Who should pay for the frequent occurrence of intelligent driving accidents? [Excessive publicity is easy to mislead users, technology still has limitations, and assisted driving still cannot replace human control]
A traffic accident makes intelligent driving the focus of attention.
On the afternoon of August 10, a Xiaopeng P7 crashed into a faulty car parked on the road while driving on the viaduct, and the person standing at the rear of the car in front was hit and killed.
After the accident, the chat records of the suspected driver of the Xiaopeng car on the Internet showed that the vehicle speed was about 80km/h at the time of the accident, and the LCC lane centering assist function was turned on.
Regarding the accident, Xiaopeng Motors responded to the Shell Finance reporter on August 11, saying that it was saddened and regretted for the victims who passed away in the accident.
At present, the traffic police department has filed a case and the store has gone to the scene for the first time to assist in the handling.
Xpeng Motors will fully cooperate with relevant departments in the accident investigation, continue to follow up the follow-up results, and assist customers in handling related matters.
In the response, Xiaopeng Motors did not respond to whether the vehicle had the assisted driving function turned on at the time of the accident.
But the accident has once again raised concerns about the safety of the vehicle's intelligent driving features.
According to data released by the U.S. Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from June 2021 to May 15, 2022, there were 273 accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot (autonomous driving system).
In China, Weilai, Ideal and other brands have also experienced the problem of "suspected failure" of assisted driving.
On August 12, 2021, a car owner passed away in a traffic accident on the Hanjiang section of Shenhai Expressway after driving the NIO ES8 with the NOP pilot function enabled.
In March of this year, a Xiaopeng P7 owner in Yueyang, Hunan, hit a rollover vehicle parked in front of him while the assisted driving function was turned on.
On August 8, an ideal ONE collided with a construction vehicle parked on the side of the road on a highway section. The driver turned on the ACC adaptive cruise and lane keeping assist functions at the time of the incident.
Traffic accidents involving intelligent driving functions have occurred many times, which has sounded the alarm for the intelligent car industry.
Excessive publicity of intelligent driving functions can easily lead to misunderstandings
Intelligent driving has always been regarded as an important part of vehicle intelligence, and the application of cutting-edge technologies and the new travel experience brought by intelligent driving are also attracting more and more consumers.
On August 1, Guo Shougang, deputy director of the First Division of Equipment Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, revealed that in 2021, the market penetration rate of new L2 assisted driving passenger vehicles in my country will reach 23.5%, and it will increase to 30% in the first half of this year.
More and more smart cars are entering people's lives.
But in fact, the intelligent driving that can be mass-produced is still in the stage of assisted driving.
Qiu Bin, an associate researcher at the School of Vehicle and Transportation at Tsinghua University, said that if the automatic driving system can accurately identify about 95% of the current scenes, there are still about 5% of the scenes that are atypical scenes, which require continuous training and human input data. .
But no matter how you train, the environment is ever-changing and difficult to exhaust.
Once encountering an atypical scenario, how should autonomous driving respond?
At present, the recognition system of automatic driving needs to be further improved.
In addition, some consumers still have a biased understanding of the difference between autonomous driving and assisted driving.
"At present, the automatic driving function is still not perfect, and it is easy to form misunderstandings." Zhang Xiang, a specially-appointed expert from the China Bolian Think Tank, said in an interview with Shell Finance reporter that the automatic driving capability of most mass-produced vehicles is L2 level.
When the L2-level assisted driving system is turned on, the driver's hands cannot leave the steering wheel, and his attention must be highly focused on driving, ready to take over the vehicle at any time.
Zhang Xiang said that when the vehicle's automatic driving function reaches the L3 level, the driver's hands can leave the steering wheel.
However, most car companies are currently facing the bottleneck of transitioning from L2 to L3.
"The development of autonomous driving in terms of software and hardware is still immature, so the L3 level has not yet achieved mass production."
Zhang Xiang said that although many car companies currently use autonomous driving as a selling point when promoting vehicles, they describe a more technological travel experience, so as to stimulate consumers' desire to buy and drive product sales.
However, at present, vehicles do not reach the level of fully autonomous driving. Car companies should not over-exaggerate in their promotion. They need to standardize the use of the term "assisted driving" and clarify the meaning of "assisted driving" to consumers.
"Based on a number of cases, due to exaggerated and biased publicity by car companies, it often misleads a small number of users into thinking that the intelligent assisted driving system has an advanced level of automatic driving, which can allow the car to take over the dominance of vehicle driving." Zhong, an automotive analyst Shi said that car companies and industry communication should let users firmly establish that the driver must always control the driving until the vehicle reaches the L5 level of automatic driving, that is, the vehicle itself has canceled the steering wheel and foot brake hardware.
