Driver-assistance tech could save pedestrian lives

Pedestrian deaths in car accidents have hit record levels, but potentially lifesaving driver assistance tech is often seen as ‘nice to have’ rather than essential. According to a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the number of pedestrian deaths in the US increased by 35% between 2008 and 2017. Despite that, driver assistance features like lane-keeping and collision detection are typically listed as optional extras alongside luxuries like leather steering wheels and heated seats. I think the biggest challenge is really one about education. These technologies are a little tricky to describe Jack Weast, Intel Mobileye Some automakers are pushing to make the roads safer for pedestrians (Volvo, for example, is pushing driver assistance particularly hard, and earlier this year announced a new system that will monitor your behavior at the wheel, and intervene if you seem to be distracted or drunk), but they are the exception. For the most part, protecting pedestrians seems to rank alongside metallic paint and a towbar. We asked Jack Weast, vice president of autonomous vehicle standards and senior principal engineer at Intel Mobileye, why the advanced safety features that could save pedestrians’ lives aren’t more common – particularly in fleet vehicles like trucks, taxis and buses. Selfish or scared? Mobileye is a system that helps drivers avoid collisions – with motorists or pedestrians – using inexpensive cameras, usually fitted behind the rear-view mirror. It can issue warnings if you’re drifting out of your lane, you’re about to hit the car in front, or you’re close to hitting a pedestrian. In recent years, the system has also been able to intervene by performing an emergency stop, or turning the wheel if your lane discipline has slipped. Mobileye can be built into new production vehicles or retrofitted to existing ones, and although it’s mostly used by businesses and local authorities for fleets, you could have it fitted to your own car if you wanted. “I'm not a psychologist, but people will pay for things that make them safer, but for others perhaps they’re a little selfish,” Weast says. “I think the biggest challenge is really one about education. These technologies are a little tricky to describe. What’s a lane departure warning? Or what’s an FCW? That’s a forward collision warning. “The techy nature, sometimes, of how the technology is described, makes it difficult for regular folks to understand what it is, and why it would benefit them. And then I think you have automakers concerned that OK, if I add a couple hundred dollars extra cost and I've got to make up that cost, how do I explain the technology?”

Intel Mobileye uses inexpensive cameras fitted behind the rear view mirror (Image credit: Intel Mobileye) “We are starting to see though globally, as data comes out really that it shows remarkable and incredible improvements in safety, governments are realizing that this can't be an optional technology. We've got to start making this a required technology.” Weast notes that carmakers in the EU will soon have be legally required to install some kind of driver assistance system, and those in the US have voluntarily committed to making it a baseline feature. “I think in the next three four years, we're going to go from 10% or 20% percent of cars in the lot having this technology to near 100%,” he says. “It's just going to take some time due to the lag of product development.” Winning trust There’s also the issue of trust, which is proving a major sticking point for many self-driving car manufacturers. Ford is experimenting with warning lights to communicate with pedestrians, and Jaguar Land Rover has even tried fitting autonomous pods with googly eyes that let people know they’ve been seen. However, these are something of a shortcut; they don’t address the reason why pedestrians mistrust autonomous vehicles in the first place. People want to know, why is the car doing what it's doing? What is it seeing? Why did it behave that way? Jack Weast, Intel Mobileye Intel has spent time researching trust, vehicles and automation using people from all walks of life. It’s found that while people are initially skeptical of driver assistance systems, disliking the idea of a car that can take control out of their hands, once they’ve actually tried it, they quickly come round to the idea. “We think one of the reasons why people don't trust the technology is because they don't understand it,” says Weast. “The industry too often are saying, ‘Well, trust me. It's a proprietary black box and I can't tell you how it works. It's magic. We figured out the one AI model to rule them all, and it's just going to be amazing.’"