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High-tech Cars Replacing Driver Skill?
Nick writes "What happens when you take a bunch of average drivers, put them in a car with no high-tech systems like anti-lock brakes and traction control, and ask them to drive on a safety test track? 360-degree spins, of course. And not only do today's drivers need ABS and traction control to keep their cars under control, it also turns out most drivers can't even name the high tech safety systems that are continually saving their butts. And to make matters worse, carmakers plan to install automatic radar-based blind-spot checkers so motorists can avoid looking over their shoulders while changing lanes. Even geeks find some of these technologies scary, including Wired's Bruce Gain, who drove Mercedes' S-Class with automatic braking."
I drove an '89 Celebrity with no ABS or anything other than power steering up until a year ago. You just need to know how to drive the car you're in, not some hypothetical automobile from 20 years ago
I work in the R&D division of a major Japanese video game corporation. Some members of my research group have been working with major Japanese automakers (whose identity I am not at liberty to discuss at the moment) to apply concepts learned in video game design to driving cars. Instead of a cumbersome set of multiple controls, we are experimenting with a single two-axis controller, one axis controlling acceleration and braking in the up-down direction, and the other controlling steering in the left-right direction. Gear shifting is mapped to the start and select buttons. We're experimenting with a number of control devices, from the Power Glove to GameCube controllers as input effectors.
We believe that this research will lead to much more drivable and intuitively controllable autos, especially for a generation of drivers raised on video games, and will cause fewer accidents on the road, due to the intuitive nature of the control mechanisms and the ingrained neurological psycho-response actuations which have developed from extensive game playing. It will further open up driving to those who may not have all limbs working, but as long as one has thumb control, driving will be accessible to all. I look forward to seeing this coming revolution on the commericial market.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
yeah, thats going to be real popular, untill there is a sensor malfunction and you take out the little old lady in the pinto stationwagon. Those would have to be out for a few years before, and open source, before Id even begin to trust them.
Did drivers ever really have skills in the first place?
I really don't see why anyone would be afraid of new vehicle technologies. It's simply going to remove all the annoying things that we've grown used to do but will no longer have to burden ourselves with.
There are few automobiles out there (mainly SUVs) that now have systems installed to let you know if you are leaving the lane via a photo-sensor connected to an alarm inside the vehicle. After all, why should we expect drivers to keep their *!@?% car in their own lane without the aid of a computer? Here's an article that goes perfectly with the theme of this post.
These systems are good for average drivers, but if they don't even realise that they're constantly being helped by them, one must wonder what happens when the systems finally fail.
..i LIKE to drive. Sometimes helpful systems that assume control take all the fun out of things.
This "study" is big-time BS for the simple reason that the typical road-going driver has NEVER been able to pilot a vehicle safely through these sorts of dog-n-pony show tests which is why all of these technologies got invented in the first place.
Seriously, the people doing this study actually think that your typical driver facing a panic situation somehow had the foresight to remember some verbal instruction back from a high school driver's ed class about "Cadence Breaking" before ABS was a standard feature? Or that drivers from as little as 10 years ago had the sort of skid-pad training required to drill in the muscle memory and experience necessary to control a car in an understeer/overseer situation? No way; it was the inability for the typical driver to control a vehicle in these circumstances that led to hundreds of millions of dollars of automotive industry investment in these technologies.
I see what the study is getting at and it is a point that any rational person will agree with; drivers need better skill training. Telling people which way to move the wheel in a spin or how to massage the break pedal out of a textbook (or even on a video) is a useless substitute to making a student actually experience car control and build the muscle memory actually required to apply those skills in a high stress situation. At the same time, rational people also realize that nobody will ever invest the billions of dollars necessary in the sort of meaningful driver education on a skidpad and through static exercises.
Given our inability (through unwillingness of lack of funds) to train drivers, I believe that the technologies we've put on the typical passenger car are pretty amazing.
At the same time, the biggest contributing factor to accidents is simply the fact that people don't pay very much attention. Even with all of the idiot drivers on the road and the noted lack of car control skill, the overwhelming majority of accidents are totally avoidable. Unfortunatly, doing so requires the typical driver to have situational awareness above that of a rock...
what?
:O
It's common knowledge that noone knows howto drive. The thing that scares us the most is people driving cars upside-down and not dieing due to new safety features.
Respect Darwin and his laws, or be punished accordingly by certain death.
Granted if.... the cars drive you we'd be alot less worried
~--~
Do not mind the one with the crazy, for he is sane
People learn the skills appropriate for their lives. Do I know how to castrate a bull or build a replacement wooden wheel for my Conestoga wagon? No, because I'm not a settler living in the early 1800's.
Why not an article that asks the same questions about medical technology? Does the fact that we have made advancements in heart repair, diagnostics, medicines and more somehow indicate that people today are weaker or dumber than those of ten years ago?
Correlation != Causation, yet that seems to be what this article is obliquely suggesting.
If you buy their premise, then go ask some pirates about global warming, they have strong opinions regarding its affect on their trade.
High-tech planes replacing pilot skills
High-tech seat belts replacing stuntman skills
High-tech calculators replacing math skills
High-tech screwdrivers replacing screwing your freaking wrist to death skills
High-tech phones replacing screaming really loud skills
High-tech shovels replace digging dirt with your fingers skills
High-tech whining replaces err.... wait... no people are as good at that as ever
If you havent been on the road lately, heres an update for you: People are fricken idiots.
You would think stuff like automatic blindspot checkers, or abs, or traction control, or auto breaking wouldn't be nessisary but they totally are.
DONT BELIEVE ME? Go drive for yourself in a major metropolitan area for a day.
ps. The real reason I know there are a lot of bad drivers out there is because I am one, so there.
If the ABS comes on then you are driving in a manner likely to endanger life. Most probably your own!
The same applies to traction control. Off the race track, hardly anyone would ever encounter a situation where traction control is needed. Driving on the streets is not like a race track. Nor is it like a video game. I was recently persuaded to try a video racing game by my son. His lap time was 1/3 of mine, but he bumped into all sorts of things that would have cost 1000s to repair in a real car. Persuading kids that "driving a car is just like the video game" will cost a LOT of lives. Far more lives are lost from car crashes than terrorism already. Pretending cars are like video games is more dangerous than Al Quaieda, and no more sensible.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I've been driving under my wife's supervision for two years, have recently taken some lessons before I take my test (finally), and moving to a 'modern' car has been a nightmare. Everything is controlled, or powered, and it's taken some time to master it after driving a 'normal' car for so long.
On the plus side, I've been told I drive better than most people who've passed their test....
I need a "get the &#^$ out of my way" button that works on the self-absorbed asshole yapping on his cellphone while driving his enormous SUV 52 in the 65 passing lane and backing up traffic for a mile behind him! I push the button, he moves his ass over and life goes on.
Well, I guess a rocket launcher would do, too.
If cabbies were bad drivers, you'd expect they would wreck more often than usual. If they were exceptionally good, you'd expect better driving, hence good data on which to base your automated driving models.
To do this, you'd have to install monitoring equipment into a significant fraction of cabs in a given city, so that you can get a useful amount of interaction data when they are near other monitored vehicles.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I have two vehicles, one is a 20 year old sports car and the other is a 13 year old SUV. My SUV had ABS brakes. When I need to stop NOW like someone cutting out in front of me, I hate them because if I slam on the brakes the ABS kicks in and I don't stop. However, in my car when there's snow on the road just tapping the brakes can lead to a loss of control.
ABS does shorten stopping distances on wet or snow covered roads, but if the road is dry, the stop time will be much shorter if the wheels lock and you skid.
What I would like to see is a steering wheel mounted kill switch for ABS. I know when I need to maintain control and I know when it's more important to lock the wheels.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It seems that with smarter cars, less willingnesss to take risk, the world described in Demolition man is becoming real :( /me jumps down the nearest manhole
This is great news. That means less drivers will hit ME on the road. Seriously, who cares if people can't drive, I don't think people ever really learn how to drive. So what if these technologies give bad drivers a better chance of not hitting anyone on their way to work.
Ban Reality TV!
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22750- 1973418,00.html
Being a Mercedes owner, I am always aware of the lengths Mercedes has gone to innovent with new safety technologies that eventually trickle down to everyday cars. However, no matter how many driving schools I go to, no driver ever assumes the car will drive itself. These are bit of technology here to ASSIST but to never REPLACE the driver. The 2007 S-Class offers the ability for its rader-based cruise control to completely stop the car if necessary but as usual the story summary is bunk. WHoever is using or testing these devices as a full replacement for braking are complete idiots. A recent test in Germany showed that the system can fail. With that said, my order for a new S550 is already into the dealer and my car will be here in a few weeks. Hopefully the large amount of money necessary to purchase the car will make the entry of the usual idiot drivers into this space a moot point.
This test is pure bullshit. The only thing it proves is that people don't instantly adapt. If you had done the opposite, taking drivers accustomed to older cars and putting them in a new car with high-tech safety features, they'd fail all the same...
ABS is a very good example. When it came out, it was causing a large number of accidents. People accustomed to standard brakes would continue their "cadence-braking" techniques on their new ABS-equiped vehicles, and would therefore be unable to stop.
Even though people are accustomed to it now, I personally dislike ABS because of the trade-offs made... It is a system that assumes that less braking ability is okay, provided you are still able to steer. That make be true a lot of the time, but not always. When you have to slam on your brakes, but you still roll into an accident, you can thank ABS for that...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What happens when you take a bunch of average drivers, put them in a car with no high-tech systems like anti-lock brakes and traction control, and ask them to drive on a safety test track? 360-degree spins [CC], of course. And not only do today's drivers need ABS and traction control to keep their cars under control, it also turns out most drivers can't even name the high tech safety systems that are continually saving their butts.
In other news, a typical teenager can neither properly operate nor name the components in a horse and buggy.
It's a waste of time to train humans to manually perform tasks like complicated braking. The fact that screwing it up risks an (expensive) human life makes this even worse. Elimination of useless work is the main goal engineers have. I don't see this as a loss.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
What does this prove? See subject for an easy analogy.
... ...
My fun/backup car is a 1977 honda civic, complete with manual choke. It takes an act of god to start it, but I have JUST the nack to get it every time. Most people getting into the car wouldn't have any idea what a manual choke is.
Does this mean that anyone who can't start it is not skilled at starting modern day cars?
Ask your typicall 747 pilot to jump into a spitfire and fly 500km.
You see where I'm going. It's like programmers bitching about no one knowing assembler any more, when no one apart from serious system optimizers (or race car drivers....) need to know it.
Reminds me of this story I read about a month or two back - Mercedes took three shiny new S-Class's with this automatic braking system to a facility to demonstrate how well it worked for a german auto magazine. So they filled this facility with fake fog, sent a test driver down into the fog and lo and behold he ploughed into the back of one of the other S classes.
It was a bit of an embarassment and for some reason the test driver ended up losing his job despite it being nothing to do with him. Still shows that sometimes these pieces of technology do have a way to go before they work properly.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The good ole' BBC has done some interesting comparisons involving Automobiles, which the Google heads have kindly made available on line:p>
Old vs New is here.
But my favorate by far is Play Station vs Real Life here.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
I dont know any reason for the sudden mistrust of technology. Every time you have entered a car and turned it on up to this point, you have faced far greater dangers than the article brings up. Your trust in technology has to be pretty strong to get into a large steel/fiberglass/plastic object that is propelled by a series of controlled explosions under a hood about two feet in front of you. As you roll along speedily at 60 mph+ there are several other cars around you, weighing nearly a ton, doing the same thing. These are speeds and weights that will easily crush a person. Putting just a little bit more trust in automakers for something like blind spot checkers is not too much to ask when you already trust their products with your life so frequently.
Denmark has the worst drivers in the world. If it wasn't for all these fancy toys and the taxes making sure most vehicles only have tiny engines it would be utter carnage out there.
I cycle 50+ km a day and on my way to and from work I pass the wreckage of at least one accident in either direction. i.e. I see on average more than one accident every 25km.
Can anyone beat that?
(P.S. For the Danish readers the journey is along Roskildevej, right at Radhusplassen and over the swing bridge)
(P.P.S. I only notice so much as they appear to dump the wrecked cars on that bit of road I have the temerity to try and cycle along.)
(P.P.P.S. I do wish they would properly clean up all the glass and other rubbish afterwards as well.)
threadeds blog
One of the things that makes a steering wheel a good control input for a car is that in order to make large changes in what your car is doing, you have to make large changes in the control input. Want to floor the car? You have to STOMP the gas peddle. What to stop SUDDENLY? You have to STOMP the brake. Want to make a SHARP turn? You have to turn the wheel at least a half ref, often up to 2 revs for really sharp, and almost a quarter for a turn that will induce a skid at highway speed before you have a chance to correct it.
