you to let him loose either in a park. I hope one day it will no longer be a necessity and public transit will replace that need, but sadly, in most cities, it's pretty far from being able to.
It seems like people don't take their responsibilities as drivers very seriously while pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cyclists are being killed and maimed as a result. All without much consequence to the drivers who create such an unsafe condition. Then when you ask motorists to drive responsibly they rage out at you trying to shift blame to someone else.
I don't see how you could interpret my comment as believing that was the subject.
I'm not arguing about people not taking responsibility either. I'm arguing that one day, we will no longer even have enough control over a car to be able to be responsible for it.
In the current state of "self-driving car" (which is closer to a fancy cruise control) I believe you are entirely responsible for it.
> You forget that we live in a society where we need people to use cars.
Even if this is completely true, it does not absolve the driver of any responsibility, so I don't really see the point of bringing it up.
> One day we won't be able to drive at all, it will be all self driving, and at that point, you'll no longer be able to do anything to avoid an accident.
When this day comes, who the operator is may change, but there is still an operator somewhere deploying and managing these vehicles to hold accountable. If the taxi you're riding in is involved in a collision, you're not responsible.
It does if your only choice is using it or not.
Being responsible is about making choice to reduce risk. If you are required to use a car to sustains the current society and you have no control over the risk of the car, how can you be the one responsible for what it does?
> When this day comes, who the operator is may change, but there is still an operator somewhere deploying and managing these vehicles to hold accountable.
My point is that this "operator" will be the manufacturer.
> If the taxi you're riding in is involved in a collision, you're not responsible.
Thanks for the perfect example to support my case. At one point owning a car will be just like going into a taxi. You wouldn't be responsible for an accident caused by the taxi driver, why would you be if it was a virtual one? Sure if you still had a wheel, but that's certainly not the future we are going toward.
However if self driving cars aren't individually owned and are run by a transit agency, then the responsibility shifts to the agency who turned on the car. Just like when a train or buss hits a car.
We also don't need to use cars even in cities with poor transit. Most people's car trips are biking distances. Everyone can also own a moped and enjoy 100mpg, easy parking, and experience less congestion than what the 20 foot car introduces to a city. Driving a car is a choice.
An emergency brake isn't the end of all sadly.
> laws require you to be present and focused to drive on the road
Sure, I'm not arguing the current state of self driving car (which I wouldn't really call self driving car, but more like fancy cruise control, on the Volt they called it adaptive cruise control, which make more sense). I'm arguing about the future without a wheel to drive. It's not happening right now, that's for sure, but Google is working on it and there's no
> You still get a dui on a horse even if you are passed out on top and the horse is walking itself home.
You still can act on a horse though, what made you unable to control it is your consumption (which is your responsibility not to). In a self driving car without a wheel, you no longer have any control, even if you wanted to. It may have an emergency brake, but that's can only do so much. In a world where going on a horse would cause you to be inebriated, you wouldn't get a DUI for riding one ;).
> We also don't need to use cars even in cities with poor transit. Most people's car trips are biking distances. Everyone can also own a moped and enjoy 100mpg, easy parking, and experience less congestion than what the 20 foot car introduces to a city.
Where do you live? Have you lived outside of there? In most cities you still need a car. Sorry for the accusation but theses sentences made it seems like you never lived outside of there. I'm close to Montreal in Quebec, even my car yesterday had trouble in some streets, believe me, even though we are lucky to have some amazing bike lane here, biking distance get thrown out of the window for the next 4 months. Walking is much slower right now, a moped would be actually illegal. I traded 2 hours of transit a day to 30 minutes by buying a car. I know so many people that currently do more than 2 hours a day, and that's in a city with a relatively good public transit in a pretty dense area.
Inside most cities, you still need a car. Without cars, you couldn't support the current society. You are free to disagree that our current way of living is alright, but sadly, we can't change that easily and it will certainly not happen before self driving car become the norm.
I live in LA but grew up on the east coast. I'm not sure about Canada, but 50 percent of trips in the U.S. are 4 miles or less (1). 4 miles at a comfortable biking pace translates to 20 minutes, which is pretty doable on a bike (not to mention good cardio). On a bike you don't really experience traffic either, in fact it's almost better to bike when cars aren't moving during rush hour.
Even if people just biked while the weather was nice, it would make a huge difference for congestion and the environment, and would drive public support for better bike infrastructure to make it even easier. It's damn cheap to paint a bike lane, compared to other transit plans after all.
1. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig4...
I don’t want personal responsibility. I want to not get killed by an autonomous vehicle, period, and I say hold the party responsible whose responsibility more likely prevents my death. For me, that leans toward the manufacturer. If that bankrupts manufacturers because their devices kill people, fantastic, that just opens the market wide for autonomous vehicles that don’t kill people.
Don't we though? At least in the past, if a dog bit someone, they were sometimes euthanized.
This isn't about AI, it's a simple dumb case "guy presses button that makes metal move. Metal crushes pedestrian". There should be no doubt about who's wrong, and it's not a moral question.
Naturally if the starting was a failure of the remote start system it's the manufacturer, but still not really a moral discussion, just plain old product failure.
Of course laws are not always rational, but somewhere in there someone has decided that the death toll/benefit trade off for cars is worth it and for raw milk is not. It might be surprising, but I actually would rather have it the other way around, but I think there is considerable room for reasonable disagreement.
There are ~12k/year deaths from falling down stairs, in the US alone. I guess "ranch style" houses from now on, and no basements.
I predict that if self driving cars do get widely deployed, the number of 'hit and runs' they do because they couldn't detect they had collided will be very high, even if the overall accident rate is low.
Whatever gives you the idea no one cares?
