First of a five-part series.
A few weeks ago, the video of Georgia grandmother Shirley Rimmer behind the wheel of a Tesla on Autopilot was one of the funniest things on Youtube. But no one’s laughing now.
A much-publicized Tesla crash in May is being called the first fatality in a self-driving car. But that’s not quite accurate. Even if Tesla calls its system Autopilot, it’s actually a semi-autonomous vehicle, and Tesla’s not the only one making them.
There are dozens of semi-autonomous vehicles available today. Different automakers use different terms, but just remember these three features: adaptive cruise control, lane assist, and collision avoidance. Adaptive cruise control means cars that can accelerate and decelerate by themselves. Lane assist controls steering, and collision avoidance means stopping the car in an emergency if the driver fails to do so. Taken together, that’s pretty much all there is to driving.
At the New York Auto Show in March, Honda was showing off its 2016 Civic. For $20,000, adaptive cruise control, lane assist, and collision avoidance are all standard equipment. Davis Adams, a spokesman for Honda of America, explains the car isn’t intended to drive itself.
“The technologies are there, but we believe right now the best application is for safety,” he says.
In what Adams calls an arms race, nearly every carmaker has a semi-autonomous car for sale, and hundreds of thousands are already on the road. At the Twin Cities Auto Show, Richard Herod, a general manager of a Minnesota Mitsubishi dealership, was displaying a 2016 Outlander GT, telling about his trip from suburban Minneapolis to Wisconsin.
“As long as there was a car in front of me I didn’t need to use my brake to slow down," Herod says. "So the car in front of me slowed down to 30 miles per hour, and my Outlander slowed down to 30 miles per hour, and as soon as the car started speeding up in front of me, then the Outlander sped up as well. I never even put my foot my foot on the gas either.”
But adaptive cruise control hasn’t convinced everyone. Twin Cities Auto Show attendee Abdul Rolfik is a self-described early adopter who owns a 2015 Hyundai Sonata.
“It’s more functional in stop-and-go and slow traffic situations, but it’s not as good at correcting its way around curves," Rolfik says. "Or if you’re behind a car that veers into another lane, it’s not as good at detecting the other car. It’s not 100 percent accurate and I drive one of those cars. You have to correct it here and there, so … we’re not there yet.”
Fellow Minnesotans Leanne Ventrella and John Hoivik bought a 2016 Subaru Outback an opted for a semi-autonomous safety package. Hoivik says they haven’t had much time to figure it out.
“No, other than the salesman doing their typical walk-through," Hoivik says. "Did you feel, Leanne, that you had a handle on it after that?”
“I have to be honest,” she replied. “They spent most of it on the sound system and the radio.”
I rode with John and Leanne as they decided to test the lane assist. It worked, as long as the road was blacktop with white or yellow lines. John reacts as the car’s warning beeps.
“I got too close to the fog lines on the left,” he says.
Sensors in the car’s windshield can “see” white or yellow lane markings against a dark pavement—the beep tells the driver to adjust the wheel. Or in some cases, the car adjusts itself. As John, Leanne and I cross the county line in our Subaru, the surface is now concrete, with salt left over from the winter. The white lines are barely visible, and I comment that the beeping didn’t go off: “OK, so what we’re doing is we’re on a road that probably has had a lot of salt on it. We’re waaaaay over the right line, and there’s no beeping. You and I can see it; we know it’s there. But the car can’t see it.”
John agrees.
“You know, we’re in daylight, good visibility. Just don’t have that contrast,” he says.
That contrast problem is something no automaker has figured out yet, and it was the root of the Tesla crash, preliminarily attributed to the car’s sensors being unable to see a white truck, crossing a road against a white sky. Or worse, imagine the visibility problems a Massachusetts winter would cause.
Today, cars can accelerate, decelerate, brake and steer by themselves. But they won’t be completely driverless until they can react to everything in their environment. Sort of like your teenager who can drive just great in the parking lot—but isn’t quite ready for the road.
Robin Washington is a longtime Boston transportation journalist. He may be reached at robin@robinwashington.com or via Twitter @robinbirk.
