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U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

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Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#161
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that many drivers feel uncomfortable being passed by other drivers. They translate that discomfort to being "Less Safe." Despite the fact that they are objectively much safer traveling at slower speeds. Not many people appreciate the difference in fatality rates between 65 and 85 mph. Fatality rates go from 20% to 70%. In addition, your ability to control your car in a minor collision at high speeds is hea…

I've read both of your links, and both fail to address one scenario and a question regarding it: If EVERYONE is driving 80 mph, is it more dangerous to be the one person deciding to drive 65 mph? Most studies and statistics either focus on speed alone OR being the ONE person driving 80 while everyone else is driving 65. Speed differential increases the frequency of crashes, and overall speed makes crashes worse. I po…

So you are arguing FOR speed governors which would keep everyone at the same speed?

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#162
post #156
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are movie plots. We know what happens in things like natural disasters: epic traffic jams because the roads have limited capacity and once people start thinking they can violate the laws they crash and make it even worse. Medical emergencies are more plausible but it’s a collection of edge cases: you have to be somewhere a long way from the hospital, without an ambulance, no traffic, and safe road conditions fo…

True, but on the other hand, it would only take one headline about people losing their lives while trying to drive off a bridge about to collapse at 20 kph to spark public outrage. We tend to be less sensitive to tragedies that occur due to an individual’s own bad decisions.

What about the tragedies that occur every day when speeders kill strangers, friends, and family? Currently about 33 deaths per day are caused by speeding. I have yet to find a person who died because they couldn't exceed the speed limit.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like when

Like when everyone else is speeding. If everyone is going 80 mph, then being the one driver actually obeying the 65 mph speed limit puts you and everyone around you in MORE danger. Would it be safer for everyone to be going 65 mph? Absolutely. I'm definitely not disputing that. But speed differential is more dangerous than speed itself. EDIT: To be more accurate, speed differential makes crashes more likely, but spee…

One thing to keep in mind is when is the breaking point? If one person drives 100mph, should every single driver match that speed? What about 90? 80? What is the cutoff?

There is a reason there are speed limits. They are the cutoff.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#164
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the path of a police car or ambulance, you are required to slow down and pull over to the right. Death rates per mile have a loose correlation to vehicle size. However, engine size has a high correlation to deaths per mile. Sports cars love to kill their drivers. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

I would encourage you to look more closely. Safest mainstream car is Chevy Bolt which (1) isn't bought by douchebags to show off (2) does 0-60 on 6.6 seconds, on par with muscle cars, exactly as I described.

So would you say that Chevy Bolt drivers tend to drive slower? And are thus safer? Why should douchebags be able to buy cars that drive 100+mph on public roads?

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#165
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all of the instances you mention, it is recommended that you use your brakes. NOT go faster. Who sees a toddler in the road and floors it? Are you avoiding rocket children?

In the situation described, I already charged lanes to avoid the toddler / deer / stopped car. The question is what I do about the incoming car I didn't notice. A) change back and hit the toddler B) do nothing, and have a fatal head-on collision C) hit the brakes, and have a non-fatal head-on collision D) speed up a little bit, so I can get back into my lane before the other car gets here

So, you are driving in such a manner that you cannot stop in time for toddlers, deer, or broken down cars. Perhaps if you were driving slower you would not need to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid road hazards?

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#166
post #12

All this technology has the effect of pushing up the cost of vehicles, often for questionable minor safety improvements. Is there a good analysis of why the road safety trend has gone the wrong way in the US lately?

I think there's one of two ways to make roadways safer: 1. Add these safety feature mandates that increase the price of vehicles 2. Move towards banning larger and larger vehicles and create limits on height and clearance for non-commercial vehicles. The latter doesn't seem politically popular, so the former is the only choice.

There's another way, which is far more cost-effective and particularly well suited to government action: build more public transportation.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#167
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the truck we had with it, it couldn't be disabled. We tried pulling the fuse but then the truck wouldn't start.

What truck?

It was a 26 foot International box truck.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#168
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like when everyone else is speeding. If everyone is going 80 mph, then being the one driver actually obeying the 65 mph speed limit puts you and everyone around you in MORE danger. Would it be safer for everyone to be going 65 mph? Absolutely. I'm definitely not disputing that. But speed differential is more dangerous than speed itself. EDIT: To be more accurate, speed differential makes crashes more likely, but spee…

One thing to keep in mind is when is the breaking point? If one person drives 100mph, should every single driver match that speed? What about 90? 80? What is the cutoff? There is a reason there are speed limits. They are the cutoff.

> If one person drives 100mph, should every single driver match that speed? What about 90? 80? What is the cutoff?

Completely irrelevant to my scenario. Let me try to be more clear.

If everyone is driving 65 mph, then the person driving 80 mph is in the wrong.

If everyone is driving 80 mph, then the person driving 65 mph is in the wrong.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#169
post #155
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's another significant problem. Any dense housing built near the city is, necessarily, corporate built, due to initial costs. The ability to own these units is disappearing [1], with much more profit being found by renting. This means that moving near a city is, almost always, a 100% loss, where you burn your housing cost every month, rather than building equity with something you can own some commute away. This…

> where you burn your housing cost every month As opposed to travel cost? (yes, it's a really stupid situation that renting a house is far more expensive than renting some money for thirty years)

My cheap gas car gets 40mpg on the freeway. With our roughly $5.30/gallon cost here, a 40 mile one-way commute is around $300/month. That's If free electric charging is available where you work, you can save even more by buying a low range, used, electric that nobody wants. I picked one up for $8k. The savings will pay it off in a few more years.

Re: U.S. to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles in 5 years

#170

Having driven a vehicle with automatic braking, I find myself experiencing no positive feelings about this proposal.

> Having driven a vehicle with automatic braking, I find myself experiencing no positive feelings about this proposal. This post seems useful. As in - there are really important experiences behind it that we should know about. Or better yet, experiences that lawmakers should know about. Or worse yet, experiences do know about and disregard because it's an election year.

> there are really important experiences behind it that we should know about

It was exactly what anyone with experience developing new automation might predict. The system seemed to do basically what it was designed to, and if we were ever about to rear-end someone it would likely have helped us do so less violently, but its false-positives were frequent enough and caused enough problems that I'm not convinced the driving experience was safer overall. It was certainly not less stressful!

One must continue watching the road, watching the other drivers, and trying to predict their behavior, as before - but one must also try to predict what the half-blind paranoid moron attached to one's brake pedal might do, so you can quickly react to its erratic spasms of deceleration and avoid causing a different sort of crash, after you find your car abruptly going somewhat the wrong direction or getting in someone else's way.

If I owned the car, perhaps, and had months to get acquainted with the robot's quirks, I might learn to anticipate its misunderstandings and compensate for them. In the rental I was driving, however, automatic braking was pure distraction.

Would the roads be safer if everyone used this technology? Well... there might be fewer rear-end collisions; but there would be more ambient chaos, vehicles abruptly braking for no apparent reason, leaving other drivers to react and compensate. The same quantity of danger, perhaps, only smeared out more broadly and thinly? Maybe that's a kind of an improvement, I suppose, but it does not seem like a better future so much as a messier one.

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