Studies: Automated safety systems are preventing car crashes

glad to hear it! with everyone looking at their phone while driving these days, we need as much help as we can get. defensive driving isn't working like it used to.

 

100% agree people should stop poking glass while driving. Hell, I'm beginning to think that's the only reason people "want" or "need" semi or fully autonomous cars at this point. You know...safety without the inconvenience.

 

agreed. the younger generation is not locked into our historic 'car culture', which is a good thing.

 

It's not just phones, or alcohol. There's a lot of engrained bad habits:

tailgating
speeding
rolling stops
failing to yield
failing to signal

And mostly, just blind egotism, that you're the best driver, most entitled, and so on. Watch the autonomous cars, they drive cautiously, carefully. And they get where they're going, no problems.

 

what's wrong with rolling stops?

 

When you're all alone, completely: nothing. With any amount of cross traffic, and/or pedestrians: more.

FWIW, current almost no one does legal stops.

 

old habits are hard to brake.

 

But it's always the other guys that drives so bad...not me.

 

I've missed adjacent lane cars in my blind spot, more times than I care to admit. So far I've been lucky, and I'm working on it.

And a couple of times now I've tried to go forward when I'm still in reverse. That dang beep doesn't register. Maybe if it was a voice saying: "you're in reverse, you're in reverse, you're...". I never got confused with the regular shifter.

 

i can't turn my head anymore, i'm only allowed to drive in florida.

 

Stop signs are not suggestions. It's amazing how many accidents and close calls I've seen around the crosswalk and elsewhere from people who insisted they were safe drivers and it was perfectly okay for them to roll through. I see that issue the same as people who are talking or texting while driving. You only think you are a safe driver because you're unaware of most of the close calls you've been in.

 

From the top of the article that @Sooner Al linked to:



Is it true that all American cars have to have that written on their door mirrors? I've never seen it in any other country.

Wouldn't "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE BEHIND YOU!" be more informative?

 

I did some work a couple of years ago with a Chinese software company that develops these systems for a lot of Japanese, American and German car companies.

Once when I was meeting some directors of the company for lunch, there'd been something on TV in the morning about the ethical dilemmas facing the developers of such systems: the old "If the system has to choose between letting the driver die or running over ten people at a bus stop, what does it do?"

I suggested that the system needs to reflect the driver of the particular type of car. This company makes software for BMW, among other companies. I asked whether the BMW system would just choose to run over the people at the bus stop anyway, or at least drive through a puddle and splash them all, even if there was no risk to the driver. One of the directors later told me he'd passed this on to a BMW technology boss, who thought it was funny.

 

.... actually, though, and on a more serious note.....

Autonomous emergency braking is very common now, especially in German, Swedish and Japanese cars. Other collision-avoidance systems that can override the driver are starting to come in - Volvo's system that can avoid animals (except kangaroos) by automatically braking and steering around them is a case in point.

If this becomes more widespread, I wonder whether it would have an impact on attacks like Westminster Bridge, Finsbury Park, Nice and Las Ramblas? Could such a system make it impossible for the driver to deliberately drive into crowds? And if so, might it become compulsory, at least on rental cars and trucks?

 

Unfortunately, traffic fatality rates have risen significantly over the past three years. Conventional wisdom is pointing to distracted driving, in particular those little rectangular hand-held glass-screened devices that so many people are using. But I haven't seen any research to verify such a cause.

If the automated systems are helping, they are not yet keeping pace to fully offset the harms from those increasing distractions.

These issues have always been present, so are unlikely to be significant factors in the recent increase in highway carnage.

 

It was only on the passenger side mirror, and it was because that one was distorted to show a larger area but changed the distance perspective.

Now that I think about it, I don't recall it being on newer cars. Our Sable has it, but it is over 16 years old.