SUV With Emergency Braking Mistakes Billboard Ad For Real Car And Slams On Brakes

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Automatic emergency braking is now a common feature on many cars. It’s intended to slow a vehicle down when the driver may not be aware of a hazard, or is not able to react in time. However, these systems are not infallible, as one recent story out of China demonstrates.

The matter concerns the Li L9, a full-size luxury SUV from Chinese manufacturer Li Auto. Naturally, it’s equipped with all the usual modern safety equipment, including automatic emergency braking. A few months back, the system ended up putting the L9 in the headlines in China—for all the wrong reasons.

As seen in a video shared on Twitter, the L9 was driving at just under 50 mph on the G70 Expressway, when it passed under a billboard ad for vans. As per the footage, the vehicle can be seen to slow quickly, as if the brakes were slammed on—a dangerous maneuver to undertake on a free-flowing highway.

As reported by Pan Daily, the owner claimed this was due to the automatic emergency braking system, which mistook the vans in the advertisement for a real vehicle. Thus, assuming a collision was imminent, it slammed on the brakes. A rear-end collision was reportedly the result, with the owner demanding 20,000 yuan ($2,750 USD) in compensation.

Li Auto eventually confirmed that sequence of events. “The onboard system mistakenly identified an advertisement image as a real vehicle,” stated a company representative speaking to Pan Daily. The company noted that the AEB software would be improved to avoid this problem in future.

This incident happened despite the sophistication of the assisted driving system in the Li Auto L9. It features lidar, radar, and ultrasonic sensors in addition to multiple cameras. Regardless, all that redundancy wasn’t enough in this case.

Radar
The top-tier L9 has radar, lidar, and ultrasonic sensors in addition to multiple cameras for the ADAS system. Lower models omit the lidar but still have the other sensors to augment the camera feeds.

It’s an amusing problem that thankfully did not have a major negative outcome. Nobody was seriously injured in the crash. However, it’s easy to understand how frustrating this would be for the driver. It’s one thing for a vehicle to crash while under fully autonomous control. It’s another thing entirely for the computer to step in while you’re doing a fine job of driving, only to help precipitate an accident on its own.

It’s not the first time Li Auto’s automatic systems have come under scrutiny. In 2023, Car News China reported on a driver who said their car spotted “ghosts” as it drove past a cemetery. As they drove through the area, the car’s camera appeared to be detecting humans and cyclists when there was nobody around. “This is not a supernatural event, but is caused by the limitations of sensor recognition capabilities on the market,” responded the automaker, noting that it was merely a sensor error.

Thanks in part to this story, Li Auto has made the news again more recently for another rear-end incident. This past weekend saw a stack of Li Auto vehicles in a chained rear-end crash on a highway in Shantou, Guangdong during an outing of the local Li Auto car club.

In this case, AEB was involved, but not believed to be to blame. The incident was apparently caused when the lead vehicle in the pack stopped for a red light. A following vehicle was driving too fast in the wet and slippery conditions and was unable to stop in time. Automatic emergency braking engaged, but could not prevent the crash from occurring.

Vlcsnap 00152
Looks like a billboard to me…

When it comes to the billboard incident, though, it’s hard to say what drivers can do to avoid getting caught out. It’s a rare occurrence, to be sure, but also one few of us would expect to deal with. You could drive around with AEB turned off all the time, but then you’d be losing the benefit of the system. At the same time, if you did end up coming to grief because of an automatic safety intervention, you’d be incredibly upset that you’d crashed through no fault of your own.

Ultimately, the solution is better engineering to avoid uncommon but foreseeable cases like these. When it comes to automatic safety systems, automakers have by and large gotten it right. But as they should, the instances where automatic safety systems do not correctly interpret their surroundings will stand out as an unacceptable danger to the driving public.

Image credits: via Twitter screenshot, Li Auto

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55 thoughts on “SUV With Emergency Braking Mistakes Billboard Ad For Real Car And Slams On Brakes”

  4. Wacky errors are pretty common on ADAS systems, though this is an extreme case. My Accord will regularly shit its pants when passing a semi on a sunny day. Loads of laughs when it happens on I-94 at rush hour.

  5. Wacky errors are pretty common on ADAS systems, though this is an extreme case. My Accord will regularly shit its pants when passing a semi on a sunny day. Loads of laughs when it happens on I-94 at rush hour.

  6. Is it bad that my biggest takaway from this article is that modern front end designs have actually nullified (I think it was) Jason’s argument against the Cars universe character design? The one in the main image, along with a lot of newer Hyundai hybrid/EV’s would look like Geordi La Forge if you applied the “correct” character design and used the headlights as the eyes…

    1. Torch’s headlights are the eyes assertion only works on half of car “faces” at best. Usually small roadster type cars
      A whole lot of cars have headlights in line with the grille, who has a mouth between their eyes?

      1.  who has a mouth between their eyes?

        Outside of a Guillermo del Toro vision, I can’t think of anything… (yes, it’s an odd reference)

      2. The grille doesn’t have to be the mouth. It could be a nose or nose-like feature. Any horizontal feature, hole, bumper, or air duct toward the bottom of the fascia can be the mouth.

