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Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

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Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#241

Post by _carbyau_ »

radlad wrote: post #101
presidentender wrote: post #20

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…

On the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign. Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I…

There is no upside to giving personal data to a for-profit company with a monolithic amount of money and a clear view of the statistics around any activity.

The incentives just don't line up.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#242

Post by Dylan16807 »

sagarm wrote: post #209
toxik wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is left lane driving policy. I am like this, and I was not at first. What makes you drive like this is rush hour traffic. "Move up the lane or move out of the lane" is the sentiment, basically. As others have noted, it is essentially an adversarial process. If you drive nice, people cut in front and you're unable to drive nice to both those behind you and in front.

Letting them "cut in front" is good driving.

If you have to keep significantly slowing down to get the gap back, that's perfectly nice to the people in front of you but it's not nice to the people behind you.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#243

Post by Dylan16807 »

codebje wrote: post #237
Dylan16807 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd also avoid a lot of accidents if we stopped the people that are doing lane changes for position-jockeying and no other purpose. So it's bad to be mad while driving, but there's a lot of lane changes that deserve the ire. (It's a tiny fraction of drivers that get really bad, but a less tiny fraction of lane changes.)

Being angry at them won't change their behaviour, but will make you more stressed. Remember: driving like that is its own punishment, because they'll be extremely angry and frustrated at everything. Between that and the realisation that driving 2% slower adds about 1 minute more per hour of driving you have to do, I find I can avoid stressing at people lane weaving and have a nicer journey myself.

> Being angry at them won't change their behaviour

Yes, but the comment above was about society collectively making a decision, so that's the context I responded in.

And while it's relaxing to not worry about your own exact speed, I don't see how that lets you avoid stressing about the people that are lane-weaving. They're acting dangerously and I need to be ready to react to them.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#244

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

grog454 wrote: post #21
avidiax wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some amount of that is inevitable, but there is another level of defensive driving where you anticipate poor behavior and arrange that it won't cause an accident. Have a look at a few dash cam accident videos [1]. There are many maladaptive patterns of behavior, but a frequent one that the average good driver can improve on is limiting speed on two occasions: when approaching a blind spot, and when passing stopped or…

The landing page video's first incident is a car coming from behind and from the right, cutting off the filming car. The filming car didn't react at all when instant (but measured) braking would've been safer to start building a distance buffer. One thing HPDE taught me is that most people under brake in dangerous situations because they simply don't know the limit of their vehicle nor the sensitivity range of the br…

> One thing HPDE taught me is that most people under brake in dangerous situations because they simply don't know the limit of their vehicle nor the sensitivity range of the brake pedal.

On any modern car, just push it all the way and let ABS and stability control figure it out, and don't let the vibrating brake pedal spook you into releasing it. That's just ABS doing its thing.

Really though, getting a license is too easy in the USA. We really need to require some sort of car control course, including obstacle avoidance in the rain. Would be really nice too if it included an obstacle avoidance course in two cars: A huge SUV or pick-up truck and a more reasonably sized sedan. So many drivers think they need a huge vehicle to be safe while being completely unaware of how well smaller cars can likely avoid the crashes to begin with. Would probably get really expensive really quickly, though.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#245

Post by observationist »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #213
mountain_peak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> vehicle changes lanes in front of you; I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people. Changing lanes is a necessary part of navigating, even during busy traffic. People on an on-ramp will need to get in front of somebody . People needing to move back to the right because their exist is coming up will need to get in front of somebody . Your lane is not a birth right. Let people merge. > you slow do…

It's considerate communication. Lurching into the next lane .08 seconds after the blinker first flashes says things like "Your life isn't worth the basic consideration and respect of communicating my intentions" and scales up to "I'll communicate, but you're not worth any sort of common courtesy" - that can be upsetting to people.

It doesn't even have to be real. There's huge room for miscommunication. Unpredictable movements and perceived aggression, or unwillingness to be considerate to other drivers on the road, there's a whole wealth of information being processed, regardless of how little is actually real.

Now add the total lack of accountability for the driver's emotional state (don't you love yelling at other drivers, completely free of judgement?), and you can see how things spiral into road rage so relatively easily, even if everyone involved is normally a pretty chill, rational person.

If you're tailgating or brake-checking, or being inattentive and sloppy, you're basically threatening people's lives with a few tons of high speed metal, even if you don't intend that at all.

