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>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% o

>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% of midrange cars. There's a US auto industry goal of it being standard by 2022. That's probably the main feature needed for self-driving cars to coexist with human-driven cars. I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. Most times when I hear about people getting rear-ended it's because the driver behind them was looking at their phone or otherwise distracted. We shouldn't invent features that allow that to continue. On the other hand, I think this is fine in some rare cases, like maybe an accident or some other incident happens up ahead, a driver stomps their brakes, and then the person behind them who doesn't know what's happened doesn't stop soon enough. But even for the latter case, you could argue that the DMV says to keep enough distance where in most cases you should be able to still come to a stop with barely a moment's notice as long as you're paying enough attention. Of course, most people don't leave that much space much, if ever.

Waterluvian 6y ago
I support tackling this problem with both your solutions. But I certainly wouldn't bet my money on yours.
derekp7 6y ago
Unfortunately, current cars have to be controlled by humans, and the human brain has certain characteristics (selected for by evolution) that makes it near impossible for it to be able to react to 100% of the driving situations. There are built-in efficiency circuits (similar to CPU branch prediction) that takes immediate action based on what it typically sees. So if 99.9999% of the time, when a car in front starts to accelerate, and doesn't slam on the breaks immediately after, the brain makes the assumption that the care in front will never slam on the breaks and devotes less brain-CPU time to "Oh No, that care in front just slammed on the breaks" processing. In general, human drivers don't do this unless they are very inexperienced. You don't mash on the gas and immediately mash on the breaks, instead you make sure there is nothing coming. If you can't see well enough that there is something coming, then you ease up slowly and only mash on the gas when you have enough information that you won't get side swiped going through the intersection. And yes, intersections that have a "stop line" far enough back that you can't see cross traffic are poorly designed. Or if cars are really expected to stop every time before a crosswalk, then advance 2 feet to stop again, this needs better enforcement so that activity becomes normalized to the point where the car behind would expect that (one way of doing this is to put two stop signs, one before the sidewalk, and one at the intersection).
- pas 6y ago
  ... but isn't rush hour traffic basically that? Car in front of you starts to move forward then sometimes suddenly stops. People usually have experience with this, though it's a whole other category compared to entering a seemingly empty intersection as the second car and the first car slams the brakes because it turns out the intersection wasn't empty.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    > but isn't rush hour traffic basically that? Car in front of you starts to move forward then sometimes suddenly stops It may be sudden but it's also predictable. The participants know that the car in front of them will stop, possibly quickly and are prepared. A car (human or AI piloted) stepping on the brakes in the middle of a green light because a pedestrian anticipating the car's departure from the intersection began to step off the curb is far less predictable and arguably violated established traffic behavioral norms. Predictable traffic is safe traffic.
mindslight 6y ago
> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. I know we're talking about California here, but the other straightforward explanation is that self driving cars are braking unpredictably compared to regular traffic, possibly when other drivers have judged that they wouldn't possibly need to brake. Such accidents are only the fault of the rear car in a simplistic prima facie sense. Unexpectedly stomping on one's brakes in a fit of road rage is generally seen as causing any resulting accident, as should overzealous braking by a self driving vehicle that isn't following the norms of the road. For example, from the Waymo report of February 16, 2021: > While in autonomous mode, the Waymo AV was stopped at a red traffic light at the unprotected intersection of 16th Street and Market Street. After the traffic light turned green, the Waymo AV began to proceed and then came to a stop as it yielded to oncoming traffic also entering the intersection. A passenger vehicle behind the Waymo AV then made contact with the stationary Waymo AV’s rear bumper This could have been the Waymo turning left and needing to yield to oncoming traffic, OR it could have been the Waymo going straight through the intersection and slamming on its brakes due to someone coming in from the right that hadn't stopped before the Waymo's judgement margin. It seems impossible to tell from the accident report, but the two have very different root cause analyses.
- Animats 6y ago
  That's better performance than most humans. Look at 16th and Market.[1] It's a 6-way intersection. Visibility to the left is very poor. The stop line is half a block back from Market Street. It's not even visible that there's a second street coming in from the left. The Waymo planner is very aware of where its scanning is blocked, and makes worst-case assumptions about what it can't see. The mapping system knows there are 6 streets here, one of which is totally hidden at intersection entry. It's permitted to turn right on red from northbound Noe to Market, but not from northeast-bound Market to 16th. So traffic from Noe gets stuck in its dedicated turn lane within the intersection. That traffic is supposed to wait and turn right, but it's quite possible that Waymo's system doesn't trust it to do so. This intersection also has dedicated bike lanes and a streetcar track. It had 7 accidents with 4 injuries in 2018. It's hard to fault Waymo's system for cautious driving in that intersection. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.76429991,-122.43305656,39.49879467a,212.87053571d,35.00007495y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@37.76429991,-122.43305656,39.4...
