4 ms·

If you are regularly engaging the automatic braking or even warning, you and your driving habits really are the problem. It’s quite trivial to slow down and lea

If you are regularly engaging the automatic braking or even warning, you and your driving habits really are the problem. It’s quite trivial to slow down and leave adequate braking distance when driving on public roads. Not every journey is judged down to the hundredth of a second. I have a relatively large sample size of drivers I’ve talked to about this. None of the careful, normal drivers complain about collision warnings because they never experience them. Several of my Driver™ friends complain about such warnings with passion.

zbrozek 3y ago
I regularly drive down a gently curving 25 mph road. Every single time I do, the collision warning comes on because it thinks I'm going to go straight and not follow the road. It's so repeatable that I pause my podcasts in anticipation of the bleating warning.
- callalex 3y ago
  I’ll grant you that one, my 2015 Honda predictably does that on some low-speed turns, but I have pieced together that the triggering factor is retro-reflective stickers/indicators on utility poles or road markers that seem to trick the radar into thinking an object on the side of the road is larger than reality.
  - zbrozek 3y ago
    The regular false positives are so annoying that I sometimes fantasize about removing the camera, then remind myself that it's a leased vehicle and that I only have to endure it for ten more months. Some folks don't mind getting dinged at incessantly, but I have sympathy for people who dislike being constantly techno-nannied or notified to death.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Sticker in a strategic spot?
      - tomcam 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - wernercd 3y ago
    Is it because of the "older" tech? 2015 is "ancient" for these things and difference between 2015, 2020 and 2023 from what I've seen is pretty massive as tech has changed at a dizzying pace. my 2020 civic seems to do okay but I get those issues only on occasion. Newer tech would be more stable I think. Only been driving it ~3 months.
    - eszed 3y ago
      I dunno. The first car I drove with any of these driver assists was my sister's 2015 Honda (CRV? I think that was the model). I thought it was fantastic. It kept station smoothly behind other cars. The lane-keeping was great on the freeway, and easy to turn off on surface streets. I thought it made me several times safer as a driver: I didn't spend as much attention on the lane markings, or the back of the car ahead of me, so I was able to be far more attentive to cars around, or upcoming (potential) hazards. When we looked for a car a couple of years ago (and, more recently, when I've driven rentals), station-keeping was certainly no better (and in at least a couple of instances, definitely worse), and as noted by everyone else in this thread, the whole system is so darn annoying. Of the beeps and warnings which are not false-positives, most draw my attention to things I've already seen, so they become either distracting or ignored, which is a net safety degradation. I think 2015 driver-assist systems (or Honda's, at least) worked better.
sushisource 3y ago
I think this take is pretty BS. I'm not claiming sainthood or anything, but I don't drive like an insane person either, and every time I've driven a Tesla (which is at least semi often, my parents own one) it just goes HAM beeping at all sorts of shit, and it jerked the wheel weirdly on me at least once when it seemed to get terribly confused about what was actually a lane or not. Moral of the story, the features are far from perfect, and I would prefer the number of times the car moves the wheel for me to be 0.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  For both my Tesla model 3 and my Honda Odyssey, I turn all the alerts on and have adjusted my driving until I don’t routinely get them. One thing I’ve noticed is just how bad the typical driver is at maintaining a safe following distance: the recommended “2 or 3 second following distance” one finds in things like the California driver’s handbook (and Texas’s as well as just about every drivers ed course I’ve seen) is several times longer than the typical following distance in most of the U.S.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  > and it jerked the wheel weirdly on me at least once when it seemed to get terribly confused about what was actually a lane or not Not in a Tesla, but I've rented 3 cars as of late where driving through construction zones with shifting lanes caused the wheel to jerk constantly as it thought I was leaving a lane. I'm aware enough to catch it and so on, but man it does not come across as a safe feature in that regard. I would be curious to see what amount of testing is done for this scenario, since construction is a common enough thing to encounter.
_jal 3y ago
You clearly don't drive on 101.
- callalex 3y ago
  I do, constantly. Someone entering the lane in front of you does not mean that you lost today’s commute. It’s not a competition.
toss1 3y ago