...and with even more force, since the car now had a bit more distance to build up some speed. One wonders whether he would've survived if they had left him there, and it was the second blow that killed him, since the fact that they were able to push it back suggests it was probably an automatic left in neutral with nothing more than the idle torque. If it was a manual, stopping it or pushing it backwards would've already stalled the engine. I suppose another lesson here is that if you ever have to push a car out of the way, chock the wheels afterwards, or otherwise try to prevent it from moving again.
I'm also surprised that was enough to kill.
Edit: downvoters, explain yourselves please.
Then the person pushing the car back gets tired (since they are pushing against an automatic cars 'creep' torque converter), and the car comes back at you again, this time crushing your head.
I can see how that's deadly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_syndrome
Depending on the height of the bumpers involved, I would suspect several possible problems: one or both femoral arteries severed; or both femurs fractured; or the pelvis fractured; or some combination of these.
Even if the arteries were untouched, fractures of both femurs or the pelvis cause life threatening blood loss as these are heavy bones which have major vascularisation (to allow blood cells generated in the marrow to enter the blood stream). A closed femur fracture is a 1000 mL to 1500 mL loss of blood (per femur). An open femur fracture is double that. A pelvic fracture can go to 5000 mL (approximately the total volume of blood in the average adult male).
In the field, major lower limb arterial bleeding can be controlled with tourniquets; femur fractures can be somewhat reduced with traction splints; pelvic fractures can be somewhat stablised with pelvic compression devices... However all of these scenarios are bad news for the patient and require rapid evacuation and surgical intervention (ideally in less than 1 hour from the time of injury) to have a chance of saving the person's life. RIP and condolences to patient's family.
Looks like it would pin you just above the knees if you were her height.
(Edit: typos.)
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50756243
You're accusing good samaritans of killing someone - with no evidence to indicate that this was the case?
A manual could start in neutral without the clutch, but if it somehow slipped into gear (don't see how that's possible without someone forcing the stick), it would stall immediately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ZxtRrWxOs&t=9s
However, it’s functionality is greatly reduced compared to the US version, and requires the operator to be standing nearby with a line of sight to the vehicle.
for me it just shows how far off autonomous driving really is, I swear a roomba could navigate a parking lot better and quicker. currently the driving features are best confined to limited access roads; interstates
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/dtx14k/tesla_s...
(Per parent post, this is not applicable in Europe)
(I'm very much against wiping the insides of the windows as the smearing can make driving at night very dazzling)
What if you open the driver's side window at first?
1. Emissions, catalytic converters and such will not reach full operating temp, so it dumps a lot more emissions than when it's up to operating temp. Diesels were even worse in this regard cause the particulate filter plugs up when idling and then needs to trigger fuel wasting regen cycles.
2. Engine wear/damage. Oil pressures usually don't come up enough to properly lubricate components on the engine while cold idling for long periods of time. (Like, after the rpm's settle back down) This adds unnecessary wear. Should really only run an engine long enough to bring up initial oil pressure and then take it easy in it until it's up to full operating temp. (This is because parts expand at different rates, so pushing a cold engine hard will oftentimes blow seals)
For some reason that doesn’t sound so crazy for Germany though. I’m not sure why.
I didn't say illegal, I said bad.
I haven't seen this in practice. In fact, I see the opposite. My 2003 350z has an oil pressure gauge, and when it's idling while cold (say, < 40 degrees F), the pressure is actually higher than it is when cruising on the highway once it's warmed up.
I attribute this to the oil being "thicker" when cold.
On a really cold start, the pressure goes well beyond 60 PSI until the RPMs taper back down from around 1500 to the normal cold idle of ~1000, at which time it drops a bit.
The other major issue that specifically effects cold idling is that the ECM is going to increase the amount of fuel dumped into each cylinder, past what gets completely burned. This leads to problem called 'quench' that leaves gasoline behind on the walls of the cylinder after combustion. This will mix with the oil on these areas and actually dissolve it over time.
Anyways, don't take it just from me. No manufacturer specifies over 30 seconds of idle time for their vehicles: https://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/Pub61263.pdf
Performance will still be worse and wear higher than a warm engine. But there’s no reason you can’t let it warm up on the way. Growing up in Canada it was always body rust not the engine that ultimately did the cars in anyways.
They also advance the timing when cold which increases emissions. I forgot to mention that as well.
> And multi viscosity oils ensure lubrication even when cold.
Improved, still not ideal.
See "Driving in winter" [1]
[1] https://finland.fi/life-society/how-to-survive-winter-in-fin...
I don't even see people letting their cars idle while scraping, which was the norm 15 years ago. I think the info has spread that it is bad for your engine and the environment. And newer cars don't need it at all.
For the windows to fog up, you need to sit in the car right? How long do you need to sit in your car until they fog up? Why are you sitting in your non-moving car for so long? And how often does that happen?
In our cars it takes about 10 minutes in cold winter before the fog comes up when around 2 people sit in it, unless it is raining and we just jumped in wet a minute ago. And it's gone a minute after starting the AC again. And one is a small car 2 week short of being 20 years old.
From this viewpoint I cannot possibly understand your reasoning? Are you trying to find an excuse to disable Start/Stop?
False. In autumn, when temperatures are low and winter comes (minuses) the humidity is really high. I can't tell you exactly what must happen, but I'v had fogged windows in the morning.
Throughout the years living here, I have learned that following every law by the book, is more a stereotype foreigners have about Germany than how things actually work.
The argumentation in the manual is that the car won't reach operational temperatures for a longer time while idling. New efficient motors apparently idle very efficiently (surprise?), which generates not enough heat.
I work in that business.
Source please?
I live in Europe and first time I hear such a thing. Yeah, I'v got my drivers license a while ago already, but no-one has mentioned not even whispered that such a law exists.