There's also a reason your acceleration and braking are controlled by your feet - because your leg muscles are stronger than your thumb muscles. You can't have your acceleration/braking controlled by a non-resistive joystick, because it'd just be too easy to sneeze/drop your coffee/knock it with your elbow and have sudden acceleration or braking. You need pretty stiff resistence to prevent accidental input. Now can you imagine driving for an extend period of time using your thumb muscles instead of your leg muscles?
Even on vehicles that have throttle controls (like planes and boats), the throttle is a separate input device, has a large range of motion, and the vehicle being controlled usually experiences INFREQUENT velocity changes.
paintball
Preparation
Prevents
Poor
Performance.
Engineers can work technological wonders to mitigate against accidents and protect passengers in accidents, but the fact remains the majority of people freeze in an emergency situation or freak out. Those who can keep their heads in emergency situations expose themselves to the training and experience that will allow them to survive, perhaps in spite of the engineering.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I would be interested if my assumption is true, and that is the more you automate the car into preventing the driver from losing control the more likely that driver will eventually pay so little attention to their driving that when they do ultimately push the car too far the result will be catastrophic.
The less drivers need to think about the fact they are in control of a couple of tonnes of metal adhering to the whims of inertia the less attention they'll pay to that fact. When this innatentive Michael Schumacher finally does push his vehicle past its ability to correct for driver stupidity, the speed at which the car leaves the road is therefore higher, making a bigger crash and increasing the chances of making driver/passenger/pedestrian into shoe custard.
SO, if that is the case, adding more stupidification features into automobiles may reduce the number of collisions, but increase the odds of the collision causing death.
Something for the grant hungry amongst you to draft a study proposal over.
--My signature is six words long.--
Why a fancy radar system for blind spots?
A blind spot mirror ($1-$2 US at any Wal*Mart) works just as well and has far less that can break with it. I got one after having a few "near misses" when driving without one (California's roads have too many freeways with forced lane changes--the 5-210 junction is one of the worst examples of this).
I am 17 (and I wish morons would not judge by age) and I have not a licence, but I can drive a 1969 GTO without any of this modern bullshit implemented and perfectly(even a 1994 Chevy Beretta)... If people cannot drive without traction control or ABS (minimally) then they should not be able to drive at all. Driving a motor vehicle is not difficult. Some that I know still can't drive at all even with safety features and such... it is truly sad, they should "come up with" some type of test (I believe Intelligent Quotient tests are full o' shit) to see if people are not intellectually devoid enough to drive... safety or not, it is not hard
Yep! And let's be thankfull for the electronic goodness they do have.
A few weeks ago I was driving through Cairns, NQ, Australia (and I know that doesn't quite qualify as 'CITY', but never mind), pulled up at some traffic lights, heard a kind of bump behind a few seconds later, and a car parked itself in the shrubbery beside me. Yes, I am thankfull that he had ABS beneath his left foot, or I'd have had an uncomfortable evening. (He beached himself in the pinebark mulch, by the way. For all I know he might still be there.)
No. I'm all for whatever goodies the engineers can give us. Road casualties have fallen ( in per distance travelled terms) as far as they are going too, for as long as humans remain in charge of cars. Give them (and me!) as much help as you can.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
It's dull downtime.
The more automatic, the better. My ideal car is where I hop in, say "take me to work" (or wherever), then I'm free to do whatever till we get there, at which point there's a pleasant "ding" sound, I look up, and see that I'm parked in the best available spot at my destination.
Ah, bliss...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You guys need to go back to school and research why joystick controls of the first cars were abandoned. It's something called IMMUNITY to G-Forces and vibration from a bumpy and rocky road as well as other situations. The game floor is VERY different from a real road ride. Then there's the aspects of having independent controls such as accelerator and brake. This is the same for bicycles and for them scooters for the handicapped.
There's a reason why some rally cars have independent front/rear braking pedals. Sure that may be not an everyday example, but it's still more representative than trying to reinventing the controls from the unreality of video games.
Unless you are flying/floating like a plane, it is pointless to try to reinvent the wheel with controls of such low resolution and fidelity controlled by sub-par limbs of coordination, the thumbs.
The reason for accidents on the road happens to be more a direct result of poor driver competance than from poor controls. If you eliminate any driver that can't pass the B-license driver's test from Gran Turismo (1-4) at the level most drivers are subjected to in Europe or Japan, THEN can you start thinking about if the controls are an issue.
Sometimes, people are just not meant to drive.
Well, say what you will, I like having power steering and power breaks. I could do without the automatic transmission, but apparently many cars no longer come with "standard" transmissions.
The ability to slow down for traffic in front of the vehicle would be appreciated as well. I have been in two accidents where the driver of the vehicle following did not pay attention and slammed into someone that had stopped. A system that helped prevent this from happening would have saved time and effort on my part, especially since the insurance payments are never really enough to cover your expenses.
When driving I also worry about my blind spots quite often. I now drive a minivan and it's difficult to see small cars that are traveling in my blind spot... As a motorcyclist I often have people pull into my lane and have to keep a constant eye out to prevent injury.
So nebulus comments about how no one needs traction control outside of racetracks, attributing new driver skills to skills picked up in video games and talking about how if you took away modern technology like anti-lock breaks etc modern drivers would have more accidents... Well, I'm sorry wasn't that why the new systems were added in the first place? To make driving safer....
Also, I'm highly doubtful that locking the brakes on dry pavement will stop you faster than anti-locking brakes. From my own personal experience it takes longer to stop and you have less control so it appears to me that this is just FUD.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Last winter I had an experience using ABS, and it seemed to me that it was knowing how and when to use ABS is a skill still sorely lacking in most drivers. You can read the entire quote on my blog, but here are the pertinent points...
Today's commute was quite an experience, as the Poconos, as well as most of the Northeast United States, were graced with 12 or so inches of the white stuff - snow, in layman's terms.
As I headed down the mountain, I spy a snowy white Range Rover, England's answer to the Hummer, creeping along the other side of the road. I assumed the road was blocked - I stopped and we both rolled down our windows - I asked the gentleman was the road ahead blocked by a car, was that why he was turning back? He replied in a Russian accent, "Is terrible road conditions - my wehicle can't make it - I'm goink home."
He rolled his window up and I mine, and I considered his words. Let's add this up. This man has a 2005 Range Rover, costing about $84,085 (Ichecked this price on the web later) - basically a car designed to scale Mt. Everest without shifting out of 1st gear, and I, on the other hand, am leasing a 2001 Toyota Rav4, list price about $20,000. He is going back to his safe, warm house, and I am attempting to drive down the mountain. The voice inside me says - go for it, (please note I have scheduled my inner voice for a visit to a good therapist) and proceed. Sure enough, the Rav starts to emit the familiar sound of the ABS brakes kicking in, but I find it relatively easy to keep it headed around the the steep curve and make it past the most challenging portion of what qualifies as our little Mt. Everest in these parts. Note to inner voice - you were right and I'm canceling that therapist's appointment.
The Moral Of The Story? - Thinking of buying a Range Rover? Buy a Rav4, save $64,000.00 and STILL be safe.
Arriving at the Park and Ride, I find that my bus company decided it was a tad too dangerous to venture forth into the elements, and so I was faced with a decision to either wait until they felt conditions improved, or drive in by my lonesome.
Lonesome won. The roads were actually fairly clear of snow, thanks to the road plow crews in PA and NJ, and since it was quite possible that the remainder of all timid Range Rover drivers had opted to decline descending the incline, remarkably free of traffic as well. Although I had phoned in earlier and given an estimate of at least a 2 to 3 hour delay in my arrival at work, I was only about 5 minutes late, and my boss was quite pleased!
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
This was a big problem for early ABS systems, especialy here in Australia, with lots of gravel roads. Braking on dirt involves the wheels sliding in the gravel, biting through the surface to gain traction, evin in normal, slow-down-for-the-corner stuff. Many people had to get the ABS disabled, because they simply couldn't stop the car. When finaly introduced in a locally built car, they readjusted the ABS to allow the wheels to slide somewhat before activating. They also had to make it work POLA when on wheel was on bitumen, and the other on gravel: a common thing around here. Oh, and everyone with an ABS car should do an panic stop on a deserted road sometime, so they know what it feels like before the really need it.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Long answer: Absolutely not. And this (high-tech cars compensating for the lack of driving skill) is GOOD, because the average driver can spin a car on a safety test car even if the car has ABS and stuff. Actually, I think that if cars ever become fully automated, Minority Report style, we will have a lot less car accidents (*), and we'll take a lot less time to commute.
(*) And I'd take a bet that 99% of the car accidends would be caused by human failure (even if it's failure to properly maintain the vehicles.)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It really depends on your perspective. Sure the F1 cars of years ago were fast, but the drivers died when there was a big crash. Nowadays most F1 drivers, with all the advanced CAD desgiend rollcages and such can walk away from disasterous crashes with little more than a scratch and broken rib.
Cars like the Bugatti with 1001HP, can you imagine driving that without ABS, 4WD, various driver assists like traction control, etc.? I'm sure a pro driver would have no problem controlling it, but why let only the pros have all the fun?
For cars, technology is the great equalizer. You want to drive a raw car with little intervention and help, get a Lotus Elise. You want to go just as fast or faster for about the same kind of money, get a Mitsubishi Evolution or Subaru STi, and have a much easier time at it.
But personally, I'd like the car to warn me if there is something in my blind spot, especially during spirited driving. It doesn't replace me, it supplements me.
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1) Real link here
2) The test involved only 4 people, who seem to have been deliberately chosen from the very worst of rich idiots: what a suprise, they cant drive.
3) If you're not scared by other drivers, you haven't been paying attention.
[ insert meme here ]
Nobody is exempt from the laws of physics. Even the morons in California, driving their BMW's, are subject to Newton's laws of inertia. No amount of ABS will save the situation, when the a$$hole's front bumper is a mere 15 feet from my rear bumper.
A one-million-candlepower spotlight shining out my rear window, on the other hand, would tend to make people very smart very quickly.
Here's his previous troll article:3 55754
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172401&cid=14
Go to a super market car park, stand near the road, and just watch the drivers for half an hour.
You'll never want to be on the road again after the display of universal incompetence you'll see. I had to do this as part of my motorcycle training in the UK, and getting on the bike again was a severe brown trousers moment.
You are absolutely right. /.ing, etc.
In the 20 minutes I take to commute, I could be reading something,
In the 4 hours that takes to go to granny, I could be playing with my 7yo son, or tending my newborn daughter, or mellowing with the wife, or even taking a nap... instead of ducking trucks and potholes (*).
(*) Down here, there are practically ZERO cargo/passenger trains. As a result, and due to the fact that we are an enourmous country (bigger than continental USofA), all interstate cargo and passenger traffic is on the roads, on trucks and buses... and this causes an enourmous strain on our roads, that are horrible because of that.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I think much of what goes wrong in driving is the result of the increasing disconnect from reality that modern drivers face.
When you're riding a bike, the danger of what can happen if you're not cautious is all too real. Same with skiing. Same with walking.
Cars are another story entirely. It goes far beyond gadgetry like ABS, traction control, and the other modern technologies. It's far more fundamental than that.
You're in an enclosed environment. The windows are up. You can't fully hear the sounds outside the car. When you're on the highway going 80 mph, you've got the windows up. You can't feel or hear the loud, howling, fierce, blistering wind, the loud, raw sound of the tires grinding down the pavement. The shrieks of cars and trucks passing you by. You hear and feel maybe 20% of that, with the windows rolled up. These are all danger cues, things to keep you on high alert, but you've blocked them out, enclosed in the false security of your vehicular cockpit, with comfortable reclining bucket seat, music and talk radio, comfort-maximizing air conditioning and heating, zero wind, etc.
And then you've got those nice cars with the great suspension. No longer can you feel the all-too-real road beneath you. Now you don't even realize you just drove over a giant pothole at 40 mph.
The car control schema itself is like a video game. One pressure-sensitive button to stop, another to go. A wheel to steer. Each of these controls, your low-effort movements are amplified 1000x to control the multi-ton vehicle you're sitting in. Tired of pressing the B button? No problem, flip on the cruise control.
And most importantly, of course, is the need for speed! We love going 70, 80, 90 mph -- as fast as we can get away with. Why? Because we love to live in the moment, and that's ALL you feel when you're zooming along at 100 mph down an open road. You're steering a giant death machine at 100 mph...you don't have TIME to think about anything but the present.
And this, "living in the moment," is dangerous for exactly the same reasons it's enjoyable: You're not thinking about the future. Not even the near future. Not even the next few minutes. You've all but completely blocked out all thoughts, all concerns of the potential consequences of your actions.
