Grandmothely car almost killed us

I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.

 

Sometimes.
Not this time.

 

I’m not trusting that the Gen 5 Prius would actually stop on its own to avoid a collision. Hopefully I won’t need it. Mine seems to be a bit inconsistent when it comes to auto breaking. I did find the controls for adjusting the distance and isn’t there a way to adjust the sensitivity of the controls such as the lane assist? Was I just imagining this? I’m asking because the lane control feature works but definitely doesn’t over power me. I certainly have enough practice because of my swerving to avoid potholes.

 

I was going to say Mendel is the GOAT of egr cleaning but I guess he won't see this. Now that our ex governor and first term Trump cabinet member Rick Perry is advocating psychedelics I guess I will join his crusade instead.

 

I'm quite sure it won't stop in time to avoid a collision reliably. I've seen it failing to slow the car sufficiently, requiring panic stop braking.
Yes, I know; "the driver should always be prepared to take control."

 

I would never rely on it. Toyota Safety Sense 3.0 Pre-Collision is stated as providing an audio and/or visual forward collision warning and brake assist under “certain circumstances”. I guess this is why the warning sometimes comes on when there is no one in front of me and doesn’t come on at times when I would expect it to.

I initially was told the car would brake to a stop if a child or pedestrian abruptly ran out in front of or behind the car.

 

I had a similar experience but I agree putting more force on the steering overrides it.

On my 5th Gen Prime, I had a pretty unnerving experience while merging onto the highway.

I was in the merging lane with my left signal on. The lane directly beside me was completely empty, but in the next lane over (the middle lane), there was a truck. As I started to merge into the empty lane, the car kept nudging me back, as if it thought I was going to collide with the truck even though there was a whole lane of space in between us.

It got a bit scary since I was already at highway speed and the merge lane was ending quickly. Eventually, I applied more force to the steering wheel, and at that point the car stopped fighting me and let me merge safely.

 

It will - here's a video of some tests I posted on another thread a few days ago. (First half of the video, after the crash test clips at the start).

Although obvious there are limits to its ability to cope with situations and it can't beat the laws of physics.

 

FWIW, [sic] is written in square brackets.

 

That sounds like electronic stability control (ESC) found in cars since the early 2000s. If you really had a grandmotherly car without ESC, you would have gone off the road and crashed really badly when you steered abruptly at 80 mph.

 

Stability control's function is to correct skids and make the car obey steering inputs. If anything it would have made him steer into the barrier more cleanly. (Once he'd started skidding, which it doesn't sound like he was.)

It sounds like a safety function that detected surroundings to me.

But yeah, maybe he turned so hard he induced a front wheel skid, and it tried to moderate.

Haven't got the blurb for the G5, but the old G2 VSC+ NCF describes the function thus:

All of this does highlight the downside of modern smart cars - neither the driver nor those he relays the story to can be certain of why it took the action it did.

But the upside is that he's fine, so no obvious system failure. Maybe it prevented a serious accident, maybe it interfered unnecessarily, but there was no accident.

 

It has little to do with knowing how to drive. This is what would have happened if you turned off ESC. In fact, you would probably be worse off because the driver in the video is a professional driver.

 

Thanks for posting this video. I knew I had seen it somewhere.

 

In Minnesota at least you are "discouraged" from changing lanes across a solid white line between lanes but it's not forbidden. Double solid white lines are another matter. There lane changes are prohibited. (See p. 81 in the Minnesota Drivers Manual)

 

It really doesn't matter if there's no enforcement; part of the reason more drivers are ignoring the basic rules of the road.

 

They don’t patrol. They don’t enforce. And they drive recklessly themselves.

CHP faces legal action over crash on 605 Freeway in Norwalk that killed 4—ABC7 Los Angeles