[HN Gopher] Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory,...
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Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 27 points
Date : 2023-06-01 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| jacquesm wrote:
| This almost got me into a serious accident, twice. Definitely
| would not recommend and I switched cars because of it. The last
| thing I need is buggy software with the capability of instantly
| changing the trajectory of my vehicle (slippery surfaces,
| cornering). A brand car as well (MB) so really, really
| disappointed, what should have been a safety feature actually was
| the opposite. Dealer said everything was fine so that was the end
| of that car, if 'fine' means that you have a couple of close
| calls in the first few thousand km on account of a feature that
| can't even be properly disabled without sabotaging the
| electronics then that's just too bad.
|
| Now I drive a 27 year old car that has none of these 'features'.
| It does what I tell it to and when I tell it to, it doesn't phone
| home, and has no touch screen, but old fashioned buttons.
|
| If the government wants to immediately improve car safety they
| should outlaw touchscreens instead.
| nzrf wrote:
| Fully agree. As it is fine most the time it comes back to the
| other part where it is wrong.
|
| Example: living in cold weather climate my outback just stops
| cuts the engine when exhaust from the car leaves car in front
| of me on cold day( large cloud of vapor). The visual collision
| avoidance detects this as car and cuts the engine. This is not
| the place you want to be leaving an intersection with people
| accelerating behind you.
|
| Unless this backed by lidar / radar or combination that is more
| accurate I don't see this as pro. Top reason I can't stand my
| outback is the decisions it makes incorrectly.
|
| Of course there is no way to get any of this fixed in my
| outback other than selling it. Consumers are getting the shaft
| on technology in their cars imo and are being treated as test
| pilots.
| ddalcino wrote:
| Would you care to elaborate on what went wrong? The other
| comments here make 'automatic emergency braking' sound like a
| really good idea, and it's hard for me to imagine that this
| particular feature would be so problematic.
|
| If you're talking about other automatic steering features,
| that's very different, and your comment makes more sense to me.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Not the person you were responding to, but here's an
| anecdatum:
|
| One time I was driving behind someone under otherwise normal
| conditions, and they turned right into a parking lot. As they
| turned right, they obviously began exiting the road. The
| screen on my car screamed "BRAKE!" and then the braking
| system activated. They were about 60% of the way into the
| parking lot, and continuing to exit. I was at a normal
| following distance, going a normal speed, and they were just
| making a right into a parking lot. This was a very ordinary
| situation, and the emergency warning was unexpected.
|
| Now, technically, if that car had completely stopped for some
| reason instead of continuing to exit, I guess I could have
| hit the back corner of the bumper. That is, if I hadn't, you
| know, shifted a couple feet to the left to avoid it.
|
| Ironically, the emergency braking alarm was so distracting
| that it might have caused me to hit the car in front of me
| _if_ the brakes hadn 't activated, and if I had needed to
| steer to avoid an accident.
|
| And if the person behind me hadn't seen my brakes suddenly
| activate, they might have hit me. Or, if the person behind
| them hadn't seen their brakes activate, they might have hit
| them. And so on.
| bgentry wrote:
| I've had this exact situation happen on numerous occasions.
| It's always people turning into a parking lot ahead of me,
| in a situation where they will absolutely be out of the way
| long before I reach them, but also I'm actively shifting to
| the side to go clearly around them anyway. In none of the
| situations was there any chance of an accident even if the
| turning car stopped suddenly instead of completing its
| turn. And this has happened to me on multiple different
| vehicles.
|
| Each time it happens my immediate reaction is "what the
| hell is wrong with my car" before I see the "BRAKE" on the
| dash or heads up display and realize this happened yet
| again. I'm surprised I haven't been rear ended on account
| of it yet.
| lsaferite wrote:
| I fully understand that frustration, but I would point out
| that continuing through the departure zone like that at
| full speed is prone to accidents with another car entering
| the road in that blind spot and you should adjust
| accordingly. Additionally, following the car in front of
| you so close that you hit them if they brake suddenly is
| inherently dangerous and a bad habit as well. Interestingly
| enough, a universal AEB requirement on all vehicles would
| help in that scenario.
