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Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

arstechnica.com

461–470 of 512 posts

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#461

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…

Wanting to have control over the vehicle is not some "gearhead forum" thing at all. I barely care about cars and I still care about this. I'm the driver, I should be in control and there's literally no need to justify it any further. Anything that forcibly takes away control is automatically wrong from a basic human dignity perspective. I couldn't care less what governments or insurers think, I'm the goddamn human an…

This is a fine attitude for a closed course racetrack, but not appropriate on public roads given natural and universal fallibility.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#462
post #426
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human errors have killed many, many, many more.

It should be optional period. You want to save lives how about disable stolen cars, so joy ride Kias dont kill pregnant mothers. Imagine emergency braking a F-350 with a gooseneck and two tractors on it. Does not end well.

What if it being optional increases death statistics massively? Should we really be ideologically driven instead of relying on data and measurable effects?

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#463

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…

Afaik, insurance rates are heavily influenced by collision data.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#464
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> make cost/benefit tradeoffs that decrease the safety of those around them And yet we see that truck and suv purchases are through the roof with buyers regularly expressing the sentiment that they would rather be in a large vehicle to keep themselves and the other occupants safe. Generally the other side, which is fuck the pedestrians, cyclists, or other drivers who cannot afford to drive a full sized truck to starb…

> buyers regularly expressing the sentiment that they would rather be in a large vehicle to keep themselves and the other occupants safe

Yes. This is precisely why this sort of decision cannot be left to individual consumers -- the end result is an arms race of ever-larger vehicles and dramatic increases in fatalities for the rest of us.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there are more than two drivers involved: There is you, and the slow driver blocking traffic in the passing lane next to you. Then there are the 8 cars behind you, and at least one of those drivers is making everyone unsafe out of frustration. You can't do anything to change that driver's behavior. The situation persists until the system is altered.

Unfortunately, unless the frustrated driver is allowed to drive unimpeded at 100mph+, they will continue to be unsafe and make others unsafe. If there is enough traffic for you to be the slow car on the road, then that unsafe driver will be causing safety problems for all of you. Bottling them up in a line of cars going the same speed may be the safest course of action you can take for everyone.

That's very often not the case. Usually they just want to go 80 or 90, but are stuck going 63 because 2 drivers are aggressively passive.

Bottling up traffic is not safer! Every driver in a line who has to slam on their brakes, for whatever reason, subtracts the amount of available reaction time left to the driver behind them.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On my 21 Subaru I disable lane assist unless I’m on the highway. It’s too strong on the wheel, and there are too many construction related lane issues near me that have almost caused accidents for me multiple times.

Do you not have strength settings on the lane keeping? My 2020 Kia Telluride lets me control how strong the lane keeping is with 3 levels.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#467
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The majority of people killed in crashes are impaired by alcohol or drugs or both. 1/6 of all fatalities are pedestrians, and another 1/6 are motorcycles, despite only being 1/10 of all registered vehicles. There are tons of modes in this data. Assessing all crash fatalities as some sort of "general" problem you can target misses this fact. The single greatest thing you could do to reduce fatalities is to eliminate d…

Agreed that eliminating drunk and impaired driving is important. (For example, if there was a well-tested and reliable technology that could reduce drunk and impaired driving, I would be in favor of mandating it in new cars.)

But this is not mutually exclusive. For one thing, we can do two things at once. For another, automobile fatalities typically have multiple contributing causes. If we had stronger safety regulations around vehicle height, stopping distance, windshield visibility, etc then some number of the crashes involving alcohol or drug use might have been injuries or close calls instead of fatalities.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#468
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 son just got a job outside the house. He hated the looks of newer cars and with the current market a Honda Fit with 100,000 miles cost about as much as spent our current fit which was 30,000 when we got it. (Dealer had excuse why they didn’t have any new ones.)

We found a 1996 Buick Park Avenue for less than $5k and keeping it running might be an adventure in maintaining American cars but boy is it a sweet car and it gets 29 mpg on the highway which is not bad at all for a large car.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#469
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we care about reducing following distance, we should be lowering speed limits. A car doing 60 needs a much longer safer braking distance than one doing 45. Also, if you are following at a distance where an AEB activation will cause you to rearend the vehicle in front of you, you are too close to safely follow any vehicle, regardless of whether it has an AEB.

Depending on where you live, if you leave a big gap someone else will just fill that space and you're back to the "short following distance" mode again. Rinse and repeat...

And then when the car in front has to tap the brakes for whatever reason, the tailgater has to slam them to avoid a collision, the person tailgating them also slams theirs, and you get a wave of braking propagating backwards, eventually creating a traffic jam.

Re: Automatic emergency braking should become mandatory, feds say

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really interesting watching videos of emergency responders in my country (the UK) either showing how their advanced driving looks in practice, or in later stages of training when they're explaining their thoughts to an instructor as they work. Their progress through traffic is markedly faster without greatly compromising safety. They aren't making violent manoeuvres, they accelerate pretty aggressively but other…

Would love to know more

So for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmGDpUnlMas is people learning to drive an ambulance in an urban environment, so, they're under blue lights with a siren, they're authorised (while learning and after completing training) to exceed speed limits, and break various other rules, but they're being trained to do this safely (or at least, more safely than most people probably drive normally)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjkBchxT5kw is a solo, commentating live on his driving in a response car rather than an ambulance, again he's be authorised to break the rules.

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