dheera 6y ago
When do the automatic emergency brakes kick in? Normally you're supposed to maintain at least 5 cars distance on the highway -- will it brake to always maintain that, eliminating those idiot tailgaters? :)
walrus01 6y ago
> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. If I had a dollar for every person I see driving around in thick rain, or in full darkness with their lights off, I could probably buy a nice new macbook air. It's truly shocking how many people are far from alert and observant while driving. Either because they really don't care, or they've been conditioned to take driving very casually. I use the number of cars I see driving with their lights off as sort of a gauge of how many 'bad' drivers might be on the road, in a 4-5km radius, at any given time... And it's a percentage that is too damn high. My working theory being that if people are putting a car into gear and getting into traffic without checking that their lights are on first, they're probably far from alert and ready in all other driving scenarios as well.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  This is more of a problem caused by emissive displays replacing traditional gauge clusters. There is no longer any feedback in low light conditions from illegible gauges forcing you to turn on the lights. Automatic headlights (without needing a selectable auto mode) should be mandatory on every vehicle with such a display.
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  I don't know, I was trained in the navy to drive ships and sometimes I have a near accident when driving my car, and a car is way easier to drive. I think people are just imperfect and sometimes have accidents, so we should allow for that when engineering tech.
SkyPuncher 6y ago
> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. I know everyone considers themselves to be a good driver. I consider myself to be a relatively good driver and generally keep very conservative follow distances (no reason to be on someones bumper). Even when paying attention, I've been in situations where I've had to apply the brakes harder than I should have to avoid a rear end. Sometimes you just don't read the situation correctly and need to play catchup.
- zip1234 6y ago
  The reality is that average human reaction times at speed are not very good and many people do not care to pay much attention or even follow the rules of the road. Most roads are also not designed for safety. They are usually designed for speed/throughput.
freddie_mercury 6y ago
Any solution that relies on "let's just make humans beings better" is basically doomed to failure and little more than hand wringing and virtue signalling. Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".
- enjeyw 6y ago
  While you may be correct in this case, I'm not sure what you're claiming is generally true. An equally valid observation is "trying to address social problems with technical solutions is doomed to failure". I wouldn't advocate for solving my country's domestic violence issues with technology for example - a shift in social norms addresses the underlying issue and is far more likely to be long-term effective.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  > Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better". I disagree, given how standards for getting a driver's license are different between countries and getting more and more tighter. In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Over here, you need a driving instructor in an adapted car (dual controls), and depending on how well you pick it up, spend anywhere between 15 and 50 (or sometimes more) hours practicing driving and traffic rules. There's a written / theoretical exam you have to study for (traffic rules), then a practical exam with an examiner. In my case, it cost me about €2500 in lessons to get my driver's license. Then I spent another €1500 or so on top of that to get my motorcycle driver's license, where there's even more emphasis on personal safety and safe driving. With that in mind, I'm confident in my claim that Dutch drivers are better than American ones.
  - javagram 6y ago
    > In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Be cautious about believing TV drama is realistic. States I’m familiar with require 30 hours of licensed classroom instruction and 6 hours of licensed driving instruction beyond the training via a parent or other adult. In any case, no amount of training seems to stop people from using their phone while driving.
T-hawk 6y ago
That last point isn't a "you could argue" or "most cases", it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault and it's always their responsibility to leave enough space and time to react and stop safely. If the lead car braked when there was no reason or danger, that driver might also be cited for recklessness or some such, but a rear-end collision is always an error by the rear driver.
- pas 6y ago
  No, it's more complicated than that. If someone cuts in front of you and you end up rear-ending them, it's not your fault. See all the fucking break-check idiots. (And the videos when someone does it to a car, which then turns out to be a cop.) That said, yes, in theory you have to be alert, as the car in front of you can at any moment do something unexpected. (Eg. the driver falls asleep and crashes into the barrier.)
  - enko123 6y ago