  7. Is it bad that my biggest takaway from this article is that modern front end designs have actually nullified (I think it was) Jason’s argument against the Cars universe character design? The one in the main image, along with a lot of newer Hyundai hybrid/EV’s would look like Geordi La Forge if you applied the “correct” character design and used the headlights as the eyes…

    1. Torch’s headlights are the eyes assertion only works on half of car “faces” at best. Usually small roadster type cars
      A whole lot of cars have headlights in line with the grille, who has a mouth between their eyes?

      1.  who has a mouth between their eyes?

        Outside of a Guillermo del Toro vision, I can’t think of anything… (yes, it’s an odd reference)

      2. The grille doesn’t have to be the mouth. It could be a nose or nose-like feature. Any horizontal feature, hole, bumper, or air duct toward the bottom of the fascia can be the mouth.

    1. And then subtract it all when the company somehow shifts liability onto the consumer for utilizing the feature. (Or, best case, the company offers a settlement that also includes an NDA so the owner can’t talk about the issue.)

    1. And then subtract it all when the company somehow shifts liability onto the consumer for utilizing the feature. (Or, best case, the company offers a settlement that also includes an NDA so the owner can’t talk about the issue.)

  14. Although ADAS equipment needs to be positioned a certain way to function well with its FOV, wow that fake roof scoop lidar/sensor housing looks like such an afterthought. Reminds me of the 10th gen Civic surround view camera placement on the mirror.

  15. Although ADAS equipment needs to be positioned a certain way to function well with its FOV, wow that fake roof scoop lidar/sensor housing looks like such an afterthought. Reminds me of the 10th gen Civic surround view camera placement on the mirror.

  18. I don’t get it. If the radar/lidar/sonar/whatever doesn’t conclusively determine that there is an object in front of the car, how can it justify slamming on the brakes when it apparently also doesn’t check if there’s anything behind the car?! Like, I’m sorry, but if there’s a Freighliner behind me and we’re goin downhill, I don’t want the AEB to trigger because Mr Squirrel darted across the road. How is the opinion of the most fallible component (the machine-learning “vision” thing) sufficient to cause such a dangerous maneuver?

    There must be a lot of Boeing engineers shopping their resumes around.

  19. I don’t get it. If the radar/lidar/sonar/whatever doesn’t conclusively determine that there is an object in front of the car, how can it justify slamming on the brakes when it apparently also doesn’t check if there’s anything behind the car?! Like, I’m sorry, but if there’s a Freighliner behind me and we’re goin downhill, I don’t want the AEB to trigger because Mr Squirrel darted across the road. How is the opinion of the most fallible component (the machine-learning “vision” thing) sufficient to cause such a dangerous maneuver?

    There must be a lot of Boeing engineers shopping their resumes around.

  20. The problem with edge cases is that there are always going to be a lot of them. The world is messy and computers are pretty terrible at contextualizing new or unexpected things.

  21. The problem with edge cases is that there are always going to be a lot of them. The world is messy and computers are pretty terrible at contextualizing new or unexpected things.

  22. You just need to press the accelerator to override AEB, this is not rocket science. They all work like that and have driver overrides, because they are all kinda flawed

    2. I don’t have a car with AEB and did not know this was the case. I would argue that we should just get rid of all these driver aids that don’t work right all the time. Having a car randomly slam on the brakes is crazy stupid. If it does it rarely enough that it’s considered to be acceptable, it does it rarely enough that you have to remember what to do to override it before you can take action. If it does it often enough that you have muscle memory to override it, it’s worthless.

        1. I think it depends on how hard you have to press the accelerator. To the floor isn’t something that’s part of “ordinary” driving (at least not for me). Either way it still takes measurable time to realize what’s happening and react. Until they can work out substantially all of the possible errors, I don’t think these “driver aids” should be on cars.

  23. You just need to press the accelerator to override AEB, this is not rocket science. They all work like that and have driver overrides, because they are all kinda flawed

    2. I don’t have a car with AEB and did not know this was the case. I would argue that we should just get rid of all these driver aids that don’t work right all the time. Having a car randomly slam on the brakes is crazy stupid. If it does it rarely enough that it’s considered to be acceptable, it does it rarely enough that you have to remember what to do to override it before you can take action. If it does it often enough that you have muscle memory to override it, it’s worthless.

        1. I think it depends on how hard you have to press the accelerator. To the floor isn’t something that’s part of “ordinary” driving (at least not for me). Either way it still takes measurable time to realize what’s happening and react. Until they can work out substantially all of the possible errors, I don’t think these “driver aids” should be on cars.

  24. Reminder: the dismissability of an edge case is inverse to the potential hazards incurred should that edge case be encountered.

    I’m confident any extant self-driving system would fall apart under a rigorous FMEA.

  25. Reminder: the dismissability of an edge case is inverse to the potential hazards incurred should that edge case be encountered.

    I’m confident any extant self-driving system would fall apart under a rigorous FMEA.

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