If using Pilot Assist, can you legally use your mobile?

[Yelper85]

Evening all,

As per the title, if you're using Pilot Assist, is it still illegal to use your mobile phone?

I'm assuming it is, as the law hasn't caught up with driver assisting technology but thought I'd ask.

What will the deal be when the fully autonomous XC90 comes out?

Cheers

Mitch

[TeamG]

Yup, still illegal.

[ovlov04v]

Using a handheld mobile phone is illegal. Unless the law is changed to cover autonomous vehicles it will remain illegal. I think we are still a long way from fully autonomous vehicles. Until all vehicles on the road are autonomous then the driver will be 'responsible ' for overseeing and thus need at least a similar level of attention to todays vehicles.

[Harvey1512]

Yes, you have to be in control of your car even if it is helping you.

As to the future, who knows but it will be a while off yet I suspect. You have to be ready to take over in case the system fails.

[XC90Mk1]

Originally Posted by Yelper85

Evening all,

As per the title, if you're using Pilot Assist, is it still illegal to use your mobile phone?

I'm assuming it is, as the law hasn't caught up with driver assisting technology but thought I'd ask.

What will the deal be when the fully autonomous XC90 comes out?

Cheers

Mitch

It does not actually drive, make decisions and decide what to do. It films the 2 white lines, highlights on the dash each one it can see and then disengages when the lines are poor.

It’s illegal and will remain illegal when fully autonomous as you can’t allow the vehicle to drive for more than 5 or 10 minutes without it failing. Unless you are M25 or somewhere else equally well marked up.

[Yelper85]

Cheers for the replies everybody, much appreciated.

I thought the fully autonomous XC90 was being debuted next year? Maybe that's Sweden only, would make more sense.

So if it requires two white lines, what does it do if it loses the lines, does it disengage straight away or warn you? If you do nothing, does it just disengage and coast but the other safety systems are still active or does it slow down and stop etc?

I though the new Volvo's did have the ability to self drive, so you could put a postcode in and it will go, as long as you hold the steering wheel and intervene once in a while (5 or 10 minutes based on the above).

I thought they had the feature where you could call the car and it will drive to you on its own, it's just the feature isn't enabled yet? This is sort of like the self driving feature where it will take you out of a parking space and onto the main road?

I really want to understand how the system works so please do correct me where I'm wrong. Similarly, if you have any good links to useful information please share them.

[inchindown]

As far as I know, there are no fully autonomous cars (Level 5 automation) currently on the road.

There may be some on test, but I don't think any of them will be let loose on the open road any time soon.

Even the lower levels of automation struggle with what they are supposed to be able to do. I'm not sure if there will ever be a place for autonomous cars outside a controlled environment like an airport or a gated community. The ancient British road network is just not suitable autonomous cars.

I think the best we will ever get will be slightly better driver assistance packages.

[DaveNP]

No experience of the Volvo system but I do drive Merc trucks with their latest aids and a KIA Stonic full of tricks. Both seem to use optical cameras to detect road markings to either side of a lane, the truck seems to do a better job at that, probably because the camera can be higher so looking downward, but the inconsistencies of road markings mean both vehicles frequently lose one or both sides of the lane. The KIA will self steer around a reasonable bend but if it loses the lane marking on either side the system shuts off and it's back to manual steering, the truck doesn't steer just sounds a loud buzzer to alert you to steer. Whilst the KIA pings a message to put your hands back on the wheel if you try 'no hands' it doesn't have an audible warning of when the lane system goes on or off (maybe a setting I haven't found yet).
Both vehicles have a system for forward collision avoidance (based on sonar or radar?) which I've never experienced in real emergency but both have alerted to potential problems, the truck does throw up the occasional warning and cut the throttle when it shouldn't such as going round a bend on a country road it will react to the chevron boards on the other side of the road, or if there is a car waiting in a right turn lane it doesn't like passing on the left, this is potentially hazardous as the deceleration can be quite marked which brings in questions of handling and what the following vehicles may do.
The latest trucks also have cameras instead of rear view mirrors, personally I don't drive them for reasons I won't bore you with, but they also have a feature which can be programmed to the length of the trailer and it will then track the rear of the trailer through turns. The camera tech isn't too great though.

Overall, especially with the truck experience, I'd say there's a long way to go to make vehicles fully autonomous on the general road network. Recognising 'what is a road' would seem to be a major problem, whilst it would seem simple the amount of mental processing we instinctively do with what we see is amazing. A problem in the past with factory robots was that presented with a bucket of bolts, like one would give to a human operator, they couldn't recognise a bolt so every bolt had to be turned round and lined up first, teaching a computer to recognise a consistently produced M10 bolt is infinitely simpler than recognising 'a road'.
I recently was told that the security type problem solving on websites which has changed recently is part of teaching computers to recognise our world. In the past one would be asked to type in some letters based on a wobbly picture, this was used to teach computers how to recognise wobbly writing and thus be able to read documents which weren't necessarily printed in 'Times New Roman' or 'Arial', nowadays one is often asked to click on which squares of a picture contain a motorbike, whilst we can all recognise a motorbike from practically any angle the computers still need help. (I believe this is similar to one of the car systems which should avoid animals but can only recognise a deer crossing the road, if it walks down the road towards you the car can't see it).

Whilst undoubtably the technology has made massive leaps over the past few years I'd say that a lot of the stuff we have experienced and have now is still experimental and is being rolled out to see how well it works while there's still a driver to take responsibility, as the systems get used we learn more to put into the next generation. A similar thing happened with automatic gear boxes in trucks, there were a number of evolutions some of which seemed like backward steps which can now be found in the fully automated systems, but until simple things like the mechanical operation had been proved by a driver there was no way to get a computer to do the job.

In the meantime, keep hold of the wheel, stay alert, and off of the phone

[skippyfox]

What we all should remember is, the most important part of any vehicle is the nut that holds the steering wheel.. sorry folks autonomous cars are not for me.

[ovlov04v]

Don't look now but the future may be closer than we think.

But never mind the tech issues, what about the style issues?😁😁

https://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/n...y-vehicle.html