| ics wrote:
| It's fair to say that some percentage of cases could be
| avoided by driving more defensively but I doubt it is
| significant. There are plenty of scenarios that the
| systems simply can't handle gracefully such as narrow or
| shifting lanes (my experience). The safest solution might
| be to avoid such roads entirely but then I'd never be
| able to leave my borough.
| burgerzzz wrote:
| I've had the automatic breaking in my Jeep take effect
| needlessly, which can be quite jarring
| lsaferite wrote:
| My Kia has AEB, Lane Keeping, and Adaptive Cruise Control.
| They have false positive type events from time to time, but
| generally you just know when it's going to happen. The
| first couple of times it was a shock, but I've never had it
| trigger in such a way that I felt like it would cause an
| accident. That being said, you can't just leave it un
| attended. You're still the PiC of the vehicle.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've detailed this in older comments, in a nutshell the first
| time was on a wet bridge where the car mistook the return of
| the bridge supports for an imminent crash causing the car to
| go into a spin (and on a narrow bridge that could have ended
| really badly, especially because of those supports). I had
| the car checked out and it was declared healthy, and that it
| must have been something spurious. A short while later it did
| it again, this time in a corner where an advertising sign was
| placed such that oncoming traffic could read it, again the
| car braked violently resulting causing some loss of control
| so it swerved into the oncoming lane. Fortunately no traffic
| there. I sold it right after and won't be buying another MB,
| ever. They've really lost the plot if they believe that this
| sort of thing is acceptable in a production vehicle for their
| regular clientele.
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| Not the poster
|
| Vw golf r 2016 the sensor was low to the ground and it would
| randomly brake for stuff it thought was a threat like a
| cardboard box.
|
| Subaru crosstrek 2018 - would brake for no reason, cars
| turning up ahead of me, etc.
|
| VW atlas 2019 - brake for no reason would also scream at me
| and show a red symbol on the hud when nothing was in the road
| in front of me.
|
| Subaru impreza 2023 - brakes for turning vehicles up the
| road, had it brake in a car wash.
|
| On my vw vehicles i bought a can bus programmer so i could
| turn off as much if the safety stuff as possible because it
| made the car less safe to drive. In the impreza (current car)
| turning off the eyesight features is part of the pre-drive
| ritual.
|
| I also had the lane assist on the crosstrek almost cause an
| accident on the highway at speed. Roads here are inconsistent
| and it was violently jerking the wheel trying to stay between
| lines.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Why not get a car without that stuff?
| r00t4ccess wrote:
| I got what was available at the time. The golf r is low
| production car finding one to buy was hard enough.
|
| The crosstrek the only orange one available had eyesight.
|
| The atlas was used so there was only 1 option locally
|
| The impreza its standard on anything over base, and the
| base was missing other things i wanted.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok, that makes sense. I just bought a 1997 car and had it
| rebuilt, about 30% of the price of a new one and none of
| the crap, roughly just as safe as the current ones and
| much less likely to be stolen. Not the most economical
| decision because of course it is still a 1997 car but it
| will hold its value well enough that I'm not worried
| about it and I'm not really planning on selling it
| anyway. But if I ever do crash it then I'll probably lose
| a bunch of money because the present day value is less
| than what I put into it. Otoh just the write-off on a new
| one would have been roughly the total invested.
|
| It's very frustrating how tech can be mis-applied. But I
| also see the regulators point of applied statistics and
| that even if these systems cause the occasional crash
| they prevent a much larger number from ever happening.
| ics wrote:
| I wrote up a long comment that got scrapped by my focus filter
| but I feel the need to voice strong agreement here. I have a
| recent Mazda which in almost all ways is my perfect car
| _except_ for the newfangled safety features all new cars seem
| to have. Lane correction and emergency braking, even set to the
| lowest sensitivity levels, are bad to outright dangerous in
| city (and some country) driving. In NYC it 's common to have
| multiple road lines crossing during construction which by
| default has lead my car to try steering into cyclists or
| barriers. It can't read the lane because the lane is not
| properly marked but that's _typical_. So I disabled it.
