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Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

arstechnica.com

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Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#171

Post by ceejayoz »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #165
ceejayoz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a reduction in speed helps - 10 mph can make a significant difference in lethality - and sub in being rear-ended if you prefer. The point is even a perfect driver may benefit from safety devices in the hands of other drivers they encounter.

This is a good point, thank you. I don't think anyone here would argue against this feature if it was 100% accurate. However, mandating something that has many reports of erroneous activation seems like overreach.

Defective airbags blew shrapnel in folks’ faces, too. Anecdotes are of limited value here; I’m sure you can find the occasional person who has been trapped in a car by a seat belt and burned to death. Policy needs data, not unfalsifiable claims of being a perfect driver hobbled by computer interference.

The article notes:

> A metanalysis in 2015 found a 38 percent decrease in collisions for vehicles that utilized such a system, for instance.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#172

Post by solfox »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

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 th…

My MB van also has similar serious issues with buggy auto-braking. Once, while driving head-on into a bright sun, it decided it was time to apply full brakes while driving highway speeds on a busy highway, in a vehicle with a GVWR of around 9,500 lbs. That wasn't fun and could have easily caused an accident involving multiple cars.

My Tesla, which is probably the leader here, regularly makes mistakes - though never really to the point of forcing braking. Often it will warn me on my narrow street of objects like parked cars it thinks I will hit, but it seems a little more polished than MB.

If regulators want to force this on all car manufacturers, they really need to also mandate certain tests and features - plus OTA updates to recall any bugs... My guess is that most car makers just don't have the workforce to develop these features, so forcing them to roll them out will mean even worse bugs!

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#173

Post by dabluecaboose »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #99
dabluecaboose wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exclusively a "gearhead" opinion to not want a system in your car that can violently take control away from you unexpectedly Statistics are meaningless to the individual. Sure, emergency braking might be safer across the board, but that means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it.

> but that means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it. https://udayton.edu/blogs/erma/2022/06/lakewobegon.php My 'boomer' relatives refuse to wear a seatbelt, regardless of how many fines they've incurred, exactly because they already drive safely.

[flagged]

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#174

Post by jedberg »

I see a lot of comments in there in the lines of "it almost caused an accident!". Yeah, my AEB has misfired too, often when coming around a curve and it thinks I'm about to have a head on collision with the oncoming traffic even though we are both turning. Or when making u-turns with a car in front of me.

But it's never caused me to get hit. And more importantly, if the other cars around me also had AEB, then they too would get triggered.

Yeah, it's sometimes annoying when it misfires, but man, that one time it fired in a real situation definitely saved my life as I stopped inches from the car in front of me.

I'd take the minor annoyance of misfires over a crash any day. Especially if everyone has it.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#175

Post by tempestn »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

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 th…

Agreed here too. Pretty much all my experiences with these kinds of features have been poor. I turned off the emergency breaking on our Tesla after it slammed on the brakes for no reason on the highway a couple of times. Could easily cause someone to rear-end you. I also recall a Kia I rented once that had automatic lane keep assist and blind spot warnings. The blind spot warning was so sensitive that it would loudly beep at you if there was another vehicle anywhere near you in the other lane when you put your turn signal on. Not helpful, and quite distracting. The lane keep assist was worse, because the way it pulled on the wheel any time you approached the edge of a lane (which it turns out you do often in the course of regular driving for all kinds of reasons - another car crowding you, giving room to a cyclist, taking a smoother line through a corner, etc.) felt very much like losing traction. It was quite disconcerting, and I could see it causing someone to overcorrect and lose control. And to paraphrase Matt Farah, if you need assistance to keep in your lane, you shouldn't be driving.

All that said, I do like the autosteer on the Tesla, with the caveat that you need to treat it like cruise control, NOT like "autopilot". And I'll pretty much only use it on divided highways. In other situations its insistence in sticking to the dead center of the lane can be disconcerting at times (like the ones I listed above!)

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#176

Post by alephxyz »

uoaei wrote: post #141
taeric wrote: post #25

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…

A driver that drives unreasonably more slowly than the traffic that surrounds them is a bad driver. They cause traffic and create more chances for crashes -- after all, crash severity is directly proportional to relative speed between moving bodies.

But odds of rollover and braking distance are proportional to your absolute speed. So is crash severity when you're impacting a tree, animal or pedestrian.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#177

Post by pokerface_86 »

taeric wrote: post #25

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…

i intentionally purchased a car without any of these hanfisted “safety” features that take control of the car away from me. NEVER had an issue. sit close enough so that you can properly slam breaks to engage ABS as hard as automatic braking systems do, and don’t take your eyes off the fucking road. it’s not that complicated, and i’ll be damned if i let a car make that decision for me.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#178

Post by withinboredom »

ceejayoz wrote: post #95
dabluecaboose wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exclusively a "gearhead" opinion to not want a system in your car that can violently take control away from you unexpectedly Statistics are meaningless to the individual. Sure, emergency braking might be safer across the board, but that means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it.

> Statistics are meaningless to the individual. This is just blatantly untrue. > means little compared to an individual who already drives safely without it Until emergency breaking stops a bad driver from T-boning you in an intersection as they run a red light. “I’ll just drive safely” was the argument against seatbelts, airbags, and antilock brakes. Motorcycle helmets, too.

> > Statistics are meaningless to the individual.

> This is just blatantly untrue.

This statement is blatently untrue. If a "driver gets in an accident every X miles/km" does that mean if you drive more than X miles, you're "overdue?" No, that's a statistical fallacy. Aggregate statistics are only meaningful if you're within a standard deviation of the mean. If you are a safe driver, it's likely to be meaningless. If you are a reckless driver, you're unlikely to live long enough to find out.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#179

Post by peteradio »

ethanbond wrote: post #137
peteradio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

360 deaths is noise.

Was that determined by looking at the statistics or is this just your gut-reaction?

>>> math.sqrt(42939.0)

207.2172772719495

Not quite pure statistical noise but close.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#180

Post by ethanbond »

warkdarrior wrote: post #158
ethanbond wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that determined by looking at the statistics or is this just your gut-reaction?

I literally do not care about 360 deaths. Now if we get to 361 deaths, I am concerned and will raise my pitchfork.

Another interesting question is how many of the other 24,000 crashes were serious. And how many additional crashes wouldn’t have been avoided but would have had a lot of kinetic energy removed before impact.
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