4 ms·

Is it the (lack of) reliability of electronic systems that people don't like? As a fairly anxious driver, I rather like the extra peace of mind that comes from

Is it the (lack of) reliability of electronic systems that people don't like? As a fairly anxious driver, I rather like the extra peace of mind that comes from having automatic braking, blind spot indicators, and cameras. ACC and lane centering are also quite convenient for long drives, and I do rather like CarPlay. Maybe I'm the problem?

ilyt 4y ago
It's the implementation. In many cars stuff like automatic braking is kinda unreliable and twichy, can trigger by just someone changing lane in front of you (or so I've heard from colleague that have it). Personally I'm in for anything passive (cameras, sensors) as long as it is not intrusive, acc and lane centering is kinda.... I'm already driving and have hands and feet on controls, I don't need that automated in the first place. I am 100% or 0% on any "driving automation" or self driving. Either work as automated taxi, let me enter the address and let me read book in peace on back seat, or let me drive the car without bothering me. So I drive 15yo civic type R lmao.
- infotogivenm 4y ago
  > acc and lane centering is kinda.... I'm already driving and have hands and feet on controls, I don't need that automated in the first place. Anecdotally: I and a number of friends have held this same opinion for years, but recently it has changed. Not because of lane marker following, but because of this situation: “idiot in front of me slammed on their brakes at the last second while I was scanning left or right”; the system kicked in and legitimately prevented an accident. If there was some way to just enable that feature I’d be pretty happy.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > “idiot in front of me slammed on their brakes at the last second while I was scanning left or right”; the system kicked in and legitimately prevented an accident. How many accidents have you had of that type in the past, say, 300000km of driving? Because you say it legitimately prevented an accident, but this is a routine thing that happens (drivers slam on brakes at the last second) and if you aren't routinely driving into the rear of cars who brake at the last minute, then ... no, the accident wouldn't have happened anyway.
    - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
      I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure studies have and/or are being done on this. I wonder if the rate of incidence of rear-end type accidents has changed noticeably with these systems becoming standard. A quick Google suggestions around 30% of accidents are rear-end, accounting for something like 1.75 million accidents annually. What % reduction in these would make it make sense to "require" this? I'm not sure, I personally can't stand currently implementations, but it does seem like an easy thing to target for reduction. As an aside, trying to quickly search for these sorts of statistics leads to an awful lot of law firm websites.
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        > A quick Google suggestions around 30% of accidents are rear-end, accounting for something like 1.75 million accidents annually. But that number is not relevant. What is relevant is the ratio of humans avoiding these accidents to humans not avoiding these accidents. Like I said, having to avoid the car in front which braked hard is routine. It happens all the time. It's why the blame and culpability for a rear-end accident is always on the rear driver by default - safe driving distance and all that. Which is why I phrased my question to the GP the way I did - if he managed to go 300000km without rear-ending someone even though unpredictable braking happens so routinely ... > What % reduction in these would make it make sense to "require" this? I doubt there'll be a decrease, if any. A better system that beeps if a safe minimum following distance is not adhered to will almost certainly prevent more accidents than auto-braking, because the auto-braking system will sometimes get it wrong and cause the jackass tailing you to rear-end you. An alert won't cause any accidents.
        shortstuffsushi 4y ago