    There's also an insurance scam where the driver slams on the brakes for no reason on the highway hoping you rear-end them literally was 50mph to 0. I barely dodged that one, since I allow 3-lanes of stopping distance, but I still needed to swerve toward the median, and the guy behind me hit me, and behind him hit him and behind him hit him.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  > it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault a Rear ending being the rear car's fault is a norm of the insurance industry that is used to settle disputes in the absence of other information. Furthermore, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions the government specifically does not establish "fault" for routine vehicle accidents (the government generally only decides matters of fault inside a court room) and the paperwork that comes with a police report of an accident usually says something along the lines of "we don't establish fault, just record the facts" prominently on it.
  - _nalply 6y ago
CobrastanJorji 6y ago
Please tell me more about this "proper education of being observant." Do you believe such a thing exists? Does it reliably make people consistently observant? Would it work on me? I would pay a lot of money for such a thing.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  Indeed, this is a "take my money", "I'll subscribe to your newsletter" kind of breakthrough that I would dearly like to see everywhere (and in myself!), not just in the context of driving cars.
- dataduck 6y ago
  I understand this was supposed to be sarcastic but I've been informally working on this for years. I have a technique which seems to work wonders with students but I haven't the resources to test it scientifically, so do with this information as you will. The technique is simple: ritually venerate the thing you wish to be more observant of, and never denigrate its value. So in the case of traffic stopping, have a thing that you do whenever you notice it (e.g. tap your braking foot), even while you're not driving, and never ever look at your phone whilst driving. Another way of thinking about it (if you don't like the word ritual), is as a variant of the Alexander technique: whenever you notice that thing, consciously note that you noticed it, and emotionally reward yourself for doing so. I'm not sure where this fits on the scale of "outrageous quackery" to "blindingly obvious" but it seems to be news, and also useful, to fifteen year olds.
- shalmanese 6y ago
  Yes, there are defensive driving courses offered at most racing schools and they're generally a prerequisite for taking more advanced racing courses but are also pitched as a terminal course for people who simply want to improve their daily driving skills. They'll take you through some of the basic theory of safer driving and then take you out onto the track to practice some basic defensive maneuvers. People who take the course generally say that it has real, long term effects on their driving as it provides them a mental framework for how to evaluate traffic from a fundamentally defensive perspective and they find themselves practicing the same skills decades after they've taken the courses. I'm not aware of any long term, longitudinal studies on whether defensive driving courses decrease raw accident rates but any study would be tricky to do since people who self select for defensive driving courses are likely to have any number of confounds that would make observational studies less than clear.
mschuster91 6y ago
> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. The problem: on long stretches of road, especially with tunnels or trees acting as side wall, human biology gets in the way - we literally don't perceive stuff happening properly anymore (and as usual, German has a word for it: Tunnelblick, tunnel vision). The additional factors of people being (too) tired to drive or stressed out by children, traffic jams etc. also won't disappear no matter how much enforcement there is... the only thing that enforcement can suppress is phone usage and drug usage. Better safety systems save lives!
- bkor 6y ago
  > The problem: on long stretches of road In Netherlands some of those are mitigated. Long straight roads have found to be more accident prone (doesn't matter if it's a highway or some local street). So infrastructure now tries to avoid such long stretches. It won't solve it, it's the Swiss cheese model of airplanes (try to allow multiple things to go wrong before it results in a failure/accident).
nitwit005 6y ago
> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. You'd have to give people whole new brains. My grandmother had a condition where her eyes forced shut, completely out of her control. She insisted she could still drive without issue. She ignored multiple friends and family telling her she'd murder someone. Last Saturday I had to dodge out of the way of a car (fortunately moving very slowly). The woman driving was staring in my direction at me as I waved my arms. That she nearly ran me over eventually clicked and she rolled down her window to appoligize.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
While I agree, people are unpredictable. Second, even when they are paying attention they may still react too slowly. Even when there's a competent driver at the wheel paying attention, crash prevention systems can still outperform them. Anyway, I don't think the goal is to prevent accidents entirely; that would be ideal, but it'll be really hard. More important is to prevent injury and death. A car is just hardware, that's what insurance is for in the end. In that regard, even without automation, cars have gotten safer over the decades with roll cages and airbags everywhere.
wing-_-nuts 6y ago
I'm certainly not blaming the victim for getting rear ended, but I've noticed that a lot of people brake a lot harder and more suddenly than needed. It's easy to see how that can lead to getting rear ended, even if the other driver is only distracted for a second. I try to spread my braking over the space I have to do so. Lower braking force over a longer time is much safer. It both gives people more time to react, and if a collision does occur the speed differential is lower, and less damage will occur. This doesn't save you from getting rear ended while stopped, but that's a minority of rear endings from what I have seen.