umm, nope. The two current cars in the family both have exactly the same bugs with their "collission warning" (and some unique ones). They both will consistently issue the RED-FLASH!+BEEP!!+BEEP!!+BRAKE (sometimes), when driving around a turn with a car or especially truck parked on the outside road shoulder. The car cannot figure out that I'm not going straight into the "obstacle", and so warns me. Too late for me to actually do anything about it if I were to actually be heading straight into the parked obstacle, but it goes right ahead. The only possible benefit is if it is also silently pre-tensioning the belts & priming the airbags, but it could do that without the histrionics. Both cars also far too often will alert on mere cracks or patches in the road ahead, with no obstacles. There are other times they mis-alert in their own ways or randomly, and it isn't often enough to dump the cars, but it is definitely bad. The warnings are also timed so as to be absolutely useless were it an actual emergency, and I say that as a qualified & championship-winning road-racing driver who has at least better than average situational awareness & reaction times. I can say absolutely that if this "warning system" were to be my first alert to an emergency, there is no way I could take effective action in time. So I have no idea who are the clueless wankers designing and implementing it; it is evidently for only their own self-satisfaction to justify their existence. Sad.
rconti 3y ago
This is a bad take if you haven't driven every single car on the market in order to inform yourself. I agree most of them are surprisingly good -- the forward collision warning system on my Golf R only made a few mistakes in the 3 years I owned it, and they were all "understandable" mistakes where the tech clearly didn't understand why it was 'wrong' -- eg, I refused to lift throttle because I knew the car in front of me was about to accelerate due to the light which had just turned green, or I elected not to brake because the car cutting in front of me was swooping across two lanes so it wasn't worth panicking about. The system on my Model 3 is GREAT, but only when set to "late" ; my aunt's car was constantly hassling her until I found the setting and moved it from normal to late. But there are other such annoying automated systems -- my Golf had a REAR collision warning which would fully engage the brakes if you were reversing down your driveway while a car was driving down the street behind you. I suppose it wanted me to wait until the road had NO traffic before daring to reverse on my own private property. Also, some cars try to overthink things for you. I've driven vehicles where if you drive in a spirited manner, lifting off the throttle abruptly and engaging the brakes quickly but not aggressively, it decides you MUST want to perform a panic stop and doubles the brake pressure. I think most of us can agree that we want our machines to perform in a reliable and consistent manner and not have basic controls second guess us?
- blep_ 3y ago
  I like how you disagree with the parent comment suggesting you drive very aggressively, and then nearly every example you give of the car being wrong is a direct result of you driving very aggressively.
  - somehnguy 3y ago
    None of their examples were aggressive, let alone very aggressive. To me just sounds like someone who knows how to drive a little better than most.
  - barrkel 3y ago
    Lifting off the throttle and on to the brakes quickly but gently is a natural safety decision if your going fast on a motorway and someone slower changes into your lane up ahead. This is the primary reason for emergency brake assist kicking in for me in my car, Skoda Superb (VW group so similar software). It's only ever happened on the Autobahn where there can be higher speed differentials. It's a bit annoying when it does, but it's all controllable. Other than that, I find my car's safety stuff pretty good. Lane assist isn't intrusive, traction control is functional (car is 4WD 280hp), warning tones are relevant and customizable, etc.
klyrs 3y ago
> If you are regularly engaging the automatic braking or even warning, you and your driving habits really are the problem. Nonsense. I live near a fenced parking lot next to a highway. When I gently back out of a spot at 2km/h, approaching the fence, my car slams on the brakes. Because a car is driving down the highway. Not toward me. Not on the shoulder. But almost two lanewidths away, and behind a fence. No. I can't "slow down and leave adequate braking distance" to ameliorate this. I try to avoid that side of the lot, but sometimes I can't. I need to wait for a lull in traffic. Because the automatic system on my almost brand-new car is hot garbage.
- sethammons 3y ago
  What if you reverse into the spot, and pull out nose first?
necovek 3y ago
Admittedly, I can be classified as one of those "Driver™" people (I've been to a track day with my previous car, for instance). But, here're a few examples of a system like this messing up in slow driving scenarios. In a traditional European city with lots of tight, one-way streets, illegal side-walk parking on them, or short time window available to merge into congested traffic, I'm seeing my 2020 Volvo constantly complain thinking it's about to have a collision with a parked car as you drive around potholes (and point a car slightly to parked car's tail), or abruptly breaking as you slowly reverse back into street from a parking spot because of incoming traffic (eg. other driver behind in the street slowing down to let you merge but not fully stopping, a pedestrian anywhere in the ~8m radius regardless of the direction they are going, or "cross-traffic" coming from the other direction not crossing your lane). I get automated braking happen at least few times a month (I started ignoring collision warnings, so I have no idea how common they are), and I don't even drive that much (35kkm over 3+ years). OTOH, I did see it react and break properly at exactly the same time as I pressed on the brake pedal when another car unexpectedly cut in front of my car 2 times over the last 3 years: so I appreciate the system being there and I hope it will react even if I am not attentive enough, and I am not looking to turn it off. But is it annoying and overall stupid? Yes. Could other systems be much smarter than the one in my car? Oh, yes, and I hope they are!

