Automatic Emergency Braking System: False Positives Matter When Driving Cars with Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) Systems

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False Positives Matter When Driving Cars with Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) Systems
The advancements in intelligent transport systems (ITS) such as anti-lock braking systems (ABS) in the prevention of vehicle-to-vulnerable road users (VVRU) have seen a reduction in road accidents and fatalities over recent years. However, while automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems are installed in self-driving cars, they are often disabled when the vehicle is computer-controlled to reduce incidents of erratic behaviors of automobiles. This National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) argued that the March 2018 case, where a woman was hit by a driverless Uber car, was as a result of disabling the AEB system and the mislabeling of the 49-year-old woman, identified as Elaine Herzberg, as a vehicle (Laris). It was too late for the human driver who served as a backup to begin braking before the accident occurred. This is a case when false positives should matter since most AEB systems are designed to enhance the safety of VVRUs. Unfortunately, instead of the Uber ITS discriminating between the human and the vehicle, the driverless Uber 2017 Volvo XC90 car registered the late as an unknown object, a vehicle, or a bicycle, and failed to brake, hence the killing of the woman (Laris). Cases with discriminating between objects are not unique to Uber self-driving cars alone but involve other driverless vehicles, and this observation calls up the interventions of human drivers to consider the issue of false positives seriously.
Tesla's autopilot systems have also been reported to fail in identifying stopped firetrucks (Stewart). While Tesla’s Model S sedan has the capacity to self-drive in some situations, the autopilot systems in driverless cars pose significant limitations. In January 2018, a Tesla Model S sedan crashed into the back of a firetruck that was stopped on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles while on autopilot, according to the driver. While Tesla did not mention that the car was on autopilot during the crash, the system manual warns that the autopilot feature is not des...