Waterluvian 6y ago

I support tackling this problem with both your solutions. But I certainly wouldn't bet my money on yours.

derekp7 6y ago

Unfortunately, current cars have to be controlled by humans, and the human brain has certain characteristics (selected for by evolution) that makes it near impossible for it to be able to react to 100% of the driving situations. There are built-in efficiency circuits (similar to CPU branch prediction) that takes immediate action based on what it typically sees. So if 99.9999% of the time, when a car in front starts to accelerate, and doesn't slam on the breaks immediately after, the brain makes the assumption that the care in front will never slam on the breaks and devotes less brain-CPU time to "Oh No, that care in front just slammed on the breaks" processing. In general, human drivers don't do this unless they are very inexperienced. You don't mash on the gas and immediately mash on the breaks, instead you make sure there is nothing coming. If you can't see well enough that there is something coming, then you ease up slowly and only mash on the gas when you have enough information that you won't get side swiped going through the intersection. And yes, intersections that have a "stop line" far enough back that you can't see cross traffic are poorly designed. Or if cars are really expected to stop every time before a crosswalk, then advance 2 feet to stop again, this needs better enforcement so that activity becomes normalized to the point where the car behind would expect that (one way of doing this is to put two stop signs, one before the sidewalk, and one at the intersection).

pas 6y ago
... but isn't rush hour traffic basically that? Car in front of you starts to move forward then sometimes suddenly stops. People usually have experience with this, though it's a whole other category compared to entering a seemingly empty intersection as the second car and the first car slams the brakes because it turns out the intersection wasn't empty.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  > but isn't rush hour traffic basically that? Car in front of you starts to move forward then sometimes suddenly stops It may be sudden but it's also predictable. The participants know that the car in front of them will stop, possibly quickly and are prepared. A car (human or AI piloted) stepping on the brakes in the middle of a green light because a pedestrian anticipating the car's departure from the intersection began to step off the curb is far less predictable and arguably violated established traffic behavioral norms. Predictable traffic is safe traffic.

mindslight 6y ago

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. I know we're talking about California here, but the other straightforward explanation is that self driving cars are braking unpredictably compared to regular traffic, possibly when other drivers have judged that they wouldn't possibly need to brake. Such accidents are only the fault of the rear car in a simplistic prima facie sense. Unexpectedly stomping on one's brakes in a fit of road rage is generally seen as causing any resulting accident, as should overzealous braking by a self driving vehicle that isn't following the norms of the road. For example, from the Waymo report of February 16, 2021: > While in autonomous mode, the Waymo AV was stopped at a red traffic light at the unprotected intersection of 16th Street and Market Street. After the traffic light turned green, the Waymo AV began to proceed and then came to a stop as it yielded to oncoming traffic also entering the intersection. A passenger vehicle behind the Waymo AV then made contact with the stationary Waymo AV’s rear bumper This could have been the Waymo turning left and needing to yield to oncoming traffic, OR it could have been the Waymo going straight through the intersection and slamming on its brakes due to someone coming in from the right that hadn't stopped before the Waymo's judgement margin. It seems impossible to tell from the accident report, but the two have very different root cause analyses.

Animats 6y ago
That's better performance than most humans. Look at 16th and Market.[1] It's a 6-way intersection. Visibility to the left is very poor. The stop line is half a block back from Market Street. It's not even visible that there's a second street coming in from the left. The Waymo planner is very aware of where its scanning is blocked, and makes worst-case assumptions about what it can't see. The mapping system knows there are 6 streets here, one of which is totally hidden at intersection entry. It's permitted to turn right on red from northbound Noe to Market, but not from northeast-bound Market to 16th. So traffic from Noe gets stuck in its dedicated turn lane within the intersection. That traffic is supposed to wait and turn right, but it's quite possible that Waymo's system doesn't trust it to do so. This intersection also has dedicated bike lanes and a streetcar track. It had 7 accidents with 4 injuries in 2018. It's hard to fault Waymo's system for cautious driving in that intersection. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.76429991,-122.43305656,39.49879467a,212.87053571d,35.00007495y,0h,0t,0r https://earth.google.com/web/@37.76429991,-122.43305656,39.4...