zbrozek 3y ago

I regularly drive down a gently curving 25 mph road. Every single time I do, the collision warning comes on because it thinks I'm going to go straight and not follow the road. It's so repeatable that I pause my podcasts in anticipation of the bleating warning.

callalex 3y ago
I’ll grant you that one, my 2015 Honda predictably does that on some low-speed turns, but I have pieced together that the triggering factor is retro-reflective stickers/indicators on utility poles or road markers that seem to trick the radar into thinking an object on the side of the road is larger than reality.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  The regular false positives are so annoying that I sometimes fantasize about removing the camera, then remind myself that it's a leased vehicle and that I only have to endure it for ten more months. Some folks don't mind getting dinged at incessantly, but I have sympathy for people who dislike being constantly techno-nannied or notified to death.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Sticker in a strategic spot?
    - tomcam 3y ago
      [flagged]
- wernercd 3y ago
  Is it because of the "older" tech? 2015 is "ancient" for these things and difference between 2015, 2020 and 2023 from what I've seen is pretty massive as tech has changed at a dizzying pace. my 2020 civic seems to do okay but I get those issues only on occasion. Newer tech would be more stable I think. Only been driving it ~3 months.
  - eszed 3y ago
    I dunno. The first car I drove with any of these driver assists was my sister's 2015 Honda (CRV? I think that was the model). I thought it was fantastic. It kept station smoothly behind other cars. The lane-keeping was great on the freeway, and easy to turn off on surface streets. I thought it made me several times safer as a driver: I didn't spend as much attention on the lane markings, or the back of the car ahead of me, so I was able to be far more attentive to cars around, or upcoming (potential) hazards. When we looked for a car a couple of years ago (and, more recently, when I've driven rentals), station-keeping was certainly no better (and in at least a couple of instances, definitely worse), and as noted by everyone else in this thread, the whole system is so darn annoying. Of the beeps and warnings which are not false-positives, most draw my attention to things I've already seen, so they become either distracting or ignored, which is a net safety degradation. I think 2015 driver-assist systems (or Honda's, at least) worked better.

sushisource 3y ago

I think this take is pretty BS. I'm not claiming sainthood or anything, but I don't drive like an insane person either, and every time I've driven a Tesla (which is at least semi often, my parents own one) it just goes HAM beeping at all sorts of shit, and it jerked the wheel weirdly on me at least once when it seemed to get terribly confused about what was actually a lane or not. Moral of the story, the features are far from perfect, and I would prefer the number of times the car moves the wheel for me to be 0.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
For both my Tesla model 3 and my Honda Odyssey, I turn all the alerts on and have adjusted my driving until I don’t routinely get them. One thing I’ve noticed is just how bad the typical driver is at maintaining a safe following distance: the recommended “2 or 3 second following distance” one finds in things like the California driver’s handbook (and Texas’s as well as just about every drivers ed course I’ve seen) is several times longer than the typical following distance in most of the U.S.
Klonoar 3y ago
> and it jerked the wheel weirdly on me at least once when it seemed to get terribly confused about what was actually a lane or not Not in a Tesla, but I've rented 3 cars as of late where driving through construction zones with shifting lanes caused the wheel to jerk constantly as it thought I was leaving a lane. I'm aware enough to catch it and so on, but man it does not come across as a safe feature in that regard. I would be curious to see what amount of testing is done for this scenario, since construction is a common enough thing to encounter.

_jal 3y ago

You clearly don't drive on 101.

callalex 3y ago
I do, constantly. Someone entering the lane in front of you does not mean that you lost today’s commute. It’s not a competition.

toss1 3y ago

umm, nope. The two current cars in the family both have exactly the same bugs with their "collission warning" (and some unique ones). They both will consistently issue the RED-FLASH!+BEEP!!+BEEP!!+BRAKE (sometimes), when driving around a turn with a car or especially truck parked on the outside road shoulder. The car cannot figure out that I'm not going straight into the "obstacle", and so warns me. Too late for me to actually do anything about it if I were to actually be heading straight into the parked obstacle, but it goes right ahead. The only possible benefit is if it is also silently pre-tensioning the belts & priming the airbags, but it could do that without the histrionics. Both cars also far too often will alert on mere cracks or patches in the road ahead, with no obstacles. There are other times they mis-alert in their own ways or randomly, and it isn't often enough to dump the cars, but it is definitely bad. The warnings are also timed so as to be absolutely useless were it an actual emergency, and I say that as a qualified & championship-winning road-racing driver who has at least better than average situational awareness & reaction times. I can say absolutely that if this "warning system" were to be my first alert to an emergency, there is no way I could take effective action in time. So I have no idea who are the clueless wankers designing and implementing it; it is evidently for only their own self-satisfaction to justify their existence. Sad.