Now people have argued that keeping a skill like driving a vehicle safely is no longer required as computers will be able to do it for us. But the required skill here- to be able to pilot a big hunk of metal, plastic and glass among other similar vehicles without anyone getting killed will still be a required skill for many years to come.
I think the real question here is how much control of these machines can be safely handed over to the judgement of an automated system, and whether we'd be willing to accept human death caused by such a system.
It's hard enough to accept death if it's human error or bravado that caused the accident. But when an error on your onboard computer means your car rams the back of a 7 seater and kills the two five year olds in the back seat, who do you blame?
Now people will answer with 'but planes already have autopilots and all sorts of automated systems' but a n autopilot doesn't do much more than keep a passsenger plane pointed at the desired heading while two or three professional crew members keep the plane safe. There's still a pilot and crew watching out for the safety of the plane and passengers, there are Ait Traffic Controllers making sure that planes don't come within miles of each other, and planes don't have to watch out for pedestrians (much).
Computers won't make driving much safer for now, and if we're going to allow automated systems such as these to get into the hands of ordainary people, who will take them as an excuse to pay less, not more attention at the wheel, then we're going to have to deal with the consequences of computer error killing people on a regular basis on our roads.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
It would be even better if I could step into my car with a latte, cell phone, and laptop, ask the car to take me to the airport, and read slashdot along the way. My guess is that it will happen within 20 years.
1950 called. It wants its prediction back.
replacing skills, with easy to use automated systems is not anyway to make ANY environment safer.
perhaps before granting someone a license to drive they should have to take and pass an advanced driving / Defensive driving course with refresher courses say every 2 years or something.
if people in my town had to do that i'd feel a whole lot safer on the road.
Here in the UK defensive driving is a skill set appropriate to all road (and some pavement) users.
That includes awareness of how ABS & traction control work (or not, as many cars on the road here arent new enough to have either), and the skill to traverse a slalom, especially given the amount of traffic and some of the manouvres and corning you have to do on a daily basis: If you drive past a school during the 'school run', this in particular becomes a matter of life and death, but still needs to be done at speed in order to not be late.
A better question might be, why aren't tests designed for both modern and old car systems, in the same way as you get test for manual and automatic cars. You can drive an automatic if you pass the manual test (so we all do), why not have the same thing with aided-control and driver-control tests? (You could even incorporate the automatic clutch into the aided-control test, and keep the names as automatic and manual)..
[ insert meme here ]
technology certain things... makes certain things 'easier', and in the process takes certain 'powers' away... anything new here?
Yeah wich is the reason high performance jets do NOT use those old fashioned controls. Because jet pilots never sheeze or are never jolted around or shocked or even injured.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Having read (most of) the comments, I want to chip in my 2c.
:-) ). The less they do or know about it, the better, 'coz' they just had a tough day at work.
;-) : http://www.speedydelivery.co.uk/media/escort_mk2_r s2000_a.jpgw 2005_7549.jpg
Concerning the article... what it says is old news if you're into driving. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get a decent car to hone your skills in (one with good suspension setup & all the electronics disableable).
People who just want to get from A to B in fact welcome this. They're not interested in how a car works, how they can "tamper" with its course on the road (or off it
This is where the vast majority of most of the car makers' money is going into. Making safe cars for the indifferent (scared?) driver, who sees the more "interested" drivers as maniacs (and I'm not talking about the maniacs who practice while endangering others or just show off mid-town).
Fortunately, there are still enough departments in most european and japanese(*) companies that make cars for "interested" drivers. Unfortunately, the cars they make usually end up being quite pricey and targeted to the more affluent among us.
(*) unfortunately it's been very long since an american manufacturer managed to produce anything that handles well enough for europeans' tastes (and shipped it across to Europe, of course)
Personally... I'm an owner of a '90s RWD jap car and getting more and more interested in one of those (or anything in its class
http://www.carster.pl/pic/rallyShow2005_/rallySho
(and yes, I'd love to rally one of those if I could afford it)
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
It's easy!
So a bunch of completely average drivers were taken around a test track at high speed and spun out. Why does this not surprise me?
Note that they spun out in "classic" cars. My expierience of "classic" cars, i.e. "older" cars, is that they are heavier, less responsive, sluggish and of course, lack any modern safety features. In other words they are fundamentally harder to drive. It's got nothign to do with the driver.
I would wager that if you ran this test with these "classic" cars 20 years ago, under the same conditions, the drivers would have spun out, despite their expierience with the less advanced technology.
May the Maths Be with you!
Here you will sit in the seat of a 1970 Chevy Impala replication, and watch driver safety movies in the screen at the head of the room. After the second or third pedestrian jumping out-of-nowhere that kills your score you'll soon discover that the speedometer works and push this bastard to 120mph. The instructor with the balding head who greases his hair and extends it over the baldspot will be your record keeper. He'll even remind you to slow down and take this simulation more seriously if you expect to pass the class and be able to take the test.
For those of you age 18 taking driver's ed in your senior year you're already too dense to realize you don't need this class to get your license. But on the flipside, that lack of intelligence which translates to lack of motor skills is currently keeping perhaps one, a few, or several unsuspecting fellow citizens from getting blindsighted when you mistakenly hit the gas pedal when the break pedal is just about 2 inches to the left.
Ahh. Now that several weeks of Grand Turismo simulation sessions are in the past it is time to take this puppy out with several other classmates, and the dreaded weasel who gets to play Caesar for an hour.
"Is this our car?" you utter with clear disgust in your tone.
"What did you think it was going to be? This is public school." replied Caesar.
Flash forward to an insider Daimler Chrysler meeting. One engineer reports on research from Detroit.
The top ten list of must have ideas from Detroit.
1. Electronically Controlled Braking.
Reasoning: Well with 2/3rds of the GDP in the hands of the above 55 crowd we don't want to lose them. Afterall, besides gangster rap artists, some really bad hollywood drivers and a few car afficianados who else can afford this car? Old people that's who.
"How about lightrail trains?" asked one engineer.
"Trainnnns? We killed those in the 20s. You come up with trains again and you're fired mister!" came the voice of management who appeared as a rather short, non-descript man who finally saw his grandfather's vision fulfilled. No sooner had this moment of bliss surfaced then it was dashed by the vent system above turning on and blowing his wispy hair from the top of his head which revealed a rather large hereditary spot of baldness.
My car's ABS goes off way too easy. Until I started driving around it, it would often send me through an intersection. (Slopes usually make it happen the most).
Now I always pump my brakes and I always stop exactly where I want to, unless I want the ABS to activate, for instance if some assclown drunk pulls into my lane while I'm in it and I want to steer. It's all pretty much ingrained at this point.
ABS can also dramatically increase distances in certain conditions.
References a test done by a finnish mag with a VW Golf. (Can't find the link at the moment)
Stopping distance on ice at @ 50mph
Locked wheels - 255 m
ABS - 404 m
But most of the time it comes up in my car circles, people think it's always better then a person could do, which is obviously not always (or even often) true if the person knows how to threshold brake.
Oddly enough, this link on howstuff works references an IIHS study that found drivers with ABS were more likely to die.
I have problems with Traction Control too. Occasionally, if I hit a slight depression with the front tire (and Boston is full of depressions, ruts and everything else), it brakes that tire and jerks the wheel. The first time it happened, almost hit a guard rail. Was like a hand on the wheel. It was a nice day and the road was fine. Just a little bridge plate and it cinched up. I've learned to live with it and anticipate it as well. But to someone who is less experienced, I imagine the outcome might be different.
All bitching aside, every once in awhile, it works the way it's supposed to, when it matters and makes it worthwhile. Both have saved me from wrecking at least once. Though both have almost caused me to wreck more than once, so maybe it's a wash.
I'm not against tech assistance mind you , but people really should learn how to threshold brake and other skills. Perhaps it's because most of my previous cars were banged up shitboxes. Hell I drove on a donut for a year with one of them , knowing the cars limits were a requirement back in those days.
I think these devices give people a false sense of security. Like with 4 wheel drive. People thing they can just disregard the laws of physics. "I can take the icy corner at 90mph!", not realizing that in 4x4, as all tires are biting, it can skip out.
I'm going to stop right here. I could rant about Massachusett drivers all day.
To summarize, most people suck at driving.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Most of you seem to be missing the point of ABS. It is not designed to stop you quicker than locking your wheels up in a conventionaly braked car (although it will considerably shorten stopping distances in the wet and in snow). It is designed to let you control your car whilst braking so that if you have to break hard you can steer around accidents and obstructions in the road.
The same goes for traction control, it automatically stops you from putting too much power down allowing you to steer your car whilst cornering.
Anything which takes something difficult to control out of the hands of mortals is good news for safety. Tho' this is no substitute for good road sense and observation. As a car driving motorcyclist I can say that learning to ride a motorbike around town for a few months will certainly make you think about your own safety!
Trying to replace skill/talent with software is no big surprise in the world of engineering. A talented engineer becomes much more capable if s/he uses creative software if s/he uses software created by a more knowledgeable engineer or group of engineers.
But all knowledge floats all boats, so this phenomenon can lead to incompetents thinking they now have mad skillz. Or worse, manager-types thinking they can dictate design to engineers.
For example, I don't care if the latest web page design concept (AJAX, maybe?) fails, I DO care if the bridge I'm travelling on falls down.
I bet the passengers aboard that plane were very glad they had a old pilot who knew about gliders (perhaps they would have been more glad if they had a pilot who knew how to do conversions properly) and was able to use his obsolete skills to safely bring the plane down.
Recently we had the WMF exploit on windows (well we, I mean windows users not real people who run real OS'es) and the workaround required to do some stuff in DOS (So much for Windows being a GUI OS I guess) and a lot of people had trouble with it. All of sudden high tech fails and people who only know the high tech situation flop around like fish on land.
Of course that is just life but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of it. If you are ever faced with the choice of having to absolutly rely on a car for your live, take on that is purely mechanical and can be fixed easily on the road. Some time ago there was a fun drive with some really old mercedes cars. All the oldies made it, their accompening Land Rovers had a few dropouts. 100yr old tech beating the latest and greatest. Just beware.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They are also heavy, have a high center of gravity making them worthless when the shit hits the fan as they react badly.
Now even a street sports car will have been somewhat designed to stick to the goddamn road and behave properly. Among them is to brake well. Braking is very important even in a semi race/sports car as being able to brake late means a lot in being fast.
You are comparing the braking between a car designed to have good handling vs a car designed to appeal to the asshole in you.
ABS on the same car has been proven time and time again to shorten brake distances. The only exception can occur with REALLY good drivers. You are not a really good driver.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Has the great and prestidgeous institute known as the Mercedes Marketing department come to stoop so low as this?
To post a viral ad as an A/C... on Slashdot.
Truely, these are dark times.
May the Maths Be with you!
Actually I can imagine driving that without ABS, 4WD and other driver assists. Look at the Ford GT: theoretically, it's 550HP. Practically it's more like 620-640HP. Not bad, right? Well that car has absolutely ZERO driver assists, except for the mandatory ABS. And trust me, that car drives and handles like a dream. Totally stable, perfectly balanced.
In my opinion, it is too often that driver assists compensate for poor car engineering in the first place.
'... it also turns out most drivers can't even name the high tech safety systems that are continually saving their butts'
Why is this a problem? There are plenty of things my Mum doesn't understand about her PC but it doesn't stop her getting enjoyment from using it.
I bet most of the youngsters her don't understand what double-declutching is, why it was needed and what invention came along that made it unnecessary?
Do you understand how the electronics in the ECU that drives the engine works? I'd bet half the geeks here don't know that a cam shaft and a crank rotate at different speeds.
This is soooo much of a non-story.
You don't need a classic car and a race track to test this - just get them all to drive almost any of the vehicles in Sinbins "GT Legends" - this PC game is so good - it really captures the driving model of the old (60s /70s GT cars). Highly recommended for improving your skills at driving the older classics.
The article fails to mention if these drivers were on their cell phones while all this was going on.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
From Wikipedia:
Oh dear. the article goes on to mention that the 1969 model had a 400 cubic inch engine, which is about 6.4 litres, a size usually reserved for cargo trucks and airplanes. Someone has seen it fit to place such an engine into a two seater vehicle weighing less than one ton.
You can apparently drive this vehicle. However, I would go so far as to say that the ability to drive such a hotrod in no way prepares anyone for driving modern 1.1 litre hatchback runabouts, equipped with ABS, safely through town.
If people cannot drive without traction control or ABS (minimally) then they should not be able to drive at all. Driving a motor vehicle is not difficult.
And if people cannot drive with such systems, as was a frequent occurance when such systems were first introduced?
