Recently, a Xiaopeng owner had a crash while turning on assisted driving.
According to the owner of the car, Mr. Deng, he was driving on the national highway with Xiaopeng at the time, and after using assisted driving for more than ten kilometers, a car that overturned on the road appeared in front of him.
At this time, the vehicle did not issue any alarm and slow down, and the car crashed straight into it.
The owner, Mr. Deng, said he had 7 years of driving experience, and when he found an abnormal situation, he also tried emergency braking but the vehicle did not react at all. According to the driving recorder provided by the owner, the acceleration value before the impact has risen. At the same time, he also mentioned that after the traffic police came to the scene, he also said that there were no brake marks at the scene.
With the popularity of new energy vehicles, accidents in assisted driving have occurred from time to time in recent years. So, why did assisted driving fail to avoid accidents in an emergency by the expected operation of braking or even changing lanes?
Assisted driving ≠ autonomous driving
The recognition rate of stationary objects is not high
After the accident, Xiaopeng Motors responded: On March 13, the owner, Mr. Deng, drove a Xiaopeng P7 on a local highway section and collided with a rollover vehicle parked in front of him. The preliminary judgment is that the owner did not maintain the observation of the environment in front of the vehicle and take over the vehicle in time during the use of ACC+LCC (Adaptive Cruise & Lane CenterIng Function). After the investigation and judgment of the local traffic police department, the conclusion is also in line with the above situation.
In Xiaopeng's response, there are several key messages:
1. The owner is using ACC+LCC (adaptive cruise control & lane centering function)
ACC is adaptive cruise control: most fuel vehicles will have a cruise control function, after setting the vehicle will always drive forward at this speed, the driver does not need to step on the accelerator. The adaptive fixed speed cruise is within the range of maintaining a safe distance from the car in front, the system will automatically adjust the speed, the simple point is that there is no car in front of the fast running, and there is a car in front of the car.
LCC is lane center keeping: this function is basically literal, based on information collected by cameras and other sensors, so that the vehicle is always in the middle of the lane.
If it is in a straight lane and does not need to change lanes and turn, the combination of ACC + LCC basically includes the operation of the driver driving, which is why in particularly simple road conditions, some drivers can complete the driving by handing over the car to the system.
However, ACC and LCC, even with atc (adaptive corner cruise), ALC (intelligent lane change assist) and other functions, can still only be called assisted driving. As long as it is assisted driving, it means that the system can not do a lot of things, for example, it can not recognize the object in front of it stationary or the recognition rate is very low.
Knowing that the user Shawn, whose certification information is "Guangzhou Xiaopeng Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., Senior Product Manager of Autonomous Driving", in "ACC Adaptive Cruise Why Can't It Recognize Stationary Objects?" Below this question, the corresponding explanation is given.
Adaptive cruise system is dependent on millimeter wave radar and vision sensors for target recognition, the system is not unable to identify stationary objects, but can not accurately screen out the stationary objects that have an impact on and interference with the driving of the car. This is because the "world" of millimeter-wave radar is different from the world seen by the human eye, and the human eye can clearly see the traffic participants and road infrastructure of the road ahead and classify them, but millimeter-wave radar "sees" points, which is what we call point clouds.
So some points are more difficult to deal with for millimeter-wave radar, for example: there are vehicles driving under the road signs in front, so is the "point" that comes back reflected back, or is the road sign reflected back? If it is judged that the car is reflected back, then the result that may result is that the millimeter-wave radar will always think that the road sign has a car here, and the ACC will cause abnormal deceleration or even stop here; If you think that the road sign is reflected back, then is there really a car here that crashed? The screening of stationary targets becomes very difficult, but the moving target "points" are always changing, which is relatively easy to judge, which also shows that most of the ACC function manuals will state that "the system cannot identify stationary targets", which is so that ACC can be used, infrequently "mistaken response" to road infrastructure, millimeter-wave radar self-"sealed" the ability to identify stationary targets.
2. Did not maintain the observation of the environment in front of the vehicle and take over the vehicle in time.
Can cope with simple road conditions, some car owners feel that assisted driving seems to be very powerful, this is not automatic driving? So they were relieved to leave the driving thing entirely to the system.
In this incident, the owner mentioned that there had been a similar high-speed traffic jam before, and the auxiliary driver also automatically stopped. It may be based on these situations it has encountered before, so the owner feels that there is such a large car in front of it, and the system should recognize and make a response such as braking.
However, the truth is that the current assisted driving can not do this, so there is a crash. This is why we have always reminded everyone that when using the assisted driving function, we must pay attention to the driving matter, and do not leave the steering wheel with our hands, so that in the event of an emergency, you can quickly take over the vehicle and react to avoid accidents.
There is no driver monitoring
Assisted driving is incomplete
Similar to the incident of xiaopeng P7, there have been many incidents in other brand models such as Tesla and Weilai.
On the afternoon of August 12, 2021, Lin Wenqin, founder of Shangshan Ruoshui Investment Management Company, drove the WEIO ES8 in the rear-end car in the intelligent assisted driving state, and unfortunately passed away at the age of 31. Judging from the scene map circulating on the Internet, the ES8 first hit the pile barrel on the side of the road, and then hit a highway maintenance car on the fast lane at high speed, and the huge impact also caused the road maintenance car to roll over.
Who is responsible for these accidents?
For car owners, equating assisted driving with autonomous driving, distracting attention from other places, causing accidents to be too late to react, is the most immediate reason.
So is the manufacturer without responsibility? After all, new power car companies such as Weilai or Xiaopeng will give the owner auxiliary driving training, which is either online answering questions, or a page of functional introduction to the owner when the car is delivered offline. Since the car company has fulfilled the obligation to inform, some car owners are still bent on going their own way, as if they have nothing to do with the car company.
In fact, such a simple training, in the eyes of most car owners and even in the eyes of some manufacturers and sales personnel, is a general existence, whether the owner's learning is really effective, and who will care after the process is completed. To take the simplest example, when I was in school, the teacher talked about the question type several times, why is it still wrong every time the exam is wrong? There is a certain degree of similarity between the safety awareness of the problem and the driver, which needs to be established through a large amount of actual road driving experience. A one-of-a-kind explanation and training is unlikely to establish this awareness at all.
The occurrence of many similar accidents also shows that this level of training alone cannot play an adequate role. The most effective solution should be to monitor the driver's attention through more sensors in the car, to ensure that the driver's attention is always on the road, and the auxiliary driving function can work properly. These require more hardware and software support, and even if future cars will be equipped, those that have been sold so far are unlikely to be upgraded.
Therefore, if the assisted driving and driver monitoring functions exist at the same time, it is a complete form that can ensure the safe use of assisted driving functions by drivers, then at present, most cars are more like a "semi-finished product" in this regard.
Before the introduction of similar driver monitoring functions, what car owners can do is to improve the awareness of safe driving, and when using assisted driving functions, remember to keep concentration and do not leave the steering wheel with both hands. At the same time, it also calls on major car companies to take driver monitoring as the standard of auxiliary driving functions.
(Source: Orange Persimmon Interactive reporter Yu Jianxiao)
【Editor: Wang Yujin】
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