ryco25

I attended an event where I got to be a passenger in a safety demo of the LSS+ A Pedestrian Detection/Avoidance system. The driver was going about 37mph, no steering or brake input and as you can see in the video, the car braked and swerved out of the way, then immediately let off the brake so the driver could avoid getting rear ended and get out of there. Pretty incredible.

Vehicle tested was a LS500h.

signdetres

Very impressive! If I remember correctly, this is the system that swerves without leaving it's own lane. Doesn't sound as impressive until you can see it in action like in the above video. Thanks for sharing!

comotiger

Yes, the tech looks promising, but it left me wondering how big a safety concern this is for drivers. If this happens at a crosswalk, one would be going much slower and can take evasive action manually. In the real world, how often does this happen? Can it recognize pedestrians at night? That might be useful. Overall, this tech seems to be a solution to a very rare situation, at least where I live. It would be more useful to see how good Lexus' semi-autonomous driving mode is. I don't think it is offered in the LS, and probably is not close to matching Mercedes or Cadillac.

As far as swerving without leaving the lane is concerned, that sounds like a lot of hype. If a pedestrian is in the middle of a lane, the car cannot swerve to avoid him without entering an adjacent lane.

ryco25

So I'm not sure about the swerving without leaving its own lane...but the driver did mention that if there were no defined lane lines, it would not swerve as the car has to detect the edge of the lane and what is next to it. As you can see in the video, we were driving within a solid lane boundary.

comotiger

The point is that even if there were lane markings, how can the car swerve within its own lane and avoid a pedestrian in the center of the lane. I know of no lanes that are that wide. Interestingly, the LS500 does have a hood-popping safety feature: If the car collides with a pedestrian, the hood will pop open at all corners and reduce the likelihood of the pedestrian bouncing on the hood and crashing into the windshield.

ryco25

True - my assumption is it has to swerve out of its lane. The pop up hood is a cool feature, the LC has that too since it has such a low-raked hood. I've seen an animation about it, its pretty fascinating.

JLAWS

Cool demo but engine acceleration sound.... not so cool, Sounds like my old GS350.

ryco25

The car this was shot in with the hybrid so different sound..the regular LS and F SPORT were quieter and more sporty sounding, depending on the mode selected.

signdetres

I think this system is intended for scenarios just like those in the demo video with higher speeds and small margin to operate within. Criteria have to be met for the swerve to take place. Likely if a pedestrian is in the center of the lane, the system will rely on the brakes to avoid the collision (if even possible) and will not attempt to steer as it would require leaving the lane. At slower speeds, the system will likely be able to avoid any collisions using the brakes alone. It's really a last resort system that's looking for that extra window of opportunity to avoid hitting a pedestrian. I don't think this is supposed to be a next-level self-driving game-changing feature, just an improvement of the current Lexus pedestrian detection systems that rely solely on brakes.

IIRC, current systems in Lexus vehicles do work at night if lighting and contrast is sufficient enough for the cameras to makeout the pedestrian and would imagine this works similarly.

comotiger

I agree that this system is probably useful in a very limited set of circumstances. I was wondering just how useful it is for Lexus to advertise this as a big safety feature that may be seldom used compared to offering a semi-autonomous driving mode (likely to be used frequently) offered in Mercedes and Cadillac. For me, the latter would be a much bigger selling point than the LSS+A. I think the Lane Keep assist and adaptive cruise control systems in Lexus vehicles are no match for the Merc/Cadillac systems.

spwolf

it depends on where is the pedestrian and upcoming vehicles. In most situations, it will just auto brake... if it can avoid the pedestrian without hitting car in opposite lane, it will do so.
This is all done automatically without driver input, of course it is extremely useful otherwise nobody would ever hit anyone... In Japan, older system that is much less effective, reduced car accidents by around 50% according to Toyota... thats 2 generations older system. I am sure humans can always do it better, but point is that for various reasons they do not.

When it comes to semi-autonomous features, they require a lot of things to work well, and driver has to engage it... most people wont.
And new LS also has new system for semi-autonomous driving, much better than before...

Popup hood appeared in 2013 IS first, in Europe, due to our regulation... it is pretty common for lower vehicles now, otherwise they cant pass European crash tests.