dheera 6y ago

When do the automatic emergency brakes kick in? Normally you're supposed to maintain at least 5 cars distance on the highway -- will it brake to always maintain that, eliminating those idiot tailgaters? :)

walrus01 6y ago

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. If I had a dollar for every person I see driving around in thick rain, or in full darkness with their lights off, I could probably buy a nice new macbook air. It's truly shocking how many people are far from alert and observant while driving. Either because they really don't care, or they've been conditioned to take driving very casually. I use the number of cars I see driving with their lights off as sort of a gauge of how many 'bad' drivers might be on the road, in a 4-5km radius, at any given time... And it's a percentage that is too damn high. My working theory being that if people are putting a car into gear and getting into traffic without checking that their lights are on first, they're probably far from alert and ready in all other driving scenarios as well.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
This is more of a problem caused by emissive displays replacing traditional gauge clusters. There is no longer any feedback in low light conditions from illegible gauges forcing you to turn on the lights. Automatic headlights (without needing a selectable auto mode) should be mandatory on every vehicle with such a display.
lambda_obrien 6y ago
I don't know, I was trained in the navy to drive ships and sometimes I have a near accident when driving my car, and a car is way easier to drive. I think people are just imperfect and sometimes have accidents, so we should allow for that when engineering tech.

SkyPuncher 6y ago

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. I know everyone considers themselves to be a good driver. I consider myself to be a relatively good driver and generally keep very conservative follow distances (no reason to be on someones bumper). Even when paying attention, I've been in situations where I've had to apply the brakes harder than I should have to avoid a rear end. Sometimes you just don't read the situation correctly and need to play catchup.

zip1234 6y ago
The reality is that average human reaction times at speed are not very good and many people do not care to pay much attention or even follow the rules of the road. Most roads are also not designed for safety. They are usually designed for speed/throughput.

freddie_mercury 6y ago

Any solution that relies on "let's just make humans beings better" is basically doomed to failure and little more than hand wringing and virtue signalling. Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".

enjeyw 6y ago
While you may be correct in this case, I'm not sure what you're claiming is generally true. An equally valid observation is "trying to address social problems with technical solutions is doomed to failure". I wouldn't advocate for solving my country's domestic violence issues with technology for example - a shift in social norms addresses the underlying issue and is far more likely to be long-term effective.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
> Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better". I disagree, given how standards for getting a driver's license are different between countries and getting more and more tighter. In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Over here, you need a driving instructor in an adapted car (dual controls), and depending on how well you pick it up, spend anywhere between 15 and 50 (or sometimes more) hours practicing driving and traffic rules. There's a written / theoretical exam you have to study for (traffic rules), then a practical exam with an examiner. In my case, it cost me about €2500 in lessons to get my driver's license. Then I spent another €1500 or so on top of that to get my motorcycle driver's license, where there's even more emphasis on personal safety and safe driving. With that in mind, I'm confident in my claim that Dutch drivers are better than American ones.
- javagram 6y ago
  > In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Be cautious about believing TV drama is realistic. States I’m familiar with require 30 hours of licensed classroom instruction and 6 hours of licensed driving instruction beyond the training via a parent or other adult. In any case, no amount of training seems to stop people from using their phone while driving.

T-hawk 6y ago

That last point isn't a "you could argue" or "most cases", it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault and it's always their responsibility to leave enough space and time to react and stop safely. If the lead car braked when there was no reason or danger, that driver might also be cited for recklessness or some such, but a rear-end collision is always an error by the rear driver.

pas 6y ago
No, it's more complicated than that. If someone cuts in front of you and you end up rear-ending them, it's not your fault. See all the fucking break-check idiots. (And the videos when someone does it to a car, which then turns out to be a cop.) That said, yes, in theory you have to be alert, as the car in front of you can at any moment do something unexpected. (Eg. the driver falls asleep and crashes into the barrier.)
- enko123 6y ago
  There's also an insurance scam where the driver slams on the brakes for no reason on the highway hoping you rear-end them literally was 50mph to 0. I barely dodged that one, since I allow 3-lanes of stopping distance, but I still needed to swerve toward the median, and the guy behind me hit me, and behind him hit him and behind him hit him.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
> it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault a Rear ending being the rear car's fault is a norm of the insurance industry that is used to settle disputes in the absence of other information. Furthermore, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions the government specifically does not establish "fault" for routine vehicle accidents (the government generally only decides matters of fault inside a court room) and the paperwork that comes with a police report of an accident usually says something along the lines of "we don't establish fault, just record the facts" prominently on it.
- _nalply 6y ago