| Emergency braking is a bit harder for me to understand when it
| kicks in but I 've done whatever I can to keep it off. Twice it
| caused a hard brake in the middle of traffic with my newborn in
| the back and almost got me rear-ended. Another time it detected
| another car ahead of me but technically in the next lane and
| warned that it was about to hard brake _in the rain on the
| Williamsburg Bridge inner roadway_ which is... tight to say the
| least. If there 's a future where these features are rigorously
| tested for worst case scenarios in different driving
| environments _and_ somehow universally implemented across
| manufacturers... maybe.
| xattt wrote:
| I had AEB trigger going through a mini-roundabout in rainy
| weather as another vehicle was yielding to me. I also had an
| AEB alert when fresh snow was flying off the front grill just
| after I started driving for the day. This is on a 2021
| Sorento.
| nradov wrote:
| If you haven't already done so, please file a formal safety
| defect complaint with the NHTSA with details on that bridge
| incident. Once the regulators receive enough similar
| complaints they will open a formal investigation and
| potentially issue a recall.
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem
| ics wrote:
| Good idea, thanks for the link!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Good one, not in the USA but I will do this here in NL with
| the equivalent service. It never crossed my mind so thank
| you very much for this option.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That sounds like there is a lot of commonality between the
| two cases that I had and the ones that you have experienced.
| My car was a Mercedes Benz C class July 2014 issue. The AEB
| relies on a lot of gear supplied by Bosch (I dug into it a
| bit to see if it could be disabled without surgery but that
| wasn't possible). Maybe Mazda has the same unit? (it sits
| behind the front license plate and there is a camera behind
| the windscreen).
| ics wrote:
| I'm not sure of the exact sensor. There is a little more
| info on it here for example (https://www.mazdausa.com/stati
| c/manuals/2021/mazda3/contents...) but I can confirm the
| sensor placement is the same behind the windscreen, the
| lower one I think is by the badge. I wish they'd just made
| dashcam a standard feature instead and forget about trying
| to throw me through the windshield for shits and giggles.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok, looks like a different sensor then, the MB unit uses
| Radar and optical.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Most people I know buy older cars now. They're more fun, less
| cluttered with dumb features and technology. I get it. When I
| was shopping for a new car recently, all the salesmen talked
| about was how big the touch screens were. Cool, the
| manufacturer placed an order for a panel of a certain size,
| very impressive engineering there.
| nradov wrote:
| There appear to be major variations between manufacturers. I've
| driven many miles on a wide variety of roads in a Subaru and
| haven't experienced any false positive automatic braking
| incidents. However, the system does automatically disable
| itself (and warns the driver accordingly) in heavy
| precipitation so there is still significant room for
| improvement.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > the system does automatically disable itself (and warns the
| driver accordingly) in heavy precipitation
|
| That would have saved me one of two incidents so Subaru may
| well be the one doing this right.
| jo6gwb wrote:
| Touchscreens first, quickly followed by excessively bright,
| flickering, and aftermarket headlights.
| mkmk wrote:
| This feature once saved me from what would have otherwise been a
| very nasty crash, many years ago.
|
| I was driving too fast in a borrowed car over a small hill and
| hadn't realized that traffic had stopped just out of my sight
| until too late. I heard a beep and saw flashing on my dash and I
| started braking but a moment later the emergency braking system
| kicked in, braking much harder than I would have been able to.
| The car stopped, hard, a foot or two short of the pickup truck in
| front of me.
|
| As the brakes kicked in, my seatbelt tensioned and pulled me into
| my seat, which was surprising because, although I had a vague
| idea of emergency braking, I didn't know the seatbelts would do
| that. And although I may be mis-remembering since this was so
| long ago, it feels like the passenger seat next to me started
| moving (I'm not sure why) - I should look that up.
|
| Made me infinitely grateful for the engineering that went into
| this system. I was quite young and insufficiently cautious, and
| it was an eye-opening experience.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Seatbelt tensioners are life savers. They're a little explosive
| charge under the chair near the seatbelt attachment point that
| yanks _hard_ on the belt to squeeze you against the chair while
| the car comes to a stop. They 're super powerful and you don't
| want to mess with them unless you know exactly what you're
| doing (see also: airbags).
