Comment on Emergency Braking Will Save Lives. Automakers Want to Charge Extra for It
Majorllama@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This reminds me a bit of the seatbelt situation from back in the day.
My only gripe with driver aids that can take over control is that for some more skilled drivers they actually do more harm then good.
I’m a can be a fairly aggressive driver when the time calls for it and I will accelerate towards a stopped car so I can dart into a gap in the lane beside. If the car were to try and intervene it would almost certainly cause an accident where there otherwise would not have been one.
My mom’s car has this lane keeping feature in her car where it tries to keep itself centered between the lines on the freeway. But I cannot stand the car pulling me into the center of the lane when I am trying to give space for say a motorcycle to pass or a truck and trailer with a particularly wide load. The car will pull itself back into the middle of the lane going against my wishes. It has almost caused her to hit bikers on more than one occasion. She asked the dealership to take it off but they said they couldn’t. It’s a built in safety feature and it cannot be disabled blah blah blah.
I think these features are definitely cool for the normal inattentive driver but for people who are hyper observant while driving and they are always doing things with purpose these systems just make a vehicle unpredictable.
“I’m a can be a fairly aggressive driver when the time calls for it and I will accelerate towards a stopped car so I can dart into a gap in the lane beside. If the car were to try and intervene it would almost certainly cause an accident where there otherwise would not have been one.”
You aren’t hyper observant, you’re acting unpredictably in the situation you describe above. You’re just a bad driver.
0 accidents. 0 tickets. 0 dings or scrapes of any kind. I get a decent discount on my insurance for being a safe driver. I have avoided several other accidents and given dash cam footage to the people who got into an accident in front of me. I have helped prevent several maybe accidents while being a passenger because I was far more observant than the driver and warned them that a certain car was about to pull out in front of them.
I’ve been driving for almost 20 years at this point and the only body damage any of my vehicles have ever gotten have been from my girlfriends hitting inanimate objects at low speeds or trucks kicking up rocks.
0 accidents so far. You aren’t proving good driving skills you are demonstrating that you have been lucky.
Absolutely some luck sure. I’m not nearly cocky enough to pretend that I am some magical all seeing God driver. I simply pay FAR more attention than everyone else seems to.
My father has totalled like 6 cars in his life. He’s a terrible fucking driver. Absolutely zero awareness. Never shoulder checks. I hated being driven around by him. Even at a young age I was pointing out to him that he almost hit several cars with his oblivious driving habits.
My mother is a very aggressive driver and she’s gotten in a handful of minor accidents but I don’t think she’s ever totalled anything. She’s much more observant than my father but she is also a distracted driver. Often eating, doing makeup or fuckin around with her phone for maps or music while she’s driving.
My older brother is a straight up wreckless driver. He used to drive on a suspended license or no license for a decent chunk of his life. He has gotten tickets for the most ridiculous stupid driving in the world. I honestly do not understand how he is still able to have a license these days. I am almost positive he doesn’t have insurance right now, but he also finally joined rehab for his drug usage so we are taking one victory at a time with him.
Little brother 1 has totaled 4 cars already and he’s only 23. He is an aggressive driver that lacks the observation skills to be driving the way he does. I have talked to him about it several times and my family has asked me to teach him “how to drive like me” but he has too much pride about how he drives to listen to me.
Little brother 2 (they are twins) has been in s few minor accidents. He claims he was hit on his moped once but seeing how he drives I suspect he just wasnt paying attention. The few times I’ve been unfortunate to drive with him he was driving with the passenger tires often on the line or over the line. He has absolutely no clue where the outer edges do his vehicle are. He is also stubborn and takes any advice on how to drive better as a personal attack. I told him he needs to turn his headlights on when it’s overcast or anything other than a sunny day and now he constantly makes jokes about how there is one cloud in the sky so I better turn my headlights on. He’s unbelievably stubborn and mocks anyone that even attempts to critique his horrible driving habits.
My little sister only started driving last year. She’s already curbed her wheels so bad they had to be replaced and backed into my mom’s car. I don’t know how she drives as I have not allowed her to drive me around yet, but it doesn’t sound particularly confidence inspiring.
My mother had a roommate for years who was constantly being rear ended. I think by the time she finally moved out she had been rear ended something like 16 times in her life. She was an unbelievably scared driver who was known to panic brake at the worst times. Timid drivers are far more dangerous than slightly aggressive drivers in my opinion.
I drive with what I like to call aggressive defensive driving. I am not afraid to hammer down and push the car to its limits to avoid an accident or move my car out of what I am predicting to be a harmful location, but I also drive very cautiously while giving myself space to work with should something happen. I almost always have an escape path in mind at any given moment and I tend to be driving with my foot resting on the brakes so I can stop much quicker than someone who needs to pull their foot off the accelerator and then switch to the brakes. A car traveling at 60mph moves ~40 feet in the ~500 milliseconds it takes to see something and move your foot from the gas to the brakes. By covering the brake whenever I am near other drivers I can significantly shorten my reaction time and therefore braking distance.
In my entire extended family I am the only person who has never gotten into any accidents or received a ticket. You can say that is luck and it would absolutely be true to a certain extent but I feel that also severely downplays how much work I put into driving safely and defensively at all times.
I find that the grand majority of drivers do not put almost any thought into how they drive or what they could be doing to drive more defensively and be hyper observant. They treat driving as this slog event they have to get through instead of the highly dangerous activity that it is. You’re controlling these massive chunks of metal with enormous amounts of potential energy. Too many people are too careless.
I will accelerate towards a stopped car so I can dart into a gap in the lane beside
maybe… you should not do that for the sake of literally a couple of seconds. you’re risking the safety of everyone around you
I agree, it’s a stupid thing to do and risks you and other around you just so you can save a couple of seconds.
I have the same feature in my car. To give more space to cyclists, I have a handy trick: simply turn the steering wheel.
Yeah I do that in my car too lol. I’m saying in my mom’s car with its lane centering BS if you try and pull to the edge of your lane to give space for a motorcycle or whatever it’ll basically fight your input and try to put you back in the middle of the lane. It’s legitimately dangerous in my opinion.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
The problem is that these systems are not a replacement for a human. Humans need to be in full control at all times. The problem is that the car companies and law makers apparently think some computer system is more capable than a person.
There so is the issue of longevity and privacy. At the end of the day I will drive old cars since they are usually easier to work on and build to last.
Majorllama@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That and I’m just generally against the government telling me what I have to do. I will wear a seatbelt because it is an obvious safety benefit but I don’t think it should be mandatory. If someone wants to skip wearing a safety device then that should be their choice. Plus we need to thin the herd a bit. I say let the idiots who won’t wear helmets on bikes die off.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
I think it should absolutely be mandatory since it saves so many lives.
People fail to measure risks effectively. Everyone is scared of sharks and clowns but they are fine driving.
Majorllama@lemmy.world 1 year ago
People really do fail to measure risks effectively. But if people aren’t going to think critically and use safety measures that are around do we really need them in our society? We have been protecting way too many idiots from glorious Darwin awards.
The types of people who don’t wear helmets or seatbelts probably shouldn’t be reproducing so if we let them do what they want and they die that removes the stupid genes from the pool. I see nothing but benefits.