"As long as the cars produced by car companies still have steering wheel and foot brake hardware, it means that the car must still be taken over by the driver, and the vehicle is still in the stage of assisted driving, but the degree of assistance varies. Propaganda that is exaggerating or beating around the bush implies that misleading users are vulnerable to harm to others." Zhong Shi said.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology emphasizes that car companies should clearly inform vehicle performance restrictions
According to the "Automotive Driving Automation Classification" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, driving automation is divided into 0 to 5 levels.
In high-level autonomous driving, the identity of the driver gradually shifts to that of the passenger.
But in Level 2 Combined Driving Assistance, the role of the driver is clearly mentioned - "to supervise the driving automation system and to intervene in dynamic driving tasks when needed to ensure vehicle safety; at any time, all dynamic driving tasks can be performed immediately."
In August 2021, with regard to the management of assisted driving and autonomous driving, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Opinions of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Strengthening the Access Management of Intelligent Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", which stipulates that "enterprises produce products with driving assistance and For automotive products with automatic driving functions, information such as vehicle function and performance limitations, driver responsibilities, human-computer interaction equipment instructions, function activation and exit methods and conditions shall be clearly informed.”
The reporter found that the user manual of Xiaopeng Motors shows: "LCC is an assisted driving function, not automatic driving in the full sense." When the LCC function is enabled, the driver still needs to keep his hands on the steering wheel and take over the steering wheel when necessary. .
“The LCC is designed for driving comfort and convenience and cannot respond to sudden and dangerous situations. It is the driver’s responsibility to stay alert, drive safely, and take control of the vehicle at all times. Never rely on the system to respond to sudden emergencies. Always observe road conditions ahead and be prepared to take corrective action at any time, which could result in serious injury or death."
Regarding the accident that occurred in Ideal ONE on August 8, Ideal's official response said: "The user has turned on the NOA (Navigation Assisted Driving) function, but the user has been in a situation of letting go, that is, not holding the steering wheel."
Shell Finance reporters checked the official websites of some car companies and found that when introducing assisted driving functions, car companies no longer use the name "autonomous driving", but changed it to "pilot assisted driving"; and it will also be written in the product description. To "the driver needs to be ready to intervene in the vehicle at any time to ensure safe driving."
In this regard, Ling Ran, an auto analyst, said: "Although car companies have basically stopped "over-promoting" assisted driving in recent years, and more and more relevant prompts have been made. But usually they release more assistance The best state of driving, videos when problems occur, companies rarely or even don’t show users.” In his view, such content is also guiding users, giving positive judgments, enhancing their trust, and putting safety in the hands of users. gave the vehicle.
"At present, most car companies have been more cautious in the promotion of intelligent driving to avoid consumers' misunderstanding of the function." Zhang Xiang believes that before using the assisted driving function, car companies should train car owners to familiarize them with the assisted driving function. , is also very necessary.
It is undeniable that with the continuous upgrading of vehicle electrification and intelligence, intelligent driving has become a new trend in the development of the automobile industry, and car companies are also continuously conducting technological iterations and upgrades to build safer intelligent driving functions.
But in the process, it cannot be at the expense of driving safety or life.
Before the technology is fully mature, not letting go of vehicle control should also be the driver's last line of defense against autonomous driving.
Technically, what are the limitations of assisted driving?
Why do smart cars with assisted driving functions rear-end the car in front?
Ling Ran pointed out that there may be a problem with radar recognition and judgment, so the automatic braking function did not trigger.
"For the scene of an accident, lidar may have more advantages when combined with millimeter-wave radar and cameras. Because lidar can achieve high-precision three-dimensional imaging, it can clearly distinguish guardrails and vehicles, and can accurately detect the arrival of vehicles and pedestrians on the ground. The distance from the vehicle. Taking a brand product in the industry as an example, its lidar has a detection distance of 200 meters and an angular resolution of 0.2° to 0.1°. The millimeter-wave radar commonly used in assisted driving has a range of 100 meters to 200 meters , the angular resolution is a few degrees. Therefore, lidar has more advantages." Ling Ran mentioned.
Ling Ran said that the assisted driving function in the industry still needs to be improved, and this improvement comes from both software and hardware.
In terms of software, companies should continue to promote testing and enrich models; in terms of hardware, they should not only improve the computing power of chips, but also add the use of lidar in a timely manner.