| mkmk wrote:
| Interesting! My recollection was that it was a non-explosive
| tensioner, but maybe I'm wrong. Thinking about explosive
| tensioners reminds me of an EOD tool I recently learned about
| - the rocket wrench.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11qa5LFB6zI [1:36]
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are spring loaded ones too but they're not as
| powerful or as fast.
|
| https://laughingsquid.com/a-slow-motion-video-of-a-
| pyrotechn...
| randomfinn wrote:
| > braking much harder than I would have been able to
|
| Any idea why you weren't able to apply full brakes? I remember
| reading that most people don't in an emergency and that's why
| the emergency brake boost was created, but haven't seen the
| reason for it.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Looking at the comments here I need to double check if I'm on
| some gearhead forum where automatic transmission is considered
| appropriate exclusively for teenagers and geriatric patients.
|
| Anyway, I'll add my anecdote when my Toyota surprised me with a
| panic brake in a blind corner which probably saved my life by not
| ending up under a stopped bus. But the kicker is that my insurer
| gave me quite a steep discount when I originally bought the car,
| specifically due to the emergency brake feature. They may have
| more data comparing collisions for cars with/without this feature
| than anons on internet forums, who knows?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Insurance companies are run by people that are good at
| statistics, and there is a fair chance that statistically this
| works out well but that does not mean anything for any
| particular individual. Chances are that EAB will cause some
| accidents and prevents a whole lot more, and that's enough for
| the insurers.
| peter422 wrote:
| Every possible change to a car's safety system will cause
| some deaths and save others... look at airbags.
|
| The aggregate stats are the most important things to look at,
| especially for something like AEB which has the ability to
| save pedestrians, which as of late are getting mowed down
| more and more frequently.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Agreed that overall it can be an improvement. But I've
| clocked up a good 40K km since I got rid of the car that
| was equipped with defunct EAB and I'm fairly sure (but of
| course can not prove it) that I would have been in an
| accident by now on account of it triggering falsely.
| Conversely, I've _never_ had a problem with airbags
| deploying without cause and my seatbelt is on just to move
| the car 10 meters because it is deeply ingrained and I
| refuse to drive - or be in - a car without it.
|
| But faulty EAB caused more trouble for me than any other
| safety feature to date and I really wonder what caused
| Mercedes Benz to release this feature in such a horrific
| functional state. It is beyond belief how broken it is and
| I would love to see their internal stats for how often
| their EAB caused - not prevented - single vehicle
| accidents.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Wasn't AIG an insurance company? They don't seem to be good
| at math, much less statistics.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exceptions, rules and all that.
| peter422 wrote:
| Yes everybody here seems to be ignoring that car accidents are
| the leading cause of deaths for children and young adults...
| car safety is not a solved problem!
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I have never understood how this would work in the real world. If
| my car automatically brakes, I would just get cutoff by other
| drivers constantly until my car comes to a complete stop in the
| roadway.
| dalyons wrote:
| And yet I have it in my very real world (and unexciting) Subaru
| for years and it never does what you say. I'm guessing it has
| some idea of differential speeds , not just distance-to-object
| maxfurman wrote:
| I too have a Subaru, my emergency brake has only engaged when
| trying to parallel park a bit too aggressively. I must be a
| very good driver! But perhaps it has saved my bumper a few
| dents
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| so if someone merges over into your lane where you are it
| doesn't activate? I must not understand the point of this
| feature then.
| caconym_ wrote:
| On my Honda if a car merges in front of me and is
| accelerating, it maintains its speed presumably on the
| assumption that the separation will continue to increase.
| If a car merges in front and is slower than me, i.e.
| separation is decreasing, it will brake in an attempt to
| maintain the set following distance.
|
| In practice it does leave a bit more following distance
| than most human drivers, but your worry of constantly
| getting cut off until you come to a stop in the road is not
| a real thing. This is partly because the car modifies the
| set following distance based on speed, so that the same
| setting is much closer at e.g. 5 mph than at 60.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Also, at least on mine, it doesn't attempt to implement
| the full follow distance right away. Mine can tell a
| vehicle is accelerating away from me and won't slow down
| to fit the spacing on the expectation that the spacing
| will soon be achieved by the other vehicle. If the
| vehicle in front of me is going slower than my set speed
| and not accelerating, then it slowly will lag back to get
| the set follow distance. You do have to worry about
| aggressive cars that cut you off in heavy traffic as the
| vehicle will just let them and lag back, but I can at
| least adjust the follow distance to partially mitigate
| this situation.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| OK, it's good to know that it won't stop. But if it slows
| automatically it will still result in the same thing. All
| the other drivers just continue to cut you off
| indefinitely.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Actually, maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you were
| talking about adaptive cruise but you may have been
| talking about automatic emergency braking.