Ideally, the rules of the road are meant to reinforce a mutual understanding of the game being played. Behavior occurring when expected, proper signaling, observing limits, and making the effort to communicate where possible is a signal that you and the other driver are both operating by the same set of rules, giving you both confidence that neither of you are going to be a danger.

I've seen little "cute" exceptions where locals develop a subculture of dangerous assumptions and then get aggravated when someone from out of town doesn't immediately get it. There are other areas where aggression and what amounts to flagrant disrespect are the norm, so you've always gotta be adaptive, but ideally you get people conspicuously following the same set of rules as a sort of game theoretic optimal strategy for driving.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#246

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

loeg wrote: post #218
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vehicle changes lanes in front of you; I will never understand why this is so rage-inducing for people. Changing lanes is a necessary part of navigating, even during busy traffic. People on an on-ramp will need to get in front of somebody . People needing to move back to the right because their exist is coming up will need to get in front of somebody . Your lane is not a birth right. Let people merge. > you slow do…

It's frustrating when it eats into your safe following distance. The driver merging in ahead of you is being dangerous and not leaving a safe following distance for themselves (or you).

When traffic is heavy, everyone is likely following at [what they perceive to be] a minimum following distance.

It's simply not possible to merge during heavy traffic without eating into someone's safe following distance.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#247

Post by ssl-3 »

its_magic wrote: post #202
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I was never honked at, even by the crazy semi truck drivers. Because you were towing a camper and "slow and in the right lane" fits people's mental model of how recreational/nonprofessional heavy traffic or otherwise "handicapped" vehicles ought to behave. When you have problems is when you behave to a standard beneath what other people expect from whatever kind of traffic you are.

In the Atlanta area I've experienced a few times people FLYING up on me in the right hand lane while I'm cruising along at a conservative, gas sipping 55 MPH in my old truck, blaring their horn at me like I'm some kind of maniac. I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

That's easy to deal with: They're behind you. Ignore them.

Setting the side mirrors based on the AAA method works for a lot of reasons, and it helps with this too. So does flipping the center mirror over to the dark side.

Out of sight, out of mind.

They can be elect to stay back there behaving however they want, or they can go around be however they need to be somewhere else.

If you just can't stand it anymore, then just hop off the highway. It can be a good opportunity to stop for some coffee or a soda. Or, you know: Just to get out of the car, stretch out the ol' legs, and taste that acrid city air, think about something or someone in the world that is beautiful for you, and chill down a second.

Or just go up one exit ramp and down the entrance ramp on the other side of the crossroad, if the intersection design allows this move to be made safely and conveniently.

They almost certainly won't follow. They'll instead be disappearing down the highway at warp speed the whole time you're doing this, and you'll probably never across them again in your entire life.

It only costs a few minutes. They may seem interminable, but they're few. The benefit is relief from the mounting agony of dealing with this aggressive driver that might otherwise stick with you the rest of the day and that's good for your brain health.

(And if they do follow after you give them every opportunity to not do that? It's not Hollywood or the national news and this actually doesn't happen much in the real world on an individual level, but: Call the police at 911 or 999 or 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 or whatever it is, and get some help.)

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#248

Post by stevage »

ChoGGi wrote: post #236
stevage wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently I just live in a place where it's not a common problem. Also I do tend to leave a big gap behind cars in front.

They salt your roads, or put grit?

They don't do either of those things, and yet somehow I haven't witnessed any cars sliding off the road in winter either.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#249

Post by _carbyau_ »

HoldOnAMinute wrote: post #35
presidentender wrote: post #20

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?

My car beeps at me far too much now. I am responsible, not my car so I want less distractions.

Instead of pretending to shift responsibility to the car, how about people do training every so often instead? Maybe every ten years for an hour or two.

The amount of work a young person has to do here to be able to obtain a "full license" takes literal years and multiple tests.

But then nothing for the rest of their life despite advances in technology (in and out of the car) and changed traffic conditions...

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#250

Post by its_magic »

stevage wrote: post #248
ChoGGi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They salt your roads, or put grit?

They don't do either of those things, and yet somehow I haven't witnessed any cars sliding off the road in winter either.

From everything you've said so far, it sounds like people in your area have a lot of sense.
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