Getting a vehicle in motion is not a difficult process. Driving on the other hand is a very, very difficult skill which a great many people simply never achieve. Driving includes both the ability to move the vehicle and obey the rules of the road. It's the second part that most people have trouble with, not the first.
Any ass can get a 7 litre hotrod up to 200kph. But it would take a demi-god to use the beast on work, school and grocery runs for 10 years, in heavy traffic, with no incidents.
Some that I know still can't drive at all even with safety features and such... it is truly sad
Some people that I know have fifty times more time behind the wheel than I do and still cannot drive. They can get the car in motion in a paticular direction, but they speed, don't signal, brake lights, cut across lanes and generally put their lives more at risk than I ever will, despite the fact that my driving time is measured in hours and theirs in weeks.
My key point here is that people often mistake the ability to "move" a car for the ability to "drive" a car. They are very different things. Someone can still be a reasonably good "driver" without having fully mastered the ability to get the car in motion.
May the Maths Be with you!
Nanny cars will save idiots, yet may trip up those normally more aware.
Awareness can never truly be taken over? I mean the car knows where you are going, what the road it doing, how we it is, how old the tyres are, how much fuel there is where the next station is, how expensive it is, how late you are, how much fuel economy to frive to therefore.
Can cars become FULLY AUTO-MOBILES?
They aren't really auto-mobiles right now are they?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I don't have power steering, ABS, airbags, traction control, power windows, power mirrors or even a heated rear window. But then I learned to drive before cars had all this stuff. The car is a poverty-spec '97 Mazda MX-5, by the way, something most /. readers will know as the Miata.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Sure some cars have all these automatic features, but many of these are for people who are either too lazy, or have neglected their good driving techniques for far too long. A machine is not a good substitute for informed human judgement. Sure antilock breaks are more effecent than regular breaks, but if you need radar to check your blind spots, perhaps the vechicle you're driving is too big. There are countless people who drive mammath suvs who learned how to drive on a small car. Because of this, they have bad habits like taking 2 parking spaces in a parking lot. I drive a small compact (1999 ford escort se) and i have 2 very small blind spots, I don't need radar, and i really dispise people who drive large suv's and then almost merge into me because my roof is up to their mirrors. Perhaps suv drivers should be forced to get a new licence to prove they can drive the supersized cars.
Either way i'm not a fan of automated features. Like automatic transmission, its great for people who are lazy, but most times a manual will be more effecent (and imo safer in unsafe road conditions). Certanly there are features that without a doubt make people safer, but these features are no subsitute for safe driving practices.
The automatic breaking system may seem scary when your actually paying attention to the road, which in that matter, you will break on your own anyways.....But I couldn't tell you how many times I was searching for something on the floor and crept up on someone faster than I wanted. This breaking system would work great for me. Or how about the days when you are very very tired after a long days work and your at a dead stop, then the light turns green and you assume that the driver ahead of you is going to accelerate but doesn't. This breaking system should save a lot of low speed crashes.
Mark
Just to clarify: even though a really good driver is better than ABS, they basicly use the same method. It's just that a really good driver is better at it.
But...why bother training drivers? Why not turn over these mechanical functions to a silicon brain that won't get bored with them?
For my money, driving is an adventure for, say, the first 10 years you do it, mildy amusing for the next 10 years, and then just boring except on rare occasion after that. Mostly it's a drudge. Most days, I'd much rather just slide into the seat, tell the car "To the office, Bud, and don't spare the horses" -- then sit back and read, catch some more Z's, or jack in to some mobile wireless Internet connection and read the headlines while sipping coffee. Weekends, maybe, I'd rent an MG and swoop down the coast. But M-F in eight lanes of 45 MPH traffic? Ugh. Bring on the robot cars!
If they call what I see some people doing on the roads on a daily basis skill, then I welcome our new automobile overlords.
If only they could make a car that forces someone to be considerate on the road, like move into the right lane when they should, for example.
In Florida you don't even have to parallel park. Compare with license requirements in Europe, most of which include things like 6 months driving classes and so forth. They damn sure didn't make me do a panic stop or swerve when I got my license. I mean I renewed over the Internet.
Vote Quimby!
Hm, it would be funny to see how cars will react when a driver using the power glove scratches his head while driving.
If you get this, we're 10 of a kind.
I live in Colorado. I've driven icy mountain roads every winter for 15 years, starting with a 83 Toyota Tercel and now a Subaru STi, so I know what I'm talking about. I can tell you that there's no frelling way a car is going to stop faster on ice with locked brakes. If you're going to lock up the wheels, you're better off using ABS.
Here's a quote from a Swedish site that did braking studies: "The average deceleration was greater with ABS than without for all 24 combinations of tyres and road surfaces. However, many individual tests on the A-track resulted in greater deceleration when wheels were locked-up digging themselves down in the loose snow to a level with greater adhesion."
On ice, it'll never dig down through the snow, so that doesn't apply.
I find the Subaru ABS to be very effective. Threshold braking is more effective, but it still works. Brake until you get ABS chatter, then back off. There ya go.
ABS is really handy in situations where the traction isn't what you expect. There might be gravel on the pavement that you didn't notice, or a patch of glare ice hidden under a fresh layer of snow. That *whack* on the brake pedal is a lot better than not noticing your wheels stopped turning. Glare ice can do that. And I really doubt you can react fast enough to keep the wheels turning if you were doing heavy braking in a corner and hit gravel on pavement. Having the wheels locked up from the gravel slide when it hits pavement again is BAD.
I read the link about more deaths in ABS cars. The reason they give for it is drivers panic and quickly turn to avoid the collision, causing the car to hit on the less protected sides or driving off the road or into oncoming traffic. Ironically, ABS is working exactly as designed, giving the driver perfect control during a panic stop, but most drivers were better off when the car ignored them.
Subaru's "traction control" is all in the drive train instead of braking the loose wheel, and I love it. LOVE IT! When I had the STi for the first snow storm, it still had summer tires on it. Summer tires are basically slicks with rain grooves. I STILL managed to get it up and down 8 miles of mountain road on about an inch of unplowed, ungravelled snow that was packed by other drivers (more slippery than fresh powder). Do THAT in an old no-aids Camaro. I see cars like that struggling to even get out of their driveway down where it's FLAT. Watching them spin one little wheel is pathetic.
Driver aids are great. Badly implemented driver aids are crap.
Yay! I finally get to rant about the love of my life.
I change cars once a year and always prefered big , luxury saloons. In 2004 however, I decided to buy myself a little black sportcar for my birthday.
An MG TF roadster. What a car! It was a very fun car , but difficult to drive. The gearbox was notchy, the clutch took way too early, the rear-end broke away too easily and it felt very unsafe with the ragtop only an inch from your head.I was almost lying down in my seat and thanks to its low mass it had loads of grunt and because it was mid-engined , a beauty to drive.But that's where the fun is!Because it was so difficult to drive it taught me skill and rewarded me richly when I drove it properly. I almost killed myself a couple of times with that car. I had dropped suspension and on a dry road the grip was unbelievable. That's where the problem comes in! It gave you no warning whatsoever. You could push it all to way to its limits around a corner and then when you finally crossed that fine line it would just let go! No smoking tyres or hopping around. All or nothing! On a wet road the little sportscar was a deathtrap. You could go around a corner at 5Mph and still let the tail hang out. I also once braked too hard while driving fast.No ABS shudder or anything. All 4 wheels locked up and I just kept going. Later I thought about it and realized that the ABS would have helped only if some of the wheels locked up. I was still doing about 40 Mph and the wheels were standing still, so the ABS thought that we must have made a miraculous instant stop and all was good. Well, now I'm back to a normal(well, huge!) luxury sedan with all the bells and whistles. Although I feel very safe now, I really miss the thrill and excitement that a car like that can give you. It's part of the experience.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
I just want to get from A->B quickly and safely... In fact a better solution than bolting these kludges on to existing technologies would be to take the next step entirely...
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
Deleted
We need nanny cars here. BIGTIME.
We have many immigrants who either cross over by mexico (that doesnt mean theyre mexican)and then go cross across the southern states till they reach south florida or float across from cuba. (we've found rafts canoing in the keys) After that they get a job either with the construction industry which is booming here right now or with field labor. As soon as they have a job theres someone out here who will finance them a car despite not having a license.
The result?
Hundreds of brand new cars zooming all over the place at high speed doing seriously dangerous manuvers.
I just moved here from los angeles and this is the worst driving i have EVER seen. I see cars without license plates driving around, trucks carrying scrap piled high and unsecured with pieces falling off the back. Everyone here tailgates, its just a fact of life in miami. The amount of illegal driving activity on roads down here is so much the police departments have basically given up. Its taken quite a deal of work to learn to drive acting as though everyone around you is a drunk because many of these people haven't had as much practice driving with a cellphone as we in los angeles have. Seriously I dare anyone in the country to come down here and tell me this isnt the scariest driving in the country. In california they taught me defensive driving in school, here they seem to teach offensive driving or none at all.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Fortunately I can shut off the ABS system in my AUDI but it should be disabled by default! The system is F*hking dangerous.
During winter here we often have ice build up - but usually 2 or 3 wheels are on something that provides traction. So the ABS system reduces braking power to the LOWEST COMMON DENOMONATOR and thus if one wheel is on black ice the system simulates 4 wheels on black ice. This is GAWDAM DANGEROUS.
There have been many times I have been blindly punching at the damn shut off button as I was comming up to an intersection staring at a bus or semi to the right or left and all the while thinking I'm going to get T-Boned. The damn ABS system shuts off the brakes when you least expect it. Its almost like a demon sitting there ready to laugh and say - HAHA - no brakes - GOTCHA you SOB. I almost have had a heart attack thinking - Damn: I forgot to shut off that DAMN ABS system again.
Well - one day my son forget to shut the damn thing off. 1 block from home an SUV swerved over the center line and he had to swerve towards the curb to avoid it - and got caught in loose snow with a little ice under it.
GOTCHA.
You can easily imagine what happened next. The ABS system shut off the braking to the two wheels on dry pavement. With no brakes he could not stop the car. The loose snow put the car in a 360 because the ABS didn't know that loose snow would slow the wheels on the passenger side and indeed it had disabled the brakes on the drivers side.
So the car went into a slow clockwise spin of about exactly 90 degrees while it slid to a stop. If he had another 10 feet the car would probably have been fine. Alas - someone decided to place a sidewalk around that intersection and he slid into it and broke off two (2) wheels.
It was a clean break! Nevertheless my car was now a bicycle.
The insurance company wrote it off of course.
I'd like to sue AUDI for that monster of a system. To be driving a car where the engineers (or whoever) have decided that with NO WARNING the damn brakes should be disabled is F*hking dangerous. These vehicals SHOULD NOT BE APPROVED.
This is about as bad as using a WINDOWS system where suddenly you get an Unavoidable Applications Error (UAE) or a blue screen of DEATH!
Over the years people have asked what it would be like to drive a car if it crashed like windows does. Well - Microsoft seems to have an influence beyond the desktop because from what I can tell - Audi built this into the car I had!
The bottom line is that I have not replaced the Audi yet. But when I do it will NOT have ABS braking and I dont' give a damn if I have to drive a vehical built in 1985 I'll do it! Never again will I drive a car that suddenly and unexpectedly just disables the brakes with no warning!
As I said before. These vehicals should be banned.
Most of the cars here dont have the driving aids like ABS, ESP and the likes. In fact most of the cars don't even have airbags, even new ones.
Do we have more accidents? I doubt it...
If you know your car limitations and how it responds to a certain emergency you wont have any problems.
For the test in the article to be valid IMHO they should ask drivers that are used to drive non aided cars...
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
Pardon me, but the poster can't drive well either. It's dangerous to look over your shoulder when changing lanes. Only look to the left and right to see if there are cars next to you. Use your mirror to look behind you. Looking over your shoulder takes your eyes too long the front. Many accidents happen this way.
I worked on the Navlab project project at Carnegie-Mellon in the 1980s. The project built several a robotic cars, aided by vision systems and other specialized sensors, that could distinguish the road from other features, and drive. Top speed was less than 20 miles/hour in the 1980s. In the 1990s, these systems achieved speeds of 90 mph on the interstate, and only required the equivalent of a Pentium 150 in the trunk of the car (along with good sensors).
Technology from the same university has performed well in the DARPA grand challenge. http://www.grandchallenge.org/
Robots don't hog the left lane driving 50 miles per hour, talking on their cell phone. Human still need to pay attention, since there are always situations where the automated systems get into trouble.