|
| Interpreting your original comment in that context: AEB
| only kicks in at a point where _maximum braking_ will
| result in you _barely_ not hitting something in front of
| you, or maybe even hitting it at a low speed. Modern cars
| can stop very fast indeed with maximum braking so in
| practice this threshold is never crossed under normal
| driving conditions unless the software returns a false
| positive. It 's not about maintaining a safe following
| distance--it's about stopping the car at the extreme edge
| of the safety envelope, beyond which no manual or
| automatic intervention could prevent a violent crash.
|
| False positives do happen but I think they are very rare
| or practically nonexistent in good implementations. I've
| never had it happen with my Honda.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It's for when your mother in law hurtles your family
| towards a truck in front of you with no indication of
| trying to slow down (personal experience). The car does its
| best to stop acceleration while maximizing braking force
| safely.
| dboreham wrote:
| You're thinking of adaptive cruise control. Automatic breaking
| only activates when you're about to crash.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, because the automatic braking 'feature' can cause you to
| crash.
| mint2 wrote:
| Keep in mind that Not every car brand has the executional
| prowess of Tesla. As the others have mentioned I've never
| experienced phantom braking on my Subaru while driving.
|
| It hasn't even done the object detected warning beeping
| when driving on actual roads, which I assume happens prior
| to the braking. The times I've had that warning are parking
| head on against walls and approach fast, and on one
| particular 15 mph off ramp that curved sharply such that
| one drove directly at a sign before turning sharply. It was
| understandable that it would alert there. No braking.
|
| Assisted Lane keeping is another story, not a fan. Does not
| account for a ton of things such as the car or truck in the
| next lane is almost over the line.
| lsaferite wrote:
| My Kia likes to trigger the ~~AEB~~ Collision Avoidance
| warning when people are turning off the road in front of
| me. It's really only triggered when it _thinks_ a vehicle
| is in my path, but it's really exiting the path and just
| still in the periphery. I get about as many false
| positive type events with the lane keeping feature. I've
| learned, the hard way, that not all lane markings are to
| spec. The worst are when you have a side road and the
| solid white line curves off the road but they don't have
| a dotted white line continuing straight. The car loves to
| pull to the right in those cases. Not hard, but enough
| that you know it's being daft.
| mint2 wrote:
| Yeah the lane keeping for sure is bad because even if
| perfect there is a lot of real word situations where one
| needs to deviate from the center of the lane.
|
| So unless the vehicle is fully self driving to the level
| of an alert good driver, it's going to mess up. And lane
| keeping is definitely not claiming to be that.
|
| The lane departure warning beep is fine even although its
| 90% false alerts for me due to non-lane lines or snow
| etc, and 9% when two lanes merge and I get lazy about the
| turn signal with no cars around. But if I were to get
| more tired or something it could be a helpful alert of
| last resort to stop driving, hope I never wait that long
| though because that would be dangerous.
| lsaferite wrote:
| I find the lane keeping and departure warnings lessen the
| cognitive load on driving. I find I'm able to expand my
| focus when driving a bit more and improve my overall
| situational awareness. Overall, I'd say it's a great
| thing. That and 360 degree birds-eye view cameras when
| parking are safety features that all cars should have.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I didn't mention Tesla. FWIW mine was a Mercedes and it
| was the most dangerous car I've ever driven with
| distance. I've _never_ had a car that actively tried to
| crash before.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've had a car that apparently has "automatically breaks"
| because the darn thing spent more time in the shop than on
| the road.
| dole wrote:
| What you get for buying a bombcar.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| The quality of these systems varies wildly IME. If your car has a
| good one, they are quite useful. If your car has a glitchy one
| they are dangerous.
