The tech exists, and vehicles on the road already have it, yet a consortium of carmakers doesn’t want to make this lifesaving equipment standard. The reason is as old as the hills—money.
I’m all for forcing manufacturers to implement these safety features but you damn well better make a fuckin law that says they can’t pass the cost onto the consumer.
Getting tired of shit going up in price by a few thousand dollars every time something is added.
Although tbf I honestly think traffic laws should be much more strict and be taken much more seriously.
If you force them to spend hundreds to thousands installing a LIDAR system in each vehicle why can’t they get that money back?
Enforcing traffic laws would be the cheaper solution
More policing is never the cheaper solution.
Versus installing high hundreds to low thousands in each car? Im not sure you are correct in that assertion
Because they have the money to spare. And if they don’t why are they always reporting record profits?
The US auto sector is experiencing record profits? Since when did that start? There was a blip during covid but most have been down since 2008 or so.
The auto industry is absolutely not posting record profits
Too late, the ultracapitalists already won America. We’re all fucked.
That shit saved my car’s ass at least 2 times and ours once. Never interfered in normal driving (I’m no agressive driver though). This should definitely be forced upon manufacturers. But without relaying the cost onto the consumer.
The catch is these systems are expensive to build so they can’t be free. There’s also a huge difference between the system that brakes for another vehicle vs the one that stops because a toddler is behind the car. The latter is extremely expensive.
Sure they are. But considering that my car costs 7000 more since I bought it 2yrs ago, I’d say fuck you manufacturer. Take the extra profits you make, for no other reason than greed, for that. They will survive.
As long as I can turn it off I’m happy. The problem is when something screws up the sensors
@BrikoX Braking as a Service new subscription model dropped.
DJ! Drop the BaaS!
I hate it. But I can understand why people would want it. It often brakes when it feels I’m not braking enough etc but I’m keeping track of what’s in front and behind me and I would prefer that it didn’t.
My car gives a warning when it detects a potential collision.
Usually, it’s right before I start turning into a turn.
I get it, it’s 2-bit brain doesn’t realize that the car will not, in fact, drive straight into the wall.
It doesn’t realize that I have had my foot off the gas in anticipation.
I would really hate if the car would brake under those circumstances.
Treated myself to a used Q8 eTron, first nice car I’ve ever had. I must say, all the bells and whistles, adaptive cruise control that eases off the go pedal when a town comes up, night vision that warns if an animal has a vector crossing mine, hands off stop and go and all that works neatly.
Emergency braking together with night vision was hard on the brakes once before I even knew that a deer was even there. It crossed into the high beams fractions of a second later and every screen in the car and the HUD had a red triangle in it with a deer symbol while I was already hanging in the seat belt. Yeah, no shit, thanks engineers.
What I’m saying is: Apparently all that stuff can be made properly, manufacturers just choose not to.
Fair enough. I have an 8 year old Mercedes.
Perhaps I should get a newer car.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That way of thinking is called Eugenics dates back a long ways. It was very popular with certain government in the 30’s and early 40’s.
There is no scientific evidence to support it though. People are on average getting smarter and murdering part of the population via birth control or other means does not have an impact. In fact, it hurts diversity which harms society in the long term. Don’t fall for the easy trains of thought that create Nazis.
I wasnt actually calling for eugenics to be clear. I just don’t really care to go out of my way to protect stupid people from themselves. I’m all for warning them and telling them what they are doing is stupid but if they insist on it I’m not gonna stop em.
Like the guys that ride motorcycles without helmets in the states that still allow it. It is obviously an incredibly stupid idea but I say let em.
“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 need auto braking so I can scroll Ticktok”
Distracted driving is the core of the problem like you said. My experiences with other drivers proves that pretty hard.
Too many people are incapable of getting behind the wheel of a vehicle and committing 100% of their attention and energy into driving that vehicle.
I have my phone with maps to my destination and music playing but once I am driving I never touch the phone again. My family knows if they text me while I am driving I will never see it. They have to call me to get me to answer on my hands free if they need to get in touch with me while I am driving.
Even at stop lights I’m checking my mirrors constantly. I have avoided being rear ended twice by seeing someone coming up behind me with too much speed and then I jump outta the way into an open spot beside me.
Honestly I don’t even do that. I’m both Autistic and ADHD which means that I am very monotropic. I can’t divide my attention since I can only focus on one thing at a time. I also have time blindness so if I were to focus on something like the radio I would get distracted. (Which is probably what happens to a lot of people)
Ok you still literally talk about taking extraordinary risks while pretending you are more observant which is not something you can know.
You’re just a shitty driver.
Shitty driver that has no accidents. No tickets. Reduced insurance due to how safe of a driver I am. Only person in my entire extended family with absolute zero accidents or even minor fender benders.
Yup I must be a really shitty driver.
Just like a great ball player can be the GOAT and have no championship rings you can be a bad driver and haven’t had an accident yet.
Again all of this starts because you literally describe taking unnecessary risks while claiming to be “better” than others around you which you cannot actually know.
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.
