Driver assist tools leading to disconnected drivers?

I've been considering a dash cam, I'm noticing more and more incidents of people cutting me up or nearly hitting me.

 

It's not that - it's that our limits are about the slowest in the world, particularly on our vast deserted open roads.

I always drive within the speed limit, but often wonder why they are set like they are. In Western Queensland, on good flat, dead straight roads where you're unlikely to see another vehicle for an hour or before the next town (of 22 people), the speed limit is a mind-numbing 100km/hr - in rare cases, 110km/hr which is the maximum in the country, with our vast distances. Our neighbouring state had "OPEN" speed limits on many roads when I first started driving - we drove cars which were poor by today's standards, on roads which were poor, at speeds much higher than today quite safely, I remember driving 130-140km/hr for hour after hour, which was close to the maximum speed of the vehicle. Then suddenly, on roads which now are much safer, in much safer cars they dropped them to 100km/hr limits, occasionally 110. No wonder people go to sleep at the wheel.

I agree with the need for limits in appropriate traffic conditions - one of my pet peeves is drivers in Shopping Centre carparks whizzing along at 40km/hr when the posted limit is 5 or 10.

There is often a RADAR van placed along a dead straight, 60km/hr 4 lane piece of road near me where, in 11 yrs I've lived here hasn't has a crash. It used to have an 80km/hr limit, but inexplicably was dropped to 60 and RADAR traps started. It's about 2km long, good visibility, and has a roundabout at both ends. The level of infringements (and accidents) around the roundabout is astonishing, but they never bother to police it, only midway along the super-safe road - that's a revenue raiser. Beyond one of the roundabouts is an On-Ramp to the Motorway, where the level of speed compliance is poor - I've had trucks overtake me on the shoulder at double the OnRamp speed limit - police response is "it's too difficult".

BUT - It's that they rarely say anything about "ANOTHER PERCENT Alcohol IS A KILLER" which is much more likely than one km/hr. There are often late night reports of a young person driving into a tree "at high speed". That is the headline. But when you drill down the report, they've spent a night drinking heavily at their mate's place first. And that isn't being monitored. I drive through at least a dozen speed monitoring RADARs a week, but I've only been in an alcohol breath test about 15 times in my whole 45 yrs driving time. They're not serious.

 

Thanks Alan. Interesting. A bit different from the UK. Apart from a few remote areas we are not blessed with vast deserted open roads!

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I remember seeing some TopGear, 5th Gear episodes where they were in some of your remote villages, with such narrow streets - probably on a scale which were great for a '20s Austin 7. I was amazed at them driving Jags, S Class Mercs & Lambos confidently (?) through them.

Quite different from our Western country towns (the dates are wrong, it was 2005, my camera battery was faulty):

This is Bedourie from the air - that's it, 250 people, very wide streets. Nearest town is 5½ hrs drive away, mostly gravel - and has 100 population.



The road goes on into the sunset - from memory it was straight for almost an hour at 100km/hr, then a slight bend.



Occasional hazards - kangaroos too at sunrise and sunset. These took about 10 minutes to clear - you just wait, the drover hasn't got brakes on his herd, which from memory was approx 1500 head.



You'd miss this town if you blinked - though the speed limit dropped momentarily.

 

I've had a very similar experience. As I was growing up Montana had a "reasonable and prudent" speed limit during the day, 65 mph at night. I remember going down a two lane highway at 85 mph in the driver's education car and the instructor not having any issue with it. Once I got a decent car I was going to and from college on the interstate at about 115 mph, stereo on, a beer in my hand (no open container law either). At some point an idiot argued successfully in court that "reasonable and prudent" was not a clear enough limit and the judge threw out the law. So for the longest time the same roads with now safer cars (and no more drinking allowed) had a limit of 75 mph. That really makes a huge difference when you're going over 400 miles. They just raised the limit up to an almost reasonable 80 mph within the last 12 months or so. The funny thing about it to me is it kind of cuts both ways, used to be 65 mph at night, now it's 80 mph at night. 80 mph truly is too fast in the dark with the amount of deer and prong horn on the highways. But during the day I don't think I'll ever be happy until we're back to triple digit speed limits.

 

But he did get his speeding ticket thrown out. Considering his equipment and experience and the conditions, if his speed wasn't "reasonable and prudent", than neither was yours. You could also have been ticketed for your speeds.

