171–180 of 577 posts
I'd love to have a danger heat map displayed on a HUD while driving. Say a default green banner that goes red near a hot spot or even animates near a current hazard. Mostly it could use these same stats, but then be strident if anything unpredictable is detected nearby.
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Is there any vehicle that uses it's sensors to make a gentle suggestion about following distance? It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit. Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?
One of the few things I really don't like about my Subbie is that it tries to help braking. I'm all in for traction control and to some extent ABS, but braking hard and upsetting the car's balance when you don't need it is dangerous.
That drives me nuts. When you put x amount of force into the brake pedal, you should know you're going to get y amount of deceleration. Don't double the brake boost just because you decided it's an emergency due to some opaque criteria.
OK, now that you have this data, give me a "prefer safer routes" option in Google Maps navigation! While you're at it, give me an option to avoid unprotected left turns and to avoid making a left turn across a busy road where cross traffic does not stop. (But only during heavy traffic; it's fine when nobody is on the road.) Not only are these more dangerous, they're also more stressful and they also introduce annoyin…
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Maintaining a safe following distance is incredibly challenging on busy freeways where hard braking is often 'required'. Most people have likely found themselves in this situation: vehicle changes lanes in front of you; you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute. Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North Am…
If you think people are going to cut in front of you, provide a safety cushion large enough to account for that. Aggressive drivers almost universally will consume the forward part of the space cushion you leave. At most you will simply need to lift the accelerator to maintain space. The only time someone cutting in front of you should require hard braking is if they also brake hard. It does require patience to do th…
And from personal experience in some places, keeping such a buffer, in some traffic conditions would just literally be impossible. There are sometimes enough aggressive drivers such that they can just consume it faster than one would be able to create it. It is simply not always the case that you have sole power to create and keep the recommended buffer size (although very often it is and you can).
I keep a decent buffer whenever I am able, but at some point, you have to bow to road conditions.
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This is accurate in many ways. I use the auto cruise feature on my car frequently and I notice several things happen unless I set the distance as close as possible (which I don’t like to do. ). 1. In any amount of traffic above “a few cars” people will cut in front of me, sometimes two, negating the safe following distance. Regardless of speed. 2. If I have a safe following distance while waiting for someone to get o…
Just drive in the slow lane and you won’t have this problem. The people cutting in front of you rarely want to be in the slow lane.
In unknown roads/highways I can predict hard bumps/gaps by seeing dark oil spots in the middle of each lane.
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Just drive in the slow lane and you won’t have this problem. The people cutting in front of you rarely want to be in the slow lane.
I do drive in the slow lane frequently - and this still occurs. (My go to is to set my cruise 6-9 mph over the speed limit, if passing to smoothly pass and get back over, and spend as much time as possible in the slow lane. ) However - I will say most of the roads I’m on are 2 lanes of traffic. I will have to experiment and see if this doesn’t occur when there are 3 or 4 lanes.
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Tailgating is against the law. Tailgating causes hard braking. I recently pulled my travel trailer from OK to Charleston, SC and back. I never drive over 65 MPH for safety and MPG reasons. I always stay in the right hand, slow lane except if I have to take a left lane exit. Since I was always driving slower then everyone else, not once did I have to hard brake. Tailgating is a choice and a dangerous one. I was never…
Even that can be tricky, with the indecisive behavior people use when merging.
So much of road etiquette boils down to leaving adequate space so others can maneuver around you. Trying to optimize your travel by destroying any gaps as soon as they appear actually has the opposite effect.
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Maintaining a safe following distance is incredibly challenging on busy freeways where hard braking is often 'required'. Most people have likely found themselves in this situation: vehicle changes lanes in front of you; you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute. Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North Am…
I'm one of the faster drivers and I maintain a safe distance. (I usually have the most distance in rush hour.) It's very easy with adaptive cruise control or the other self-driving technologies that are on the market. The only people who cut too close to me are driving recklessly. That being said: If you're in the mode where people are constantly changing lanes in front of you, think a bit about how you're driving: O…
This is very state dependent, if we are talking about legality.
In WA state, for example, there is no "flow of traffic" law or similar. The limit is the limit, and any excess of the speed limit is illegal regardless of what all other drivers are doing. So even if the right/slow lane is going 100MPH through the 70MPH zone, you are legally expected to still go 70.
Thankfully we do have laws against left lane camping, but I rarely see it enforced.
I got one of those dongles from my insurance company that plugged into the ODB2 port and reported my driving habits. I was a bad driver. It would frequently beep at me to let me know that I had braked too hard. I was mystified. "What should I have done differently," I'd think, as I raged at the objective machine that judged me so. The next time my brother came to visit, he called mom. "Oh, and presidentender is a goo…
Is there any vehicle that uses it's sensors to make a gentle suggestion about following distance? It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit. Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?