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Monday 16 April 2018

Part 47 - no rhyme nor reason

So now it's Easter.

I have only blinked twice since Christmas.

Not a good time for the automated vehicle industry as there have been two fatalities with autonomous vehicles in the past couple of weeks.

Firstly an Uber hit a pedestrian wheeling a bike across  road and killed her.

Looking at the video it would be difficult to say if there would have been a different result had the car been driven manually but of course we won't have the full picture until all the reports are in but it will be interesting to get an official verdict.
Little consolation to the pedestrian and her family but road deaths have been happening since the invention of the wheel.


Tesla has lost a second driver when his car hit a barrier and killed the driver.
It has to be said that the collision shouldn't have happened and the result should have been less serious but the barrier had been hit previously and it had lost it's absorbsion quality which made it far worse than it should have been.

Again, speculation is only available at this point until investigations showthe real cause but it must be said that a Tesla is "driver assist" and not fully autonomous, a fact that Tesla is making the most of.

It would be interesting to see a static that compares the number of crashes involving Teslas again and equivalent number of other models to see if the crash rate due to automation is significantly lower, which I suspect would be the case.

Ford has announce the European version of the 2018 Ford Focus with many new driver assist features including:

  • Cross traffic alert which wars of vehicles in front or behind which is great for backing out of a parking spot where you are between two 4 wheel drives and can't see a thing.
  • Auto parking
  • Lane keeping system
  • Blind spot warning
  • Sign reading cameras to warn of speed changes or dangers
  • Adaptive lighting
  • Auto breaking to 50 KMPH
  • Distance warning for vehicles in front
  • Tired driver warning
Considering that these features are all on a car not considered to be the high end of the market shows how far along this technology is and how quickly the tech is gaining traction.
This new Valencia factory, with automation turns out a new car every 40 seconds.
It will be interesting to see next years models.



Cheers






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