 

Maybe, but I never was so in the eyes of the officers on duty (rather than someone from out of state on the internet) my speeds were reasonable and prudent. The big difference between myself and ol' Rudy Stanko (a white supremacist and a convicted felon for intentionally selling tainted meat that federal inspectors rejected) is I was on wide open interstate, he was on a narrow two lane with frost heaves, is not protected and frequently sees ranch equipment. One ticket he was running 85 mph, and I believe that was the one that he won and got it thrown out with a 4-3 decision by the state supreme court. His other three tickets he argued stuck with him. One was violating reasonable and prudent at 102 mph and two careless driving tickets at 117 and 121, all on a two lane unprotected highway with frost heaves and frequent ranch equipment traffic. You should be careful who you support. While your heart might be in the right place, Stanko is not who you want to hold up as your poster boy.

 

I was just going to comment on Alanclarkeau's post about how one time while driving in Montana on Route 2 from West to East to get to my mother's hometown, Chinook, I had to stop myself from dozing off. The road is so straight! And every few miles, there was a cross on the road memorializing someone who went off the road. My husband was with me, so he helped to keep me awake. And this was in the middle of the day!

Had I been in my Prius, it would have urged me to stop for coffee somewhere.

I'm from the east and our roads are busy and twisty, so I'm not used to the long and straight and relatively quiet.

 

I hope that you are not asserting that your purer heart and cleaner record entitle you to greater leeway. It seems that you buzzed by different officers with different opinions on different roads.

My Montana relatives (I was born there) gave the story a much different spin, more similar to the court's writings:

"Although Officer Breidenbach expressed the opinion that 85 miles per hour was unreasonable at that location, he gave no opinion what would have been a reasonable speed, nor did he identify anything about Stanko's operation of his vehicle, other than the speed at which he was traveling, which he considered to be unsafe. ...
We conclude that operating a relatively new motor vehicle, which is concededly in excellent condition, at a speed of 85 miles per hour, on a clear day during daylight hours, on a dry road in rural Montana with no significant traffic in the area, is not so clearly prohibited by the speed restriction found in § 61-8-303(1), MCA, that Stanko lacks standing to challenge that statute for facial vagueness. ...
Since there is no evidence in this case that Stanko lost control of his vehicle, or that he endangered any other person or any other person's property, it is clear that he was arrested, charged, and prosecuted for operating his vehicle at a speed that Officer Breidenbach considered unreasonable.   The question is whether a statute which regulates speed in the terms set forth above gave Stanko reasonable notice of the speed at which his conduct would violate the law.
For example, while it was the opinion of Officer Breidenbach that 85 miles per hour was an unreasonable speed at the time and place where Stanko was arrested, he offered no opinion regarding what a reasonable speed at that time and place would have been.   Neither was the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer for the State, able to specify a speed that would have been reasonable for Stanko at the time and place where he was arrested. ..."

 

Nope simply saying Butch is (was? surely he's dead by now) an donkey and assholes don't make good poster boys. You could buy his book "The Score" to read if you like, but even the Church of the Creator distances themselves from him calling him an donkey and a conman. In terms of the speed limit, he simply didn't want to pay the fine and he found a way to con his way out of it.

 

Google shows him still making news earlier this year.

But I have no interest in any poster boy. The legal outcome was nearly inevitable, somebody somewhere was going to step in and force it.

 

Ditch driver assists like Full Speed DRCC? Forget that

Full speed DRCC can ease the ridiculously mundane, nauseating task of braking, gassing, braking, gassing 500 times in stop and go commute, EXTREMELY common in SF Bay Area and MANY places.

 

One driver tool that could lead to *more* connected drivers and safer driving would be a readout showing whether the car is a safe stopping distance from the card in front. Obviously cars with DRCC could easily be programmed to do this. Other cheaper cars could still have distance sensing without Cruise.
Does any manufacturer offer this? If not, I wonder why not?

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Maybe something like this at the rear, capable of connecting via cellphone towers to police, could get chronic tailgaters off the road: transmits your location, speed, the tailgater's distance and a JPEG of their front plate.

 

…but I'm not worried about it causing any accidents for me, since I am the sole driver of my car, although I do use Google Maps! …I am far more concerned about the other drivers who are not only sharing the road on which I'm driving, but might be distracted by their SmartPhone, kids, entertainment-centres in the car, or might have even handed over the driving to the supposed Auto-Pilot¹

¹ Tesla's description, not mine!

 

Drivers using autopilot have a 40% reduced chance of accidents.
That said, if you are worried about other drivers, wouldn't it be better if the other drivers had some sort of safety mechanisms? Perhaps mechanisms that would prevent them from hitting you when they are putting on their makeup

 

With the greatest respect, it always amuses me when people report statistics based entirely on recorded, historical observations as if they were laws of physics and set in stone; never to be adjusted or modulated. Of course, we all hope and expect that all so-called autopilot systems will only improve.