Check out http://www.cs.cmu.edu.nyud.net:8090/afs/cs/project /alv/www/
and http://www.assistware.com.nyud.net:8090/
for details
A few years ago a friend told me of something that happened to his dad. His dad had just bought a new Mercedes with some early computer controlled braking system in it. It was one of these that works on the premise that if you slam the brakes really hard, the car takes over and brings the car to a complete halt as quickly as possible.
So, this guy is out driving and he comes to a 40 mph stretch of road. Now, lots of people speed down this section of road, and he's no different, so he's doing 60 down there, when all of a sudden he spots a policeman with a speed gun (this is in the UK) hiding in a gateway just up ahead. He doesn't want to get done doing 60, so he slams on the brakes and... the car takes over. He slows to 40, but the car doesn't care, it's working on stopping him altogether. He decelerates and rolls to a complete halt right next to the cop in the gateway, who looked somewhat amused and confused as my friends dad persuaded the car to move off again.
"but if the road is dry, the stop time will be much shorter if the wheels lock and you skid."
Only if you are talking about gravel roads, on a normal road skiding does not help you slow down faster, it does the opposite. Perhaps it is because you are comparing a heavier SUV to a sedan??
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I have always thought that modern learner cars allow the pupil to get away with far too much. When I learned the car had ABS, power steering and fuel injection. Now they even come with parking sensors! Being able to drive in a car that does everything for you is great, until it doesn't. Then you're screwed.
My last car was a Citroen AX - carburettor engine, manual choke, no ABS, no power steering, no parking sensors - nothing. Car before that? 1986 VW Polo - that didn't even have servo assisted brakes (PUMP THAT PEDAL!)!. Did I ever crash them? Spin them? Lose control in a skid? No. Why not? Because I learned how to drive, not just how to work the controls. I was well aware of the limits of both the car and myself. If I pushed, it would let me. And I'd be the one suffering.
One of the rules of the driving test in the UK is that the driver MUST be in control of the vehicle at all times. So, let people have their electronics, their gizmos and their gadgets, but don't let them into the toy cupboard until they've proven that can go without.
If a car has automatic braking set at 170 feet, how can you ever get it into your garage...
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
I'm of the opinion that all new drivers should be required to drive a motorcycle for 1 or 2 years before they're allowed to drive a car. You learn to be aware of your surroundings, the limitations of your vehicle, and the general lack of basic competence of many drivers around you. In addition, mistakes are harshly punished. Even if it didn't improve skills, it would certainly reduce the number of drivers on the road.
Of course! We give all kinds of incompetent idiots driver's licenses. Everything is always designed for the lowest common denominator.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
Whoa, you say. But consider this:
- Human beings have a vested interest in safety.
- They also, especially the male ones, have an inbuilt instinct to push the limits.
- So guess what might happen when a new safety feature is added? Let's say the feature, say an air-bag, makes you feel 20% safer. You choose:
- (1) Nobody changes their habits and air-bags reduce casualties 20%.
- (2)Guys drive just a bit faster, enough to raise their apparent risk level back to about where it was. Cars are $400 more expensive.
- Similarly for ABS, 4-wheel drive, traction control. The only ones that really benefit are the car parts makers and the car companies.
Kinda fits in with one's feelings about your own driving style, eh?"You have to STOMP the gas peddle. What to stop SUDDENLY? You have to STOMP the brake. "
No you don't. Its the mark of an experienced driver to be giving huge inputs for any reason.
The amount of pressure needed to floor the gas is only slightly higher than that need to move forward a 1 MPH. Likewise, unless you're driving a huge 40 ton earthmover, braking force to lock the wheels is only slightly greater than the force necessary to gently stop the car.
Since you seem to be inexperienced, let me point out a few things to you:
1) the gas pedal does not provide proportional input to fuel system. That is, pressing the gas slightly may provide proportionally greater amounts of fuel than if you press the gas 3/4's of the way to the floor (and before you argue I'm wrong, re-read the sentence. Remember the key word is "proportionally")
2) The brake pedal is very proportional because it allows you to do what's called "modulating" the brakes. The gives you the ability in emergency braking to take your brakes right to the limit by modulating pressure as you feel a wheel starting to lock.
I realize to most 17-25 year olds with only a few years of driving that the controls seem poor when compared with your PS2, but remember, if you understand how to drive, you'll realize that video game controls are crude compared to the controls in an automobile. Its also not helped by the fact that the SUV's you tend to prefer have *bad* control systems, because you guys decided that "chunky looks" and bad gas mileage are way cooler than operating a vehicle that requires precision and finesse. And now you're bitching that the crappy vehicle you chose is no fun to drive. Boo hoo.
"Seriously, the people doing this study actually think that your typical driver facing a panic situation somehow had the foresight to remember some verbal instruction back from a high school driver's ed class about "Cadence Breaking" before ABS was a standard feature?"
The only reason this stuff was taught in driver's ed class was because the teacher was the baseball coach who learned from his father back in the 20's about "cadence braking". It's a bad idea; you need to understand how to properly modulate the brakes right to the point of wheel lock...
Which explains a truism about driving... it can't be taught, it can only be learned (for the most part). If you don't really care about driving; its simply a way to get from point A to point B, you'll never be any good at it because you won't care to learn the best way to steer, brake and accelerate.
To use an analogy that most slashdot readers can relate to... most people buy a PC aren't terribly aware of how it works and don't have much idea what to do when it doesn't work as expected. Driving is pretty much the same way.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The word you're looking for is "brake", not "break".
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
My 15-year old daughter thought I was kidding when I told her she was going to the "Galley School of Driving" which is taught using Gran Turismo 4 and a Logitech Driving Force wheel. I want her to understand how easily a car can get out of your control (in a safe environment). The stupid school system can't give her a driver's ed class until she's a senior. WTF?
"I'm not a cool person in real life, but I play one on the Internet". Galley
I drive a 1974 VW Bug daily with no modern bullshit at all. What i find weird is when i have to drive a modern car, and it feels like you have no direct control of the vehicle. For example when its raining, the steering is noticably lighter, and it makes you think "hmm... its frikkin slippery, better be more careful". Whereas in modern cars with PAS you don't actually feel that the road is more dangerous. Also the feedback from the steering when cornering hard gives a pretty good indication of when you are pushing the car to its limit, again, this seems removed with PAS. Braking on moden vehicles also feels strange, as the pedal is usually so light now, i have little concept of how hard i'm actually braking as the pedal has no resistance at all...
;-)
all in all i'll stick with my bug with its old tech, but at least you can replace anything with a set of metric spanners...
I call bullshit. No power steering or brakes?
If you ever drove a pontiac aztek you would look forward to automated blind spot checkers
You wouldn't pass your driving test in the UK if you didn't look over your shoulder.
You see, there's this thing called a 'blind spot' which is an area which is not covered by the mirror. You could look left and right, look in your mirrors, and still pull out into a car. Not all cars have built-in blind spot mirrors.
Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think that driving in someone else's blind spot is a sensible idea.
In exactly the same way computers now speak with us in English (or our desired language), cell phones are dialed by voice, the same way we drive our flying cars.
:)
It's just another over-used story. Sure, these things will help in the exact same way ABS brakes and airbags have, but if there's "a loose nut behind the wheel" it's still gonna cause problems.
Sorry- gotta go: the autonomous 747 to take me to Chile in under 30 minutes is here.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Actually, as a real race car driver, I've used GT4 (and many other driving programs) to help practice for racing. Running a real racecar is very expensive in terms of $ per min of seat time, where a Playstation is pretty cheap.
Part of it is that I have the controls set up to replicate the race car as much as possible - that means a wheel and pedals, similar seating position, etc.
Playstation practice is really good training, especially the license tests. If you can get Gold on everything, you're doing well.
But like the show pointed out (Top Gear rocks BTW) the Playstation doesn't tell the whole story. It is very good for teaching line, hand/eye co-ordination, and agression. It does less well for teaching the sensation of keeping a car balanced right on the limit. With modern race tires, it's not unusual to pull 1.7G transients on concrete without aero. There's just no way for a game console to replicate that. The consoles also have trouble conveying elevation change and road camber (probably because you feel that more than you see it) The Nurburgring in person is *far* more intimidating than in GT4.
But if you understand the limitations, it makes a good training tool.
As far as ABS goes, my racecar has ABS, but its primary purpose is to keep the tires round. In testing, we found that driver modulation beat the ABS in terms of stopping distances (race tires and dry pavement) On wet pavement, same deal, but it was much harder for the driver to walk the line between "I've got it" and "it's got me". Part of the problem is the difficulty in an enclosed car of telling when the wheels are locked. With the ABS on, you could transgress the braking limit and the tires would stay round and the car would still stop.
For me, ABS has been an ass saver, but not a performance increasing device per sae (ie, I don't just mash the brakes and let the ABS do all the work - that's slow)
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
There's an easy fix to the problem of the blind-spot checker being used as a replacement - put the indicator on the pillar near the mirror. You're looking that way anyway at that point.
what happens when you are cruising down the highway and you are approaching a bend? after the bend there is a traffic jam. i dont think the system would stop you. same thing with hills. i dont like the idea of people counting on these things. people on the nj garden state parkway are bad enough drivers as it is!
I learned to drive in a 1989 dodge ram pickup, it had no abs, no power steering and the shittiest 4 speed tranny ever made. I also live in Pennsylvania where winters are pretty shitty. Recently bought an 02 Cougar, first snowfall I had to disable the abs system.
Point is people should learn to drive a car before they let the car drive itself for them.
Am I the only one that a blind spot sensor scares to death? I can just imagine it now; sure, it lets you know if there's a car next to you, but does it even register that nice, crunchy, bicyclist/motorcycle/pedestrian/baby carriage/nazgul right next to you? Not that people look for those anyway, but it would be the last nail in the coffin for sharing the road if done poorly.
Speaking of which, TFA has almost no detail on these. Anyone have a reference with more that'll make me feel better (or worse)?
Original article with more info
This work on different inputs and 'fly by wire' controls is interesting. For it to really work, the design must retain at least two things (aside from the obvious general usability attributes).
First, the key is that the controls respond to fine modulations and provide feedback. Subtle changes in pressure or position must be recognized. Racecars, in which most classes prohibit 'fly-by-wire' systems, are often designed with variable ratio steering and throttle linkages to provide for subtle inputs where it matters most. Fly-by-wire controls as you are designing have the opportunity for even more interesting input-output mapping.
Feedback is also important. Fly-by-wire controls on commercial and military aircraft employ artificial feedback to replace that lost from manual controls. E.g., the stick-shaker simulates the shaking that hydraulic controls feedback from the wing control surfaces starting to flutter as a plane approches a stall condition. The goal is for the artificial system to feel natural.
Second, do NOT succumb to the temptation to overload multiple systems onto one control. It might seem simpler to have one stick, push forward for throttle, and back for brake, but that eliminates the possibility of using both at once. In ordinary daily driving, it might seem that this is silly, but it is actually a critical skill/capability in higher performance driving or emergency situations. To quote Mario Andretti, "the brakes aren't for stopping, they're for balancing the car", and you DO need them both at once.
The key isn't combining controls or removing control from the driver. The key is allowing the driver to do things easier -- reduce driver workload so (s)he can concentrate on the items that matter.
Example 1: Paddle shifters on the steering wheel are better than an H-pattern shifter on the floor and a clutch. Manually operating the clutch added nothing to the driver's control of the car, nor did moving the hand to the shift lever. The paddle shifter reduces it to its essence -- change gears exactly when you want, with a minimum of effort.
Example 2: Displays on the steering wheel are becoming common in racecars, and Heads Up Displays are common in aircraft and are now appearing in high-end road cars like the Corvette Z06. These do not take away information, they just put it where it is easy to see.
One cautionary tale, I saw an article about a guy who won several times the world championship in video game auto rally competition (not sure which one). His videos looked impressive, and he got sponsorship to run a real rally car in British competition. The transition to real world driving was in many ways remarkably quick, but quite rough (he stuffed it into an embankment in the first few days). He had many elements of driving far advanced for his experience, but the 'feel' for the racecar's behavior wasn't there.
I'll be very interested to see what sorts of developments you make. I wish you could reveal more detail.
As one of the comments on the actual article pointed out, a much better explanation is that they were thrust from driving their familiar FWD or AWD cars into an unfamiliar RWD car in extreme circumstances. Had they actually controlled their 'experiment' by say, simply disabling the systems in the cars the testers drove the first time, then maybe the experiment would have some validity. As is it is perfectly reasonable to interpret the results as showing that people don't understand the handling characteristics of different drivetrain configurations.
Numeracy levels among the general population are dropping.
Fitness levels among the general population are dropping.
Communication skills among the general population are dropping.
Basic survivial skills among the general population are dropping.
