I’ve seen the commercials for the cars that magically parallel park themselves. They are impressive uses for sensors and computer chips. Lexus has this feature and Ford has a few models.
Who is legally responsible if the car lurches forward/backward and knocks the crap out of another car? Or worse, a person or child standing in the empty parking spot?
Things didn’t go smoothly this time. It never did get completely in the parking spot.
Man, why can’t they just design special wheels that allow the car to move from left to right, instead?
Presumably this would be handled similarly to a manufacturing defect, meaning the responsibility falls on the vehicle’s insurance company to pay the collision claim (or injury/wrongful death claim, as the case may be). Then, it will be subrogated to the manufacturer (which just means the insurance company goes after the manufacturer to pay back what they paid out).
Given enough collisions, a recall would be performed. But something tells me that the technology would not have gotten the go-ahead if they thought monetary damage, injury, or death was a likely result of the system. This kind of thing is tested and vetted VERY EXTENSIVELY so those incidents should theoretically never happen.
I saw something like that years ago. I have no idea where I saw it and I don’t remember if it was a real thing or some sort of gag picture/video. This was probably 20+ years ago.
You would pull into a small spot nose first and then hit a button that would drop a small (single) wheel out of the back end of the car, lifting the entire rear end up and scoot it over and into the spot. It always seemed so simple and the picture has always stuck with me.
The wheel/setup looked basically like the wheel you’d see on a boat trailer coming out of the back of the car, but it worked almost exactly like this. Of course, I recall seeing it in a magazine I think, it was on a nice new car as opposed to a rust bucket…but the idea is the same and I always wondered why it never caught on.
The driver is in the car the whole time. Presumably if something bad happens, he or she can slam on the brakes. So I assume that the owner is responsible.
This. The situation is no different than if you rear-end someone with the cruise control on. You still need to keep an eye on what your car is doing.
Bottom line answer to the OP: This will be decided by the courts when the first lawsuits over it reach the upper levels of Appeals.
The driver is still in control of the gas and brake pedal with these systems, so it’s hard to make an argument that they weren’t at fault should something happen.
I’m just guessing, but if an object gets too close while they’re self-parking, I imagine these cars override the driver and stop until the driver turns the system off. They’re surely not going to keep driving right into the side of another vehicle.
I thought that Top Gear clip did a good job showing what happens when something like this is released to the general public. A lot of people won’t read that thick manual they showed. They just get in there and start pushing buttons. The first time the guy didn’t have the car positioned right according to the screen. I was surprised the sensors let it back into that wall.
Used correctly I’m sure the system is flawless. It’s the Numb Nut behind the wheel we have to worry about. Imagine someone texting away while their car parks. Not even looking at the screen or outside. <shakes head>
Also, this is just the first step. Over in Germany they are testing cars that drive themselves on the Autobahn. They embedded sensors in the road that tells the car where to go. I’ve seen several documentarys on the technology.
The biggest concern of course is the human driver. Just sitting there watching the car drive itself, a non-driver would get very bored and very sleepy. It would be hard for anyone to remain alert after the first hour of non-driving. Add in cell phones, text messages, dvd players and gosh knows what else. That cars auto driving feature better not fail.
I like that. They’d need to raise the wheel more, there’s not a lot of clearance in that prototype. I’d assume the fifth wheel also serves as the spare tire.
A different kind of autodrive (no sensors, as the film notes, it was drivren around once to ‘learn’ the corners)
The “special wheels to park” idea has surfaced a few times. I suspect what it adds to the cost, weight and space requirements for the car makes it not attractive. You have to add hydraulics to raise and lower the extra wheel(s), and either an extra electric motor to drive them, or some kind of PTO arrangement on the car’s drivetrain.
Yeah, that was just a random youtube hit for ‘parallel park fifth wheel.’ Like I said, the one I remember looked more like the third wheel on a boat trailer. It was small and came down on a post and look much more maneuverable.
In fact, think about ‘parallel parking’ a boat trailer like this. Put the two wheeled end in first, then push the single wheeled end straight in…that’s how this car worked. Of course, I can still picture this pretty clearly and the more I think about it, the more I think the picture was probably fake, just a novelty shot in some random magazine created for part of an ad or article.
DARPA sponsored several competitions in the US for cars that drive themselves, involving teams from various universities.
I assume the problem is that the wall was wide mesh. These sensors are usually ultrasonic, so they need a decent amount of reflective surface for the sound waves to bounce off. You also have to be alert that the vehcle you are parking in front of does not have too much of an overhang. If you park in front of the latest jacked up monster truck or semi trailer, the sensor may be pinging the big wheels and the overhanging bumper will scrape off the trunk lid as you back up within a few inches of the tires. (or do they also have sensors up high?)
I didn’t see it pull forward though. The big danger pulling forward is vehicles with protruding trailer hitches. Odds are the manufacturers leave forward up to you, or have made an estimate for maximum trailer hitch length and stay that far away from the big reflective bumper surface.
It’s a machine, it’s up to the driver to provide the common sense.
Lexus’s system is proof of the saying “the more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”
to answer the OP, ultimately it would be the driver’s responsibility because the autopark requires the driver control the accelerator, brake, and gear selection; as well it has extremely clear alerts when you are getting too close to an object.