        I'm not entirely sure I follow your argument. 1.75MM rear endings occur yearly. Decreasing that number does seem relevant. Could / do these auto-brakes decrease that number? You seem to think no, per your second quote comment - I'm not sure, I haven't done any further research to see if there's a trend. I wouldn't be surprised in either direction, honestly. The ratio of accidents to "near miss" is probably hundred(s?) to one, but could this make it more? I don't know. Fwiw - I'm anti-auto-brake as a rule, but I'm just curious if the data would be in their favor or not. I don't have an auto-brake feature, only ridden with people who do. I believe that most of them do have some sort of warn prior to brake - but to your point, there are so many situations where this could falsely trigger that it would likely end up being tuned out, at least as I imagine it. Actually, my truck has one of the "warning" things, and I ultimately turned it off for this reason. The number of "immediate danger" warnings that would flash when I was driving, e.g. alone on a country road at night, made it not worthwhile to me. I can imagine an auto-brake would be even worse that way though, lol.
  - VBprogrammer 4y ago
    People blaming the "idiot" in front of them for braking is the reason we need these features. The sooner they are mandatory the better IMHO.
- bodangly 4y ago
  I’m with you. I drive a 24 year old 740iL. It’s a car, it functions well as one. If I want nav or whatever I have a cell phone after all. I even left the sound system original and listen to CDs. Its nice to just go back to basics for a change. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by my car being dumb as a bag of rocks.
shortstuffsushi 4y ago
For me, the biggest "blind spots" in the last few cars I've had are not covered by any sort of detectors... the front pylons on the windshield have often made me unable to see left and right. I often find myself rolling up to a stop sign thinking it's clear, but then realizing that someone has just been driving "in sync" with my pylon, entirely hiding them from sight. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but I suspect some sort of indicator could be useful in this case. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the main driver of this is. In part, it's probably a combination of "I know better than the system," especially after some incidences of false positives, and then the general confusion / annoyance with "new UI." Again, at least for most people I know, having an "entertainment center" in the car is not desirable. A simple display for current time / now playing and then a series of tactile buttons is the desire. For me personally, the blind spot indicators specifically, the yellow triangle blinking on and off in my periphery, are really bothersome. I haven't owned a car with them yet, so likely after enough time I'd get use to it, but I really don't like this feature. I'm not familiar with ACC, looks like "adaptive" cruise control? In general, I don't have the opportunity to use cruise control, except for infrequent drives to some other location. In this case, the manual cruise has typically been plenty, and if I have to turn it off due to traffic, it's usually enough that I'd probably want to be paying enough attention to manually manage my speed rather than letting the car adapt. I haven't used it though, so hard to speak to that. I have not liked the centering, though maybe the versions I've used have been too primitive - it generally makes me nauseous if it's on, the unexpected pulls back are too abrupt..
ajmurmann 4y ago
I'm with you 100%. I love the lane keeping, distance keeping, lane change assist, etc. What I don't want though is for the car to use the screen for anything but CarPlay. I don't want anything in the car to be controlled via the screen, but but buttons and dials and I don't want them to provide anything CarPlay does. Don't bother me with your inferior navigation system, Bluetooth music or anything like that. Just give me a screen and audio system for my phone. Don't even give me a radio, it's not the 90s anymore! It's IMO OK to use the screen for the rear camera when reversing, but even for this I'd prefer the rear mirror to have a picture-in-picture thing rather than taking over the screen that's IMO supposed to be my phone's external screen. This can be an actual nuisance because I cannot roll out of my garage, set directions on the phone while the gate closes and then finish backing up onto the street because the rear camera will keep hogging the screen unless I switch to a different great just to get the screen back.