Overall result: many people find themselves in worse situations than they would have been a few years ago, due to over-reliance on technology and lack of basic knowledge. If people learned how to do the basics properly before learning to use technology to make it easier, a lot of problems in today's world would go away.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Buying a car nowadays is almost impossible without ABS.
I have a 2004 Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec-V. I wanted all the options: the subwoofer, the power everything, etc.
I had to get ABS if I got all that. The only alternative would have been the 'brembo' braking system. (Read: stupidly expensive to repair). I wasn't interested. I learned how to and know how to drive in a car without ABS. I hate ABS. It kicks in needlessly, and makes my control of the vehicle much WORSE. I have to look into the legality of disabling it (and any insurance implications it may carry.)
Drivers out there are already bad enough -- but I'm torn. If these add-ons are stopping car accidents from occurring, then great, but if they're making drivers inherently dumber (if that's possible), then I'm afraid for what the future brings in a whole new calibre of shitty drivers.
A good way to tell which of these things actually help is to look at which ones will get a discount on your insurance...ABS will do that, for example. The big insurance companies wouldn't do that if ABS didn't make you safer, because they only really care about their bottom line.
All is Number -Pythagoras.
The closer we come to cars that drive themselves, the closer I come to buying a car. Driving a car has to be one of the most mundane / dangerous (for myself and others) activities that I do. I don't find these new technologies scary, I find them liberating. How do people on here complain about being stuck as a cog in the wheel at some corporate job and hold on tight to their sacred role as overly-complicated cog behind the wheel of a car.
it's brakes, not breaks.
BRAKES are what stop your car.
Your car BREAKS when it hits something.
Thank you.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
All these new safety features are really neat, cool and even brilliant in some cases. However, I still feel that all that R&D, increased cost in purchasing and repairs is directed at 'popular' solutions not real solutions.
I strongly believe that the number of accidents would drop dramatically if instead of spending money on fancy safety features, people had to spend it on getting retested every few years. Have a system that pseudo-randomly selects 15-20% of the drivers each year to undergo retesting to verify their driving abilities. If you are found to be at fault for an accident or are convicted of a traffic offense your odds of being part of the 'test' group increase.
Why am I confident this would work? Because no amount of safety features has ever encouraged me to improve my driving skills and because there are not enough consistent traffic enforcement officers out there making sure I behave. The result is that, while I feel pretty confident in my ability to control a car under normal conditions, I'm prety confident that I'm bending / breaking many laws that are meant to keep me under normal conditions.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
There's another name for this, which I can't remember right now, but essentially there is a theory in the academic (psychology) literature that states very simply that people adjust their behavior to acheive a preferred level of risk.
This applies when driving, and is _extremely_ important when developing safety systems when driving. Take a person and let them get used to a vehicle that is unsafe, and they will drive more carefully to compensate for the problems that the vehicle has. However, as soon as more safety features are added they will return to their previous (less safe) habits. The problem is that almost everyone overestimates how much safer they are because of the devices, thus they overcompensate, and are actually less safe driving the newer vehicle (because of their changes in style) than they were in the older vehicle. But they actually feel safer because of the safety features and whatnot.
This is the real reason that unless a feature is absolutely necessary, or shows a difference in safety greater than the compensation, I do not want auto braking or lane change signals and similar tech. What I do want is simple: two devices, one that show the CURRENT speed limit accurately; and one that shows the actual color of the light that you are approaching and how long you have before a light (if green or red) changes. These are two things that would help improve safety by making sure that no one ever has an excuse for running a red light. The speed limit device would give folks a clear idea of their speed in relation to the law. Then if they get caught, the fines could be handled appropriately.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
I'm not sure if it's the old cars that have anything to do with it. I mean, look at those old people (not "senile old", but old enough to have experienced a different generation of "bricks on wheels") who take to the road these days. A vast majority of them are as wreckless as a teenager who's just learning to drive, if not worse. I worked for an insurance company and some of the wrecks I saw just made me wonder about the drivers. Then we'd get their ages, and, as I said, a majority of them were in their 60's and 70's. It really has not that much to do with the cars, in my opinion (although the systems do play a part), it has everything to do with driving habits. Older cars were solid, which meant you didn't have to be as safe as these days. You could hit a brick wall and back up, go get a new paint job, and be driving later that day. These days, you hit a brick wall and you need to get a new car. They had to build the new systems in to compensate for the "crumple" in the new cars or people would be dying left and right from driving like they used to in the old cars.
I Lost My Virginity While Waiting for BSD to Compile.
"it also turns out most drivers can't even name the high tech safety systems that are continually saving their butts."
...but why should I?
I can tell by this study that the drivers were not from a place in the world in which traffic laws equate to suggestions and that the driver with bigger guts or vehicle has the right of way (not to mention any specific place, but you know what I'm referring to). After being in several of those places in the world, I'm sure that any of them should be able to ace any driving course, high tech doo dahs or not.
Vi havas e-poston.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Honestly, half the time you shouldn't be braking hard enough to kill your rotors anyhow. People not knowing how to brake causes many accidents. Driving is a skill, and a skill that is horribly taught, I think. If a deer jumps out in front of you, what do most people do? Brake==which is the worst thing you can do. For most people, braking is the end-all-do-all of driving. How about steering around the deer while maintaining control of your vehicle? Wow, what a concept.... I have taken police driving classes, as well as other not-so-standard driving classes.....and I must say, most people have no accident-avoidance skills at all. They just use that one brake pedal with no idea what to do next...
what happens when your teenage son changes all of the key mappings on the controller the last time he drove the car...
Give me a break of COURSE the drivers are going to have trouble with the old beemer on this track. It's not called the "Ultimate Car Control training school" for nothing. It's probably a very very difficult track. Do you honestly think that someone who bought this car originally 15 years ago would have done significantly better?
And just because a car is new doesn't mean it's loaded with auto-driving doodads. I have a 2005 Nissan Altima. No ABS, no traction control. I put 168,000 miles on a 1997 200SX 5-speed. No whiz-bang gizmo's on that sucker. Somehow I managed to drive in all conditions from 1/2" ice-cover, to snow, to rain, to black-ice etc without ever crashing into anything. [Although I did come close to sliding into a telephone pole at 2mph, stupid crowned road with 1/2" solid ice. But ABS wouldn't have saved me there either]. Did I lose traction? Sure, but I knew how to control my car. If I was suddenly dropped into an unfamiliar car and onto the track at "Graham Griffiths Ultimate Car Control training school" would I lose control? Yeah I probably would. And most people who aren't professional drivers probably would too.
Of course, I think my old car was easier to control with the 5-speed than an automatic since I could also modulate the clutch a bit to help control what the wheels were doing but even with an automatic I think I'd be in trouble if I ever get ABS. It's just second nature for me to start pumping the brakes if I start to lose traction. I know the ABS would be much more effective than I could ever get with my foot but that will be a hard habit to break.
Nothing to see here
Every idiot who carves me up, every clown who overtakes on a blind bend at 80, every moron in an SUV who tries to push past on narrow roads, every cretin who squeals tires just getting round a city intersection considers himself (and increasingly herself) to be an excellent driver. You may be the exception. I consider myself to be a mediocre driver, which means I try to avoid the ABS and traction lights coming on. I would feel much happier in a world in which we all knew we were, at best, mediocre drivers.
Pining for the fjords
Our minds are not Designed to process the world at 60mph, only 10-20mph.
Is there a study that confirms this? I would like to disagree that our brain is incapable of processing the world at 60mph.
At 60 mph, the world is indeed moving much faster. There is more information that passes before our eyes going 60 mph than going 3 mph in any given time period. Our mind is very selective, and is incredible at filtering information to reduce information overload.
Even at 60 mph, though, our brain still pays attention (incredibly!) to detail. If you concentrate on the road and do not get distracted, you will be amazed at how much detail you can catch, process, remember and still control.
Do not confuse "inability to process the world at 60 mph" with "too preoccupied with own thoughts to notice the world". Oftentimes when we are walking and have things on our mind, we will hardly pay attention to the sidewalk, to the storefronts, even to passersby. Much of the time people are just as preoccupied when driving, but not paying attention to detail should not be attributed to the fact that we're travelling at 20X the speed we're walking.
The danger lies that we can react just so quickly. If it takes us 1 second from the time we recognize a situation, make a decision about it, send electric impulse to our muscles at 3 mph, it still takes us the same 1 second at 60 mph, even at 600 mph. A whole lot can happen during that 1 second, and the faster we go the more dangerous it becomes.
Does this mean we can't process the world at higher speeds? I think it becomes more and more challenging, but 60 mph is nothing to fret about.
As I learned from the literature sent out by my auto insurance company years ago, you can eliminate your blind spots by readjusting your side mirrors. What you do is put your head right up to your side window and adjust the mirror so that you can just barely see the side of your car. Then put your head in the middle of the car (ie. to your right...or left depending on which part of the world you're in) and adjust the other mirror likewise. That way, you don't just duplicate your view of what's behind you with your rear view and side mirrors, and your side mirrors show what's in your blind spot. By the time you can't see a vehicle in your side mirrors, you'll be able to see the front of it right beside you. It takes a little getting used to (maybe a day or two) because, since you can no longer see the sides of your car in your side mirrors, you don't have a fixed point of reference to show you where things are, but as soon as you get used to it, you don't need that crutch anymore.
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I think the concept of mussel memory is a great idea. Mussels multiply prodigiously, and often live in clusters. If we could somehow use those mussel colonies to store information...why, the possibilities are endless. Maybe we could finally learn to communicate to dolphins.
Very sudden front braking can send you over the handlebars, which won't happen with rear braking.
Why aren't drivers, by law, required to learn on an older car with a crappy 4-cylinder engine, manual transmission and no ABS or other modern conveniences (well, ABS is required by law in newer cars nowadays so that may not work). You may scoff, but you'll also be a better driver in the long term. I learned on an ancient Diesel Fiat Uno. It was horrible :-)
People already don't check their blindspots before changing lanes. Particularly in the leftmost lane, driving the speed limit or below, with old ladies in wheelchairs passing them on their right, while they're yakking away on their cell phones. It is not in ABS or traction control they trust, but God and his Almighty SUV which only SEEMS impervious to all other traffic.
A recent test in Germany showed that the system can fail.
Fortunately, that test was a fake, according to MotorTorque.
Do you like German cars?
I'm 35 years old. I got my learners permit at 14, and my drivers license at 16. I've owned a car since my 16th birthday, and been continually licensed and insured since then.
I've owned: '72 Dodge Dart, '80 Dodge Omni, '82-ish Subaru GS, '86 Cavalier, '96 Dodge Neon, '98 Mazda MX-5, 2002 Mazda MX-5, and a Barracuda of unknown yearage somewhere in there. Might be one or two that I've missed.
I've never had an accident, although I've had dozens of photo radar tickets (which hereabouts don't impact your license). My insurance rating is as high as it gets, and consequently I pay a low premuim. I've done amateur autocross over several summers. I'm the best driver I know. Sounds egotistical, but it's true. I'll give up my stick shift only when I have no other choice.
However, I don't understand the point here. I've driven cars that didn't benefit from the latest and greatest technology. Hell, my father and I built my Dart out of a spare shell and parts from "Pick Your Part". But why should I expect that people who learned to drive more modern cars be particularly experienced with junkers from my past? It doesn't make any sense.
The implication that they are somehow less of a 'driver' is hardly realistic. It's like complaining that somebody isn't a real programmer because their CP/M chops are lacking.
Hey! A computer analogy about cars!
In my experience most people can't name much of anything. How many times have you had to suffer through someone brag about adding another 40 gigabytes of memory to their 3.2 megahertz CPU? And people are relying more and more on these crazy computers in every facet of their life! Few of them could even tell me what embedded CPU is in their ECU (assuming they knew what an ECU was). I mean, O M G!!! That's just crazy!!!
I'll bet these same people couldn't tell me what a master cylinder or calipers are either. That doesn't make hydraulic disc brakes a dangerous thing that people are too dependent upon.
Maybe we ought to hear a report from famed technologist F. Flinstone after test driving the new Rockcedes R-Class with an advanced, non-podiatric braking system.
I don't see why we can't get more stories about cool new uses of technology that are radically improving the driving experience. Like advances in electromechanical braking such as Siemens' new system. I can get technophobic drivel like this article by going no further than my local newspaper.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
This was true even when the cars did less for you.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
A 15 year old bmw should have ABS...1986 up had ABS standard
I still prefer my 6-speed manual, non-abs, vehicle (though I wouldn't mind ABS just because it doesn't interfere unless a dangerous event happens anyways). I think I'll always look over my shoulder before changing lanes and always hit the brake pedal myself, because you JUST NEVER KNOW what'll happen the one time you don't. Sure you can trust your life to some technology, but you only get one life in reality. I also wonder if they test these things on vehicles covered with an inch of snow or a layer of ice or 2-3 years of dirt, because that happens pretty often in some areas.
