3 ms·
> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over c
by Twirrim 10y ago
> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control.
Yes it is. Set your ego aside for a second, forget about how good or bad of a driver you are, and consider how long it would take anyone to move their hand back to the wheel and take control.
Lets be generous and assume half a second. 60 mph * 0.5 seconds = 44 feet, or roughly 3 car lengths before you've even begun to re-assume control of the vehicle, let alone take the appropriate action to handle whatever is going wrong.
- mafuy 10y agoFirst off, you should make a difference between driving alone on a small country road and being in heavy traffic on the highway. Either way, your calculation does not take into account that moving the hands happens in parallel with the critical (most time consuming) step, namely mental processing of the situation and deriving a resolution. So that makes no difference. You probably meant to say that the attention itself is missing for a split second? But that's something that can be said about car phones, eating food, etc, too. This is just within your individual responsibility, and this is what the law wants. It is, in fact, a risk-reward weighting. We can't use absolutes here ("not a single death is acceptable"), that would be ridiculous. The guy who wrote the parent comment explained that quite well. (not a tesla driver myself, I dislike driving in general and use my car very rarely)