rconti 3y ago

This is a bad take if you haven't driven every single car on the market in order to inform yourself. I agree most of them are surprisingly good -- the forward collision warning system on my Golf R only made a few mistakes in the 3 years I owned it, and they were all "understandable" mistakes where the tech clearly didn't understand why it was 'wrong' -- eg, I refused to lift throttle because I knew the car in front of me was about to accelerate due to the light which had just turned green, or I elected not to brake because the car cutting in front of me was swooping across two lanes so it wasn't worth panicking about. The system on my Model 3 is GREAT, but only when set to "late" ; my aunt's car was constantly hassling her until I found the setting and moved it from normal to late. But there are other such annoying automated systems -- my Golf had a REAR collision warning which would fully engage the brakes if you were reversing down your driveway while a car was driving down the street behind you. I suppose it wanted me to wait until the road had NO traffic before daring to reverse on my own private property. Also, some cars try to overthink things for you. I've driven vehicles where if you drive in a spirited manner, lifting off the throttle abruptly and engaging the brakes quickly but not aggressively, it decides you MUST want to perform a panic stop and doubles the brake pressure. I think most of us can agree that we want our machines to perform in a reliable and consistent manner and not have basic controls second guess us?

blep_ 3y ago
I like how you disagree with the parent comment suggesting you drive very aggressively, and then nearly every example you give of the car being wrong is a direct result of you driving very aggressively.
- somehnguy 3y ago
  None of their examples were aggressive, let alone very aggressive. To me just sounds like someone who knows how to drive a little better than most.
- barrkel 3y ago
  Lifting off the throttle and on to the brakes quickly but gently is a natural safety decision if your going fast on a motorway and someone slower changes into your lane up ahead. This is the primary reason for emergency brake assist kicking in for me in my car, Skoda Superb (VW group so similar software). It's only ever happened on the Autobahn where there can be higher speed differentials. It's a bit annoying when it does, but it's all controllable. Other than that, I find my car's safety stuff pretty good. Lane assist isn't intrusive, traction control is functional (car is 4WD 280hp), warning tones are relevant and customizable, etc.

klyrs 3y ago

> If you are regularly engaging the automatic braking or even warning, you and your driving habits really are the problem. Nonsense. I live near a fenced parking lot next to a highway. When I gently back out of a spot at 2km/h, approaching the fence, my car slams on the brakes. Because a car is driving down the highway. Not toward me. Not on the shoulder. But almost two lanewidths away, and behind a fence. No. I can't "slow down and leave adequate braking distance" to ameliorate this. I try to avoid that side of the lot, but sometimes I can't. I need to wait for a lull in traffic. Because the automatic system on my almost brand-new car is hot garbage.

sethammons 3y ago
What if you reverse into the spot, and pull out nose first?

necovek 3y ago

Admittedly, I can be classified as one of those "Driver™" people (I've been to a track day with my previous car, for instance). But, here're a few examples of a system like this messing up in slow driving scenarios. In a traditional European city with lots of tight, one-way streets, illegal side-walk parking on them, or short time window available to merge into congested traffic, I'm seeing my 2020 Volvo constantly complain thinking it's about to have a collision with a parked car as you drive around potholes (and point a car slightly to parked car's tail), or abruptly breaking as you slowly reverse back into street from a parking spot because of incoming traffic (eg. other driver behind in the street slowing down to let you merge but not fully stopping, a pedestrian anywhere in the ~8m radius regardless of the direction they are going, or "cross-traffic" coming from the other direction not crossing your lane). I get automated braking happen at least few times a month (I started ignoring collision warnings, so I have no idea how common they are), and I don't even drive that much (35kkm over 3+ years). OTOH, I did see it react and break properly at exactly the same time as I pressed on the brake pedal when another car unexpectedly cut in front of my car 2 times over the last 3 years: so I appreciate the system being there and I hope it will react even if I am not attentive enough, and I am not looking to turn it off. But is it annoying and overall stupid? Yes. Could other systems be much smarter than the one in my car? Oh, yes, and I hope they are!