Living in the midwest, didn't have any problem keeping "cadence breaking" (first time I've pumping called that, btw) skills current, on slippery winter roads and bridges had to do it every year, saved my butt a few times, especially on a ramp where I had to stop and be turning at the same time, you lock the front wheels, you can't steer anymore....
It's amazing how many people misinterpret technology and/or the lessons they are given about automobiles. At one point I had to pick up my sister and her boyfriend from a city 4h away. On the return trip, a heavy snowstorm struck, trapping me in a traffic pocket behind the snowplows on an uphill climb. Unfortunately this was mid April, an unusual time for snow, and I had just recently transferred off my winter tires for standard all-seasons (they wear less easily, but also grip less).
Well, as bad luck would have it one of the vehicles ahead lost control and went into a bit of a fishtail. The truck ahead braked hard and I braked but my car happily slid straight forward and popped itself a nice hold in the bumper (FYI, plastic bumpers break open nicely when cold).
Anyhow, to the point... my sister's dipshit boyfriend harranged me the whole time that if I had "pumped" the brakes I would have easily stopped in time (no ABS, just a little good old-fashioned threshold braking). My sister insisted "he had taken a driving course" and of course his two years of experience was then obviously more than my decade.
Well, I managed to not kill him, but the point is that he absolutely believed that pumping the brakes would stop the car faster. However, that particular method works more like ABS. Pump, and you won't lock the brakes and therefore spin/swerve the car in a long stop. The car does not stop sooner and depending on the pumping down can actually stop later. It's this type of miseducation that makes me want to throttle know-it-all drivers who think that they are pros on the road (and for the record, despite not pumping I did not swerve either... short stop and a little e-brake to help things).
" And to make matters worse, carmakers plan to install automatic radar-based blind-spot checkers so motorists can avoid looking over their shoulders while changing lanes. Even geeks find some of these technologies scary..."
I'm a geek living in Los Angeles. I find not having this technology far scarier. I trust technology far more than I trust the judgement of people in a perpetual hurry.
"Derp de derp."
It's pretty hard to brake hard enough to go over the handle bars. You'll almost always slide the tire first. Anyway, if you do go over the handle bars, it can only happen when the bike has come almost to a complete stop, and you land on your feet (the bike pivots, you don't). It's no big deal. Taking 3 times the distance to stop in an emergency because you've never learned to use your front brake IS a big deal.
There is one danger with front braking, and that is braking too hard while turning on a slippery surface. The resulting skid is much much harder to handle than a rear wheel skid.
The myth of going over your handlebars should be laid to rest, because although it can happen, it is far less dangerous than not being able to stop in 1/3 the distance that you can using rear brakes only.
...no matter how new, will not necessarily have all of the "driving aids" that a more expensive car does. They have to cut costs somewhere to make the car more affordable, and gizmos are the first place they start.
Maybe this isn't so bad because if I buy a car, it's generally going to be newer than the one it replaces, and so it will have more gizmos, not fewer.
The thing is, in any given year, there are different makes and models of cars that are produced to meet various budgets. When you replace your current car, even if it's with a newer model, you can still get one will fewer "driving aids". A 10-year-old stock BMW probably has more "safety features" than this year's most popular stock Mazda.
While we all would like to assume that our finances will be secure enough to buy a new vehicle when the time comes, there is no way to guarantee that whatever you buy will have the same options as your previous vehicle within your price range. Peoples' finances fluctuate, that's just life.
Also, what happens if you have to drive someone else's car, and theirs does not have all the gadgets and gizmos? You may have to rent a car, or be the DD in someone else's car, or drive somebody to the hospital in their car, etc. What happens if you are incapable of driving safely because you can't operate without ABS, traction control, proximity sensors, GPS, and all that jazz? That's just an accident waiting to happen.
Although I consider myself to be a good driver (who doesn't?) I can speak from experience that even if someone is a good driver they can get used to the technology.
When I bought my Subaru, argueably one of the best designed cars for bad weather driving, the sales person told me that after driving a Subaru for a while any other vehicle would feel dangerous in bad weather.
Yeah, sure, whatever. I bought it and had it for a few years but ended up needing to trade it for reasons unrelated to the vehicle. Now I have an SUV and I will say that this vehicle feels like a buttered banana peel hitting an oil slick in bad weather.
Of course some of the problem can be traced to the tires (they still have tread though) but there is a world of difference.
If AWD, lower center of gravity and ABS can make that much of a difference, I can only imagine what traction control, radar, or anything else could do to make us lax in our driving.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
I think some rear-facing, side-mounted, wide-angle video cameras would be better than "blind-spot checking radar." I would never be able to trust a simple indicator light. An actual visual from a better angle would be more useful, I think.
The picture you sketch makes me see roads almost as a system of public transport. You punch in your destination, and with minimum input from you, you're driven to it (quickly, safely, smoothly and efficiently). Sounds great to me! But in a system like this, what's the use of having a sporty car that can pull serious g's when accelerating and cornering? Really, the weakest of economy cars could perform just as well as a sporty one in an automated system like the one you describe.
As for me, I think this is a very good thing: it would encourage responsible, economical cars. But I also know that the more nostalgia-prone drivers who prefer sporty cars would really hate this.
I bet people were saying similar things when the first automatic transmissions
came out.
Interesting link here:
;-)
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html
In fairness, the one time I went over the handlebars involved a collision with a fixed object, although I did on a seperate occasion have a nasty sideways skid from a sudden stop necessitated by a car door opening.
I have a faint memory of going over from my childhood but of course can't remember the full details
Of course on most bicycles the brakes are in such bad condition that the question is somewhat academic.
If you want to turn off the DSC (dynamic stability control) you can do so from a switch on the console. Of course, this leaves the ABS engaged, but I can definitely notice a difference with the DSC off. For those who dont' know, the DSC system controls the amount of power transferred the engine make. For instance, it prevents wheel spin by reducing the flow of fuel so you can't "peel out" with DSC engaged.
All of these technologies are tools to improve driving safety. The point of ABS isn't to allow drivers to stop without pumping the brakes, the fact of the matter is that computer control allows the car to stop in a significantly shorter distance than any human could manage. Partly because the computer samples and responds several hundred times per second, but also because computers never lose their cool when coming around a corner and seeing a semi truck stopped in the middle of the lane.
A (silly) analogy would be saying that antibitoics are inhibiting the ability of the human immue system to evolve, so we should just let people die.
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She has anti-lock, fuel injection, and turbo....but I love being without traction control....not really needed on an all-wheel drive! And give me a stick over an automatic any day!!! I personally love KNOWING how to drive, and get quite a thrill from driving. Don't take away one of life's simple pleasures! Leave some "optionless" cars for those of us who know what we are doing! How about we make stricter driving tests, and your license indicates which kind of car you can drive? Score high, you get a license that allows you to purchase and rent "optionless" cars.....the lower you score, the more options you must have! If your are caught driving an "optionless" car without the appropriate license, you get the book thrown at you!!!!
Please.
Last I looked, the accident rate per hundred million VMT had been steadily declining since the late 1980's(well, even longer), in spite of busier roads.
if you have sufficent training you can stop in a much shorter distance without ABS, its a concept called threshold braking. basically you have to learn where the lockup point is on the brakes, if oyu know where this is, and you don't cross that line, you can brake in the shortest distance possible without the ABS kicking in, or having to pulse the brakes yourself so you don't induce a slide.
unfortunatly, its something you really can't practice on the street. abs is great for the average driver, but it is a hinderance to me in the snow and at the track/autox.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
See if you can find a CVT automatic to test drive somewhere. I've got one in my old Civic HX-- gets fuel economy and performance very close to a manual, because it is slipless. Plus, it weirds everybody out that your car never shifts, your tach stays precisely in your powerband, and it is possible to have the tach moving gradually downward while your speed is moving up.
Depending on where you live, that may be the case. Not all towns have good public transportation and the distances can easily be high enough to require some sort of motor transportation. I've lived without a car a few times and it's difficult. It limits the amount of groceries you can transport and the time involved in transportation can really eat away at your day. You get out of work at 5 and a lot of places close by 6, including the post office.
Personally, I think we're not too far from the day when automatically controlled cars will be the standard. I always want an override switch for a case where there's a glitch, a maniac swerving around in the road (probably a manual control freak...), or when the government decides they don't like where I'm going and decide to make my car go somewhere else. *sigh* Problem is, you can basically either allow manual control or have an efficient automatic system.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I know a bit about winter myself, I've got 15 winters driving in Massachusetts under my belt.
Not arguing that ABS doesn't have it's moments. Just that none of these systems are perfect and can create additional situations.
They're bound to keep getting better, but I think as they do, the times that they do misbehave are going to be even more problematic for someone who's always relied on them.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Bah...
Speaking as a cyclist then I can only agree with D.H. Lawrence (I think...I can't find the quote at the moment) who said something along the lines of "the gadget that would do more than any other for road safety would be to place a really sharp, really big spike in the middle of the steering wheel."
Sadly my experience on my daily 16 mile bicycle commute is that the standard of driving has become much, much worse in the past 5 years. Worst of all are the fucking imbeciles trying to text on their cell phones whilst driving. In an ideal world I'd be licenced to shoot the bastards.
So maybe the next best thing would be a mandatory chip in "non emergency service" phones that shuts the fuckers off when they're in a moving vechile (Yes, including trains)
The core problem is that not enough peopole leave any margin when they drive. They know what there car
can *usually* handle, and then when they hit an ice patch somehow it is the ice's fault!
And I'm not just talking about the swerve-monkeys here, I even notice this with many relatively calm drivers.
You need to leave a little time and space to account for uncertainty in road conditions, car performance, and what other drivers will do. What drives me mad is that it's not as though this even has to result in dramatically longer travel times. Gracefully coasting into place behind someone at a stop sign is not any slower than screeching into place. And I love watching the swerve monkeys get stuck in the far right lane while those of us patiently waiting our turn to pass pull ahead.
I've always thought the law enforcement effort has been too focused on speed. Travelling 70 miles per hour is not the problem; swerving in and out in order to maintain 70 mile per hour is.
My handle breaks slashcode, what does your handle do?
My car has none of those systems, and I drive 20-25K miles a year. And I don't encounter those sorts of problems under typical conditions, which for my current area includes copious amounts of rain.
Then again, I don't drive an unstable, top-heavy, gas-guzzling status symbol.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Just to clarify: even though a really good driver is better than ABS, they basicly use the same method. It's just that a really good driver is better at it.
ABS is better at a worse method. ABS must necessarily pass the ideal braking point. It brakes too hard, then releases the brakes too much, then repeats the process. It does it a lot faster than a person can, and stays close to the point it is oscillating around. A person can use their ear and experience to predict the point of "too far" and stop before that point. Properly done, the fastest a person can stop uses threshold braking and never passes the point of "too far." But, they are just guessing for where the best point to stop is, so it is greatly dependent on skill, conditions, and familiarity with the vehicle and vehicle setup. Depending on the conditions, a skilled person may or may not be able to out perform ABS.
Learn to love Alaska
Even the really good drivers don't get 4 brake pedals. The computer does.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Have you never been in a vehicle that's stalled? Turn off the ignition while coasting one day and see how hard it is to steer and brake without power assist. I'll keep my brake pedal and steering wheel thanks.
body massage!
It gives you greater control over the vehicle.
Stick is the CLI of driving.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I would like to see a link to that.
One of the benefits of ABS that you forgot to mention (especially if coupled with vented Rotors) is less brake fade, and increased Heat tolerance of pads wich leads to increased braking power.
I am not saying your wrong, but just that I would like to see statistics where a modern braking system can be beet by a driver. And how many drivers out there can do that. If that is the case, why aren't people taught to drive like that from the begining?
Me personally, I drive a '99 pontiac formula, and I have only "NEEDED" ABS once, and traction control lots [but I don't have it in my car... 8') ]
once was when I was driving on a country road for the first time, and a sharp 90 came up on me w/out a warning sign. (it was really sharp, maybe a 10mph corner for sinage..) I was doing about 50. I slowed down as best I could, and braced for impact, all the while steering and continuing to brake as if by a miracle the wet road would somehow hold me. When my tires lost traction, ABS kicked in, and I simple went around the corner!
I have not tried to replicate that situation, but was grateful (for my car's sake)that I had ABS
It is EXCELLENT on snow and ICE. My '93 Blazer gets going good, but it wouldn't stop with the best driver from 35 on ice w/o ABS or a Tree. I grew up driving in snow, and am not affraid to drive my Formula in 2 inches or less. It just requires having a feather touch on the throttle, and some patience.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I mean really, since when has the greater population of drivers ever exhibited "skills"? Technology is not replacing anything, it's just adding fail-safes for what's missing... that means lower interest rates for me, which I'm in favor of.