At present, the large-scale mass production price of products represented by Lidar companies such as Sagitar Juchuang has reached 500-1000 US dollars per piece, which is more competitive in the market.
Auto industry analyst Zhong Shi said in an interview with Shell Finance reporter that the problem in this accident is whether the lane keeping function of Xiaopeng vehicles is coupled with the ACC?
If ACC has obvious obstacles in front of the lane, the vehicle will automatically decelerate to a stop to avoid a serious frontal collision with the following vehicle.
If the driver only turns on lane keeping and does not turn on the ACC, once the driver is distracted, a forward collision is very likely to occur.
An autonomous driving practitioner made a more specific analysis from the perspective of scene judgment, "The specific cause depends on the results of the accident investigation. However, we can see from the preliminary analysis of the traffic video video that the vehicles collided in this Xiaopeng accident and The person is located in the lane next to the left guardrail. The vehicle was also in this position in the NIO ES8 accident in August last year. For obstacles in this position, it is often difficult for the millimeter-wave radar to separate the obstacle from the guardrail due to its low accuracy. For the camera algorithm , the image of the crouching person and the car in the accident scene is a rare form, which is difficult to cover in the algorithm training data, and the whole scene can be considered as a Coner Case (extreme case).”
Jiang Shanmei, a senior analyst in the automotive travel industry of Analysys, told Shell Finance reporters that technically speaking, there is still room for optimization in the calculation model of assisted driving, and more driving data is needed to support it.
Jiang Shanmei believes that the publicity of some car companies will have a certain impact on consumers. Users who use automatic driving to not pay attention to road conditions may be distracted by other things, or out of trust in automatic driving.
"Users do not clearly realize that autonomous driving may also make mistakes, so they relax their vigilance, which is the reason behind the accident." Jiang Shanmei said.
How is the legal responsibility for accidents involving assisted driving divided?
On the Internet, many netizens believe that assisted driving itself is an "assistance function", and the driver is still the first responsible person.
In terms of laws and regulations, how are they stipulated?
Yan Bing, senior partner of Times Jiuhe Law Firm, said in an interview with a reporter from Shell Finance that the current technological development status, intelligent driving promoted by all car companies, including NGP, NOP, ACC, etc., are still classified as assisted driving. , can not replace people, nor can it completely replace people's control of the car.
Therefore, if the vehicle has a traffic accident after the assisted driving function is turned on, unless it can be proved that the vehicle is out of control.
Otherwise, the driver is more or less at fault.
Yan Bing believes that assisted driving cannot replace human control of the car.
As a qualified driver you know and should know the facts.
"In reality, due to technical shortcomings or technical loopholes, or even based on the manufacturer's expanded publicity, drivers may have some misunderstandings or misunderstandings about vehicle functions, so this may affect the proportion of fault sharing between the driver and the manufacturer. But it cannot be used as a reason to exempt the driver's responsibility." Yan Bing said.
At present, the first domestic regulation on the management of intelligent networked vehicles, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Regulations on the Administration of Intelligent Networked Vehicles (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"), will be implemented on August 1.
The "Regulations" clearly stipulate that: first, the driver shall be liable for damages caused by a traffic accident in an ICV with a driver; In case of damage, the owner and manager of the vehicle shall be liable for compensation, but the relevant provisions on driver points shall not apply to the punishment of offenders; Or the owner and manager may claim compensation from the producer or seller in accordance with the law after making compensation in accordance with the regulations.
From the perspective of the enforcement of laws and regulations, in the identification of domestic traffic accidents, the main body of responsibility for assisted driving vehicles is also the driver.
According to media reports, in late 2019, a Tesla Model S driven by American driver Kevin Riad ran off a California highway in Autopilot mode and hit another vehicle, killing two people in the car.
In January, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged Riad, 27, with "manslaughter" and "traffic homicide."
In my country, the Nanjing section of Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway has had two traffic accidents in succession in which new energy vehicles collided with roadside water horses.
The traffic police investigation learned that the drivers of the two accident vehicles had turned on the assisted driving function, but the vehicles turned a blind eye to the water horse and hit them directly at high speed.
The traffic police finally determined that the drivers of the two vehicles did not observe carefully when driving, which caused the unilateral accident, so they should bear full responsibility.
A traffic policeman told a reporter from Shell Finance that when judging an accident involving assisted driving, the factors of assisted driving are generally not considered.
If there is a dispute between the two parties, the follow-up driver can communicate with the company or even litigate.
Shell Finance reporter Bai Haotian Zhang Bing intern Zou Zhenzhen