|
| How do we keep the glitchy ones off the road? Extended return
| policy? Make the unit swappable/replaceable?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Set some standards and 100% transparency on cases where they
| fail, mandatory disclosure of every case where they phantom
| brake and what the cause and end result was.
|
| Unlike seatbelts or airbags where there is very little downside
| these can cause perfectly safe situations to turn into nasty
| accidents.
| porkbeer wrote:
| Never. As someone who works on these systems, the cure is often
| worse than the disease. Fix the root issue and enforce distracted
| driving laws, ban in car touchscreens.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| The only time my vehicle ever used its emergency braking was when
| my wife's mom was driving, and my entire family was in the car. I
| was so grateful for it.
|
| The scariest part was that she accelerated toward a truck that
| was travelling very slowly in front of us, the car braked so hard
| we were all pressed into our seatbelts and the car was audibly
| vibrating as it lurched from the anti lock brakes. We were
| literally inches from hitting this truck, and her mom was
| completely unperturbed. Like nothing had happened.
|
| I was shaken. If I'd done that myself I'd think I needed to take
| a brake from driving and seriously contemplate how that was able
| to happen. She just kept driving and talking about whatever she
| was talking about. Disturbing stuff.
|
| So, that's why I'm generally in favour of emergency braking. It
| completely saved my ass.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sounds like you don't want your wife's mom driving with you and
| the rest of the family in the car. Sounds like she quite
| possibly should not be driving at all. That must have been
| pretty scary.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It was one of the scariest vehicle incidents I've been in
| (thankfully). She really shouldn't be driving; she seems
| almost senile to me, but her kids and husband are determined
| to pretend nothing is going on. She lives full time in Mexico
| so there's not a lot I can do other than be grateful for that
| buffer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I once was in the car with an American friend who was
| looking sideways while talking to me and would then swerve
| around cars in front at the last moment. Very annoying and
| quite scary. I asked him to stop the car and got out. There
| is no way I'll trust my life to someone who isn't 100% on
| the ball when it comes to driving. Good for you you did not
| end up in an accident there, and it must really suck that
| you are essentially powerless to do something about it
| given the family relationship. But, at least one very
| positive story about automatic emergency braking. I think
| such features are quite possibly a net positive from a
| statistical perspective but for me personally they are a
| no-go.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > essentially powerless to do something about it given
| the family relationship
|
| Yeah, the fallout of telling a person they can't drive is
| unreal. It took a couple years to go from incredulity
| towards me to finally accepting that I'm not
| joking/grumpy/changing my mind.
|
| Some bad driving is so egregiously bad though that it
| can't be chalked up as a lapse of judgement or something.
|
| There is a strange sort of entitlement to recklessness
| like you described (why in the world would you take your
| eyes off the road to talk!?), and we seem to take for
| granted the fact that we're still alive despite flying
| around in metal boxes within feet of each other. I think
| some especially bad drivers are severely influenced by
| survivorship bias. They're not dead yet so they must be
| fine/good at driving and different from the people who've
| had bad accidents already. But they're only protected by
| very bad odds.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I have a similar situation with an 87 year old family
| member that still drives and I've offered to be on call
| for chauffeur service or to pay for cabs or whatever it
| takes but they will keep doing it until they either die
| from other causes or get into an accident, which in my
| opinion is only a matter of time. So far I've managed to
| get them to rely on me for two really long rides and at
| least they no longer go on the highway. Highly
| frustrating because on the one hand I applaud the person
| for being that old and still self-reliant but on the
| other hand I am seriously concerned about other users of
| the road who are effectively in danger. And short of
| having them declared legally incompetent there isn't much
| that I can do beyond offer help.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Next it will be, "watch 30 seconds of this ad to unlock your
| brakes."
| jacquesm wrote:
| That gives a whole new meaning to 'anti-lock braking'.
| taeric wrote:
| I confess that I find a dark humor in how many self professed
| "great drivers" find these features a nuisance. All the while so
| many people are completely unaware that they have these, as they
| have never activated. Hard for me to square those pegs in a
| favorable way.
|
| Which, yes, being a great driver means you may be pushing close
| to limits while still be completely under control a lot. I just
| don't have a strong prior for that view.
