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My Volvo slammed on the autonomous brake yesterday for no discernible reason. Best guess was a leaf blew across the sensor.

losteverything 9y ago
"Avoid highway braking" was drilled into us as 15 year olds in drivers ed. That still is one sacred rule i swear by. Chain reaction braking, unnecessarily has caused many accidents (witnessed by me). Driving on I-95 in Florida you have (upgrades) where bridges are were built (limiting sight). Heavy congestion causes unnecessary braking. Several rear ends were witnessed on a trip north from the keys. Never highway brake. Im glad you posted this because it is good to know what cars may not respond the way a human was trained. Try braking on the Merritt parkway and see what happens
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  But when an accident due to highway braking occurs, the person in the following vehicle will always be considered at fault -- the person in front of you may brake hard for any reason good or bad, and if you collide into the back of that vehicle, you were following too closely, driving too fast, and/or not paying attention. The person in front may also be partially considered at fault if they didn't have a good reason, but the person following will always be considered at fault.
  - losteverything 9y ago
    My drivers ed class was taught by a lunatic (aren't they all?) that was ALL about safety. Especially defensive driving. Predicting possible outcomes, having an "out", seeing through cars, avoiding driving behind box trucks and much more Predicting what a driver will do is a large part of defensive driving.
  - matthewowen 9y ago
    Who is at fault matters... but it still sucks to be involved in a collision. Not being responsible is cold comfort, especially if it results in injury to passengers in your car.
jacquesm 9y ago
Happy nobody behind you slammed into you. Brake test without a valid reason is a liability.
losteverything 9y ago
Can you turn "off" that feature easily when you desire?
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Turning off safety features sounds like a bad idea. You can turn off the fusebox or circuit breaker in your house with a penny per circuit, but should you?
  - losteverything 9y ago
    Having a car be able to suddenly and unexpectedly brake hard to a full stop is not always safe. As op said s/he didnt know why Commuter and congested driving conditions by regular drivers assume a pattern of high speed. I do not want my car to have unconditional ability to brake when a computer thinks it should. Period. Yet... We are now in phases of non-human controlled vehicles and it is a safety requirement to know what outcomes a computer can place on a car going at high speeds. I would like to be able to create actions that cause my safety to increase against a computer assisted car. If decals (or any actions) make me safer because it makes a computer controlled car behave a certain way, then i will do it. (my next book: how to defensively drive against self driving cars...hmm. )
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      To torture my analogy, If a circuit breaker keeps breaking for unknown reasons the solution is not to use a penny (the equivalent of disabling the brakes). But rather to get professional to look at and fix the system. If the self driving feature can be completely disabled, that would be much better than just disabling the brakes. Then drive it to someone to fix the assistive driving tech instead of trying to use jerry rigged assistive driving tech.
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    If a blown fuse means that you have a significant chance of dying a rather gruesome death, then yeah, probably.
jsight 9y ago
This is my biggest worry with the current features, actually. A lot of people seem overly concerned about distracted drivers overlooking things and getting into rear end collisions that the car overlooks. I'm more worried about false positives causing unexpected hard braking and leading to an increase in high-speed rear-end collisions on the highways. These are really uncommon now, but could increase if false positives are common.
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Even if that does happen I think we would see corresponding decrease in head-on, T-bone and other more devastating collisions. Its like non-corrupt red light cameras, they do reduce red light running and do increase the number of accidents. They reduce fatal accidents but increase nearly harmless rear-end collisions. So property damage and loss of life are reduce, but speeders and tailergaters get the majority in my town because there are no pedestrians and no one thinks they will be the ones to cause an accident.

losteverything 9y ago

"Avoid highway braking" was drilled into us as 15 year olds in drivers ed. That still is one sacred rule i swear by. Chain reaction braking, unnecessarily has caused many accidents (witnessed by me). Driving on I-95 in Florida you have (upgrades) where bridges are were built (limiting sight). Heavy congestion causes unnecessary braking. Several rear ends were witnessed on a trip north from the keys. Never highway brake. Im glad you posted this because it is good to know what cars may not respond the way a human was trained. Try braking on the Merritt parkway and see what happens

bryanlarsen 9y ago
But when an accident due to highway braking occurs, the person in the following vehicle will always be considered at fault -- the person in front of you may brake hard for any reason good or bad, and if you collide into the back of that vehicle, you were following too closely, driving too fast, and/or not paying attention. The person in front may also be partially considered at fault if they didn't have a good reason, but the person following will always be considered at fault.
- losteverything 9y ago
  My drivers ed class was taught by a lunatic (aren't they all?) that was ALL about safety. Especially defensive driving. Predicting possible outcomes, having an "out", seeing through cars, avoiding driving behind box trucks and much more Predicting what a driver will do is a large part of defensive driving.
- matthewowen 9y ago
  Who is at fault matters... but it still sucks to be involved in a collision. Not being responsible is cold comfort, especially if it results in injury to passengers in your car.

jacquesm 9y ago

Happy nobody behind you slammed into you. Brake test without a valid reason is a liability.

losteverything 9y ago

Can you turn "off" that feature easily when you desire?

sqeaky 9y ago
Turning off safety features sounds like a bad idea. You can turn off the fusebox or circuit breaker in your house with a penny per circuit, but should you?
- losteverything 9y ago
  Having a car be able to suddenly and unexpectedly brake hard to a full stop is not always safe. As op said s/he didnt know why Commuter and congested driving conditions by regular drivers assume a pattern of high speed. I do not want my car to have unconditional ability to brake when a computer thinks it should. Period. Yet... We are now in phases of non-human controlled vehicles and it is a safety requirement to know what outcomes a computer can place on a car going at high speeds. I would like to be able to create actions that cause my safety to increase against a computer assisted car. If decals (or any actions) make me safer because it makes a computer controlled car behave a certain way, then i will do it. (my next book: how to defensively drive against self driving cars...hmm. )
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    To torture my analogy, If a circuit breaker keeps breaking for unknown reasons the solution is not to use a penny (the equivalent of disabling the brakes). But rather to get professional to look at and fix the system. If the self driving feature can be completely disabled, that would be much better than just disabling the brakes. Then drive it to someone to fix the assistive driving tech instead of trying to use jerry rigged assistive driving tech.
- yellowapple 9y ago
  If a blown fuse means that you have a significant chance of dying a rather gruesome death, then yeah, probably.

jsight 9y ago

This is my biggest worry with the current features, actually. A lot of people seem overly concerned about distracted drivers overlooking things and getting into rear end collisions that the car overlooks. I'm more worried about false positives causing unexpected hard braking and leading to an increase in high-speed rear-end collisions on the highways. These are really uncommon now, but could increase if false positives are common.

sqeaky 9y ago
Even if that does happen I think we would see corresponding decrease in head-on, T-bone and other more devastating collisions. Its like non-corrupt red light cameras, they do reduce red light running and do increase the number of accidents. They reduce fatal accidents but increase nearly harmless rear-end collisions. So property damage and loss of life are reduce, but speeders and tailergaters get the majority in my town because there are no pedestrians and no one thinks they will be the ones to cause an accident.