ilyt 4y ago

It's the implementation. In many cars stuff like automatic braking is kinda unreliable and twichy, can trigger by just someone changing lane in front of you (or so I've heard from colleague that have it). Personally I'm in for anything passive (cameras, sensors) as long as it is not intrusive, acc and lane centering is kinda.... I'm already driving and have hands and feet on controls, I don't need that automated in the first place. I am 100% or 0% on any "driving automation" or self driving. Either work as automated taxi, let me enter the address and let me read book in peace on back seat, or let me drive the car without bothering me. So I drive 15yo civic type R lmao.

infotogivenm 4y ago
> acc and lane centering is kinda.... I'm already driving and have hands and feet on controls, I don't need that automated in the first place. Anecdotally: I and a number of friends have held this same opinion for years, but recently it has changed. Not because of lane marker following, but because of this situation: “idiot in front of me slammed on their brakes at the last second while I was scanning left or right”; the system kicked in and legitimately prevented an accident. If there was some way to just enable that feature I’d be pretty happy.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > “idiot in front of me slammed on their brakes at the last second while I was scanning left or right”; the system kicked in and legitimately prevented an accident. How many accidents have you had of that type in the past, say, 300000km of driving? Because you say it legitimately prevented an accident, but this is a routine thing that happens (drivers slam on brakes at the last second) and if you aren't routinely driving into the rear of cars who brake at the last minute, then ... no, the accident wouldn't have happened anyway.
  - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
    I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure studies have and/or are being done on this. I wonder if the rate of incidence of rear-end type accidents has changed noticeably with these systems becoming standard. A quick Google suggestions around 30% of accidents are rear-end, accounting for something like 1.75 million accidents annually. What % reduction in these would make it make sense to "require" this? I'm not sure, I personally can't stand currently implementations, but it does seem like an easy thing to target for reduction. As an aside, trying to quickly search for these sorts of statistics leads to an awful lot of law firm websites.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > A quick Google suggestions around 30% of accidents are rear-end, accounting for something like 1.75 million accidents annually. But that number is not relevant. What is relevant is the ratio of humans avoiding these accidents to humans not avoiding these accidents. Like I said, having to avoid the car in front which braked hard is routine. It happens all the time. It's why the blame and culpability for a rear-end accident is always on the rear driver by default - safe driving distance and all that. Which is why I phrased my question to the GP the way I did - if he managed to go 300000km without rear-ending someone even though unpredictable braking happens so routinely ... > What % reduction in these would make it make sense to "require" this? I doubt there'll be a decrease, if any. A better system that beeps if a safe minimum following distance is not adhered to will almost certainly prevent more accidents than auto-braking, because the auto-braking system will sometimes get it wrong and cause the jackass tailing you to rear-end you. An alert won't cause any accidents.
      - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
        I'm not entirely sure I follow your argument. 1.75MM rear endings occur yearly. Decreasing that number does seem relevant. Could / do these auto-brakes decrease that number? You seem to think no, per your second quote comment - I'm not sure, I haven't done any further research to see if there's a trend. I wouldn't be surprised in either direction, honestly. The ratio of accidents to "near miss" is probably hundred(s?) to one, but could this make it more? I don't know. Fwiw - I'm anti-auto-brake as a rule, but I'm just curious if the data would be in their favor or not. I don't have an auto-brake feature, only ridden with people who do. I believe that most of them do have some sort of warn prior to brake - but to your point, there are so many situations where this could falsely trigger that it would likely end up being tuned out, at least as I imagine it. Actually, my truck has one of the "warning" things, and I ultimately turned it off for this reason. The number of "immediate danger" warnings that would flash when I was driving, e.g. alone on a country road at night, made it not worthwhile to me. I can imagine an auto-brake would be even worse that way though, lol.
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  People blaming the "idiot" in front of them for braking is the reason we need these features. The sooner they are mandatory the better IMHO.
bodangly 4y ago
I’m with you. I drive a 24 year old 740iL. It’s a car, it functions well as one. If I want nav or whatever I have a cell phone after all. I even left the sound system original and listen to CDs. Its nice to just go back to basics for a change. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything by my car being dumb as a bag of rocks.

shortstuffsushi 4y ago

For me, the biggest "blind spots" in the last few cars I've had are not covered by any sort of detectors... the front pylons on the windshield have often made me unable to see left and right. I often find myself rolling up to a stop sign thinking it's clear, but then realizing that someone has just been driving "in sync" with my pylon, entirely hiding them from sight. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but I suspect some sort of indicator could be useful in this case. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the main driver of this is. In part, it's probably a combination of "I know better than the system," especially after some incidences of false positives, and then the general confusion / annoyance with "new UI." Again, at least for most people I know, having an "entertainment center" in the car is not desirable. A simple display for current time / now playing and then a series of tactile buttons is the desire. For me personally, the blind spot indicators specifically, the yellow triangle blinking on and off in my periphery, are really bothersome. I haven't owned a car with them yet, so likely after enough time I'd get use to it, but I really don't like this feature. I'm not familiar with ACC, looks like "adaptive" cruise control? In general, I don't have the opportunity to use cruise control, except for infrequent drives to some other location. In this case, the manual cruise has typically been plenty, and if I have to turn it off due to traffic, it's usually enough that I'd probably want to be paying enough attention to manually manage my speed rather than letting the car adapt. I haven't used it though, so hard to speak to that. I have not liked the centering, though maybe the versions I've used have been too primitive - it generally makes me nauseous if it's on, the unexpected pulls back are too abrupt..

ajmurmann 4y ago

I'm with you 100%. I love the lane keeping, distance keeping, lane change assist, etc. What I don't want though is for the car to use the screen for anything but CarPlay. I don't want anything in the car to be controlled via the screen, but but buttons and dials and I don't want them to provide anything CarPlay does. Don't bother me with your inferior navigation system, Bluetooth music or anything like that. Just give me a screen and audio system for my phone. Don't even give me a radio, it's not the 90s anymore! It's IMO OK to use the screen for the rear camera when reversing, but even for this I'd prefer the rear mirror to have a picture-in-picture thing rather than taking over the screen that's IMO supposed to be my phone's external screen. This can be an actual nuisance because I cannot roll out of my garage, set directions on the phone while the gate closes and then finish backing up onto the street because the rear camera will keep hogging the screen unless I switch to a different great just to get the screen back.