| dmfdmf wrote:
| I have a modern car (2019) and the auto braking, collision and
| lane drift alert is a nuisance. False positives are common and
| there is no way to disable most of it. Some of it can be turned
| off but as soon as the car is restarted it resets to the default.
| I've even had the car emergency brake and come to a complete stop
| in the middle of the road due to a phantom collision. As soon as
| I pay it off I am going to sell it and roll back to an earlier
| model without all this mandated, modern tech and keep the older
| car rolling till I die. We will become like Cuba keeping 50's
| cars running into the 70's or even the 80's and this time it
| won't be due to the commies but the fascists.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Weird that you cannot disable the collision warning and lane
| keeping. What Make/model is it?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Usually you can disable it but on a per-ride basis and it
| takes a lot of menu scrolling and tapping to do it again. It
| defaults to 'on' when you start the car, and there is no
| physical switch to disable it permanently.
| diggernet wrote:
| I imagine there is no permanent disable because it is a
| "safety" feature. But at least on my Subaru disabling it is
| a physical button. No scrolling and tapping required. On
| the other hand, it also works well enough that I haven't
| felt a need to disable it.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Yeah, I meant it's weird you cannot just disable it and
| have that saved across starts. Mine allows me to disable
| those features and they don't turn back on when you restart
| the vehicle. I don't think AEB is a feature that can be
| disabled though. Just the collision avoidance feature. They
| are similar, but not the same. AEB is supposed to only
| trigger when a crash is imminent while collision avoidance
| is what triggers when it thinks you are about to have a
| crash that can be averted. I've never had AEB trigger, but
| CA triggers regularly enough that I know when to expect it
| now.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > AEB is supposed to only trigger when a crash is
| imminent while collision avoidance is what triggers when
| it thinks you are about to have a crash that can be
| averted
|
| If that had been the case I would have still driven that
| car... very frustrating because - touchscreen aside - it
| was a nice and comfy car and I had planned to make it the
| last car I ever bought.
| mint2 wrote:
| Name the car brand and model. Not all implementations are so
| bad, so it's important to raise awareness of the bad ones.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Seconded, better yet a public registry of locations and
| situations where these systems go off so that manufacturers
| can include these in their tests.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| Regulatory capture marches forward.
|
| In an environment where small, cheap, runabout electric vehicles
| could become very popular, I expect lots of "for your safety"
| reasons why cars have to be complicated and expensive.
| nradov wrote:
| That's not what is happening here at all. There is a separate
| set of regulations for those small, cheap, runabout electric
| vehicles. They are classified as "neighborhood electric
| vehicles". The NHTSA has not proposed to require automatic
| emergency braking for them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
| asoneth wrote:
| Multi-ton vehicles capable of moving at highway speeds are
| dangerous and kill roughly a hundred people a day in the US[1].
| So whether these changes are driven by regulatory capture or
| not it makes perfect sense to tightly regulate automobiles.
| Personally I think consumers should be free to decide things
| like seatbelt and airbag use but if they drive on public
| roadways they should not be allowed to make cost/benefit
| tradeoffs that decrease the safety of those around them.
|
| > small, cheap, runabout electric vehicles could become very
| popular
|
| Agreed that's a promising area. It's possible that the
| increasing regulatory burden on cars may drive an increase in
| low-speed vehicles such as neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV)
| for use cases that do not require more than 25mph/40kph.[2]
| Since they are exempt from the vast majority of new automobile
| regulations that makes them comparatively much simpler and more
| affordable.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7126a1.htm
|
| [2] I am not claiming this works for _every_ suburban commute,
| just that there exists a nontrivial number of car trips in
| cities and towns that would be feasible in a NEV.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, I can certainly agree that there is a thing as
| regulatory capture. I am not clear that this is it, though.
| Making cars safer has legit improved life expectancy. Anti-lock
| brakes, seat belts, rear view cameras, blind spot indicators,
| etc. are all very welcome advances that make modern vehicles
| much more safe than they would otherwise be.
| cudgy wrote:
| Well they have to do something with all the new funding from
| the latest "infrastructure" bill.
|
| "helped secure a historic 50 percent increase in funding and
| staffing resources for the agency under the Bipartisan
| Infrastructure Law"
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa-leadership/ann-carlson
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