CobrastanJorji 6y ago

Please tell me more about this "proper education of being observant." Do you believe such a thing exists? Does it reliably make people consistently observant? Would it work on me? I would pay a lot of money for such a thing.

yourapostasy 6y ago
Indeed, this is a "take my money", "I'll subscribe to your newsletter" kind of breakthrough that I would dearly like to see everywhere (and in myself!), not just in the context of driving cars.
dataduck 6y ago
I understand this was supposed to be sarcastic but I've been informally working on this for years. I have a technique which seems to work wonders with students but I haven't the resources to test it scientifically, so do with this information as you will. The technique is simple: ritually venerate the thing you wish to be more observant of, and never denigrate its value. So in the case of traffic stopping, have a thing that you do whenever you notice it (e.g. tap your braking foot), even while you're not driving, and never ever look at your phone whilst driving. Another way of thinking about it (if you don't like the word ritual), is as a variant of the Alexander technique: whenever you notice that thing, consciously note that you noticed it, and emotionally reward yourself for doing so. I'm not sure where this fits on the scale of "outrageous quackery" to "blindingly obvious" but it seems to be news, and also useful, to fifteen year olds.
shalmanese 6y ago
Yes, there are defensive driving courses offered at most racing schools and they're generally a prerequisite for taking more advanced racing courses but are also pitched as a terminal course for people who simply want to improve their daily driving skills. They'll take you through some of the basic theory of safer driving and then take you out onto the track to practice some basic defensive maneuvers. People who take the course generally say that it has real, long term effects on their driving as it provides them a mental framework for how to evaluate traffic from a fundamentally defensive perspective and they find themselves practicing the same skills decades after they've taken the courses. I'm not aware of any long term, longitudinal studies on whether defensive driving courses decrease raw accident rates but any study would be tricky to do since people who self select for defensive driving courses are likely to have any number of confounds that would make observational studies less than clear.

mschuster91 6y ago

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. The problem: on long stretches of road, especially with tunnels or trees acting as side wall, human biology gets in the way - we literally don't perceive stuff happening properly anymore (and as usual, German has a word for it: Tunnelblick, tunnel vision). The additional factors of people being (too) tired to drive or stressed out by children, traffic jams etc. also won't disappear no matter how much enforcement there is... the only thing that enforcement can suppress is phone usage and drug usage. Better safety systems save lives!

bkor 6y ago
> The problem: on long stretches of road In Netherlands some of those are mitigated. Long straight roads have found to be more accident prone (doesn't matter if it's a highway or some local street). So infrastructure now tries to avoid such long stretches. It won't solve it, it's the Swiss cheese model of airplanes (try to allow multiple things to go wrong before it results in a failure/accident).

nitwit005 6y ago

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. You'd have to give people whole new brains. My grandmother had a condition where her eyes forced shut, completely out of her control. She insisted she could still drive without issue. She ignored multiple friends and family telling her she'd murder someone. Last Saturday I had to dodge out of the way of a car (fortunately moving very slowly). The woman driving was staring in my direction at me as I waved my arms. That she nearly ran me over eventually clicked and she rolled down her window to appoligize.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

While I agree, people are unpredictable. Second, even when they are paying attention they may still react too slowly. Even when there's a competent driver at the wheel paying attention, crash prevention systems can still outperform them. Anyway, I don't think the goal is to prevent accidents entirely; that would be ideal, but it'll be really hard. More important is to prevent injury and death. A car is just hardware, that's what insurance is for in the end. In that regard, even without automation, cars have gotten safer over the decades with roll cages and airbags everywhere.

wing-_-nuts 6y ago

I'm certainly not blaming the victim for getting rear ended, but I've noticed that a lot of people brake a lot harder and more suddenly than needed. It's easy to see how that can lead to getting rear ended, even if the other driver is only distracted for a second. I try to spread my braking over the space I have to do so. Lower braking force over a longer time is much safer. It both gives people more time to react, and if a collision does occur the speed differential is lower, and less damage will occur. This doesn't save you from getting rear ended while stopped, but that's a minority of rear endings from what I have seen.