I'm just waiting for those add-ons that prevent drivers from doing rude stuff: Maybe lock the steering to prevent sudden, unsafe lane changes especially in the absence of at least 5 seconds of turn signalling; Lock the brakes to prevent pulling out from an intersection into on-coming traffic; and Providing electrical shocks whenever they are trying to drive and talk on their cell phones!
Humans are able to drive safely simply because we are able to adapt our reflexes to treat the car as an extension of our body. We develop a kinesthetic sense for the car--all senses inform the driving of a car, and most are processed automatically to provide the "feel" of driving. Most of driving occurs on the level of unconscious physical processing--an experienced driver can sense how much to slow down for a curve. They don't have to learn angles and speeds, they "just know" from experience. This is one of the things the human mind/body is best at.
And it occurs most easily when the entire body is engaged. Using our arms and legs to drive results in a more complete "feel" of driving that just sitting passively and moving a few fingers.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If you don't have enough time to look over your shoulder before changing lanes, then you're following the car ahead of you way to closely.
> Braking and steering don't mix, they demand mutually incompatible things from front wheels.
First off, I want to say that is a very good point. This is one of the first things you will learn in any kind of performance driving school. Tires work best doing one thing at a time. The more you split it up between braking, turning, and accelerating, the less traction you have available for the others.
> The car is going forward when you brake. The center of gravity is (at least in cars I have driven) higher than center of the wheels. That means when you brake, the weight is distributed unevenly between front and back wheels. Majority of braking action is done with front wheels. The "braking action" is actually making wheels resist going where they are going.
The height of the center of the gravity is not the issue, the distance from front to rear is. Most cars do not have a 50/50 front/rear weight distribution. The heaviest part of the car is always going to want to continue in the direction it is headed (momentum). This is why when you slam on the brakes in a corner in an average front wheel drive car with a front weight bias, the light rear end basically stays in line behind the heavy front end. The car will understeer (front wheels go straight) a bit until it slows down enough to to get enough traction to turn the car and follow the corner. When you slam on the brakes in a corner in a mid or rear engined car, the light front end will slow down and try to follow the curve, while the heavier rear end is going to keep going in the direction it was moving (oversteer)...which will likely result in a spin.
Anyway, this is not really an ABS specific problem. If you were braking just as hard in a car without ABS, you would experience the same thing...except it might be worse if you locked up the tires and skidded.
That's WRONG! Your method will still leave a blind spot unchecked during lane changes. Stock mirrors will fail to see what's in the blind spot and looking left and right is not enough, that's why "shoulder" checking is REQUIRED! How can the parent post be modded to Insightful?
I think that car drivers should be forced to get on a motorbike for a few hours. Then not only would they then have a lot more awareness and feel of what the machinery can do (not the modern high-tech technology), they'd also walk away with a lot more understanding and respect for other road users. Hopefully.
>It is EXCELLENT on snow and ICE. My '93 Blazer gets going good, but it wouldn't stop with the best driver from 35 on ice w/o ABS or a Tree.
funney, do a search on goole for your own link, even the over-the top pro ABS sites admit fluffy snow and gravel extend stopping distance with ABS. They don't mention railroad tracks, and potholes, that can completly confuse, and ruin stopping distance on a ABS car.
now I believe that you can't stop your blazer without ABS, but isn't that the point of this article.
In a vehicle not in 4x4 mode, a driver cant compensate for a difference in side to side traction, that is where ABS rules, so if you hit ICE with one or two tires, what you say is true. (if your in locked 4x4 mode, the differentials would make it impossible for just one tire to lock up, and a pro driver would average things out, then again the 4x4 would force you to stop in a straight line, no steering at neer lockup.)
I know Car and Driver had a shootout with a Suburu STI, and Mitsu Lancer with Rod Millen, a championship off-road racer. If you watch that, you would know how much a true champion driver is hurt by ABS, and traction controll (and completly frustrated by it.) at least as done by those manufactures.
>ABS that you forgot to mention
as you point out, when coupled with... ABS can't help with those issues, actually their is 0 heat added to brake pads, so no fade when you lock up your tires (destroys the tires, but you will stop the car, you don't have that choice with ABS, except by applying the Emergcey Brake.) but you are correct ABS originally came as a upgrade option on many cars coupled with these necesitys.
I am not anti-ABS brakes, I think they are a great thing, and look forward to them getting even better, but that doesn't mean their perfect now.
Well, if I teach my cat to drive, I suppose that's "problem solved" :o)
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> I would like to see a link to that.
(if you read the whole link, it is very pro-ABS on motorcycles, and I agree)
http://www.ibmwr.org/prodreview/abstests.html
Figure 2. Comparative Braking Distances by Motorcycle
(Average of Five Passes on Dry Pavement)
Expert rider, all distances from 60 mph
BMW (non-ABS model) 153 ft
Full ABS Control 162 ft
ABS disabled
155 ft
Honda (non-ABS model) 149 ft
Full ABS Control 156 ft
ABS disabled
150 ft
Yamaha (non-ABS model) 148 ft
Full ABS Control 152 ft
ABS disabled 148 ft
You can learn where the lanes are. Just drive around with a car with a Galileo receiver and store the coordinates. You can either use a professional driver who's paid to drive accurately in the middle of the lane, or just average (1) the data generated from a bunch of non-professional drivers. Exclude data from people who crashed :-). If you pay commercial types who travel a lot a small bonus each month to put a little box on their dashboard, the bulk of the data will be cheap. You'll still need to hire a few pro's to fill gaps in your map, but total cost can be quite low.
:).
A large country like Germany has (CIA world fact book) 230,735 km roads; that's about 5000 man hours (or something in that order of magnitude) to map it all. Of course, you'll need to solve a huuuuge Traveling Salesperson Problem first
(1) It'll be it a little trickier, for you don't want to record the middle of two lanes for example, but I think it can be done.
I helped out with some research on automated vehicle guidance back in the late 80s. The chief objective of the system was not to automate stopping but to enable "radical tailgating" as a way of increasing freeway capacity.
As it stands now, once traffic flows reach about 2000 vehicles her hour per lane, speeds start to fall off rapidly because of driver's reaction times and the inherent limits of controlling a 2 or 3 ton vehicle. If a computer controlled braking, theoretically the reaction time component could be eliminated.
Obviously there are legal issue with this, and with an automated system doing the work drivers wouldn't be able to brag as much about what studly drivers they are.
However, a system that allow you to automatically follow a safe humanly-stoppable distance (2 sec or about 1 car length per 10 mph) could still have an impact on freeway capacity by just smoothing starting and stopping impulses, and reducting tailgaiting - tailgating slows down traffic a LOT at high volumes.
And if you think such a system might be hard to widely deploy, just look at in-vehicle automated routing and navigation systems, which were a pie in the sky 20 years ago. (I used one in my research - this was before GPS and it used dead-reckoning from the speedometer signal and a magnetic compass. Needless to say, it got lost a lot.)
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Thank you for that insightful information!
As for traction control, I hate it too.
I like knowing that the throttle I put in the engine is getting transfered to the wheels. The times I "needed" it were when I was driving in a manner that without proper experience would be considered wreckless.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
True. I forgot about that. Better than old ABS systems, perhaps?
I doubt the difficulty the drivers had in the slalom could be anything to do with the fact that they were given a rear wheel drive car to us in it.
I guess I am proven wrong, on good dry pavement, ABS doesn't help. (other than taking away panic reaction time..)
Well, I just finished reading that link. Interesting information, and very good to know. I personally would not have a bike with the current itteration of ABS, becuase of this situation. If you've been riding long enough, you learn to do things, like countersteering in a cornering slide, and compensating for lean with brakes / steering / throttle. It's very physical. And like the article stated ABS is'nt ready for everything yet.
But every low traction situation ABS acceled in.
Also interesting was this:
Mileman non-ABS 181 ft
w/ ABS 172 ft
Full ABS Control 167 ft
Tourer non-ABS 186 ft
w/ ABS 167 ft
Full ABS Control 166 ft
Newguy non-ABS 180ft
w/ ABS 168 ft
Full ABS Control 166 ft
I was recently pleasured with a test drive of a Hyabusa(sp?) I was amazed at how it reacted. Most people who ride do so because they like the freedom, and the feeling of becoming one with the machine that you just can't replicate on a car in a decent pricerange. The Busa made everything feel as if I had some form of neuro-kinetic implant or something. It responded so smoothly to everything. I have been riding for some time.. My first bike was a GTMX 80 when I was 13 or so. But nothing felt like this. 0-70-0 for my first time on that style of bike was easy, and didn't take much distance, and took way less time than my car. My car takes about 7 just to get to 70. The Busa was done with the run in that time.
One thing I think is real important is knowing your vehicles handling capabilities. I truly believe though that the majority of people people don't know. Therefore they need help to control their car
in emergency situations.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Believe it or not car companies actually know this, and have and continue to hold back a lot of technologies that remove driver "feel". I took a cognitive ergonomic course from a professor who worked on a study for Jaguar on adaptive cruse control. Humans have an optimum mental load that keeps us focused on the task at hand. Too low and we get bored too high and we get confused. The findings of the study was drivers dropped below that optimum mental load and lost focus on the task. Long and short Jaguar did not include adaptive cruse control at that time. One thing to note though, Cadilac does include it.
Now this isn't to say drivers actually know how to drive. A good example being Car and Driver's test of the Ford Explorers after the whole Firestone thing. They took a Explorer on a test track with a trained driver and blew out the tires at various speeds with out telling him when it would happen. Because he knew his left foot from a hole in his head he had absolutely no issues slowing and stopping safely. The last few runs were taken at freeway speeds with no hands to show that he did not even need to adjust the steering.
IMHO We need to up the requirements for drivers licences in the US dramatically as well as enforce driving laws better.
Ideally getting a drivers licence should be to German standards, where it takes nearly a year and costs about 1000 euros for all the classes and behind the wheel training. Driving is a privilege not a right.
High-tech Cars Replacing Driver Skill?
This just in - Most drivers actually do have skill, just faking at being retards.
Give me a break. There are two possibilities here:
(a) by "public transporation" you mean something that picks up lots of people at point A at x o'clock and delivers them to point B at y o'clock. Problem is, of course, I neither live at point A, nor work at point B. Nor do I typically want to leave my house at x or arrive at y. The inevitable result is an absurd waste of my time in transportation that is a far more convoluted than it needs to be. And for what purpose? What is the benefit for which I should bear this invisible tax on my labor? Because there is some theoretical increase in energy efficiency when people are moved in large lots, instead of one at a time, on an as-needed, just-in-time basis. (And at that, this usually presumes the mass-mover is operated at its most efficient, e.g. the bus is always full and the train always leaves on time, whereas these assumptions are never justified in practise.)
That is to say, massive public-transporation gains fuel efficiency at the cost of time efficiency, the time it takes to buy tickets, hoof it down to the station, wait in line, wait for the train, re-organize your life around the bus routes, live close to a station instead of where the schools are good, and so forth. We save fuel, but waste time. Eh, count me out. Time is more precious than fuel, I think.
Why not start with a transporation system that is as efficient in its consumption of peoples' time as the automobile, and try to find a way to make it more fuel efficient? Automatic control on highways, for example. You get on and the central computer takes over, drives you inhumanly fast at insane following distances -- four lanes of cars spaced eight inches apart, each doing 90 MPH -- maximizes your fuel efficiency and maximizes the efficiency of the road.
Which brings us to...
(b) By "public transporation" you mean a system designed to be so flexible and reponsive to peoples' actual needs that it isn't much trouble at all to switch from using a car to using the cool snazzy public transportation what's-it, little bubble cars you can call with a clicker and which drop you off within a few hundred feet of the office, et cetera.
But then, you can easily get at this kind of system from the other direction, by evolving the private transporation system we've got. And I think it's better done that way, for the simple reason that people care about systems they own, whereas the Tragedy of the Commons makes sure they neglect systems they own in common. Even poor folks take care of their own cars, and even rich folks tend to abuse the public bus or train. Fact of human nature. So any system held in common ownership is almost guaranteed to be neglected, mismanaged, and -- yep, here it comes: inefficient.
I think the worse problem is that the gizmos free up "brain cycles" by dealing with things that people used to have to think about, themselves, but people don't use those extra cycles to pay attention to where they're going. They use them to talk on cell phones, eat, or daydream. The net result, many times, is that cars that should make driving easier and safer end up making drivers less observant and more dangerous.
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
But no good engineering would compensate for the heavy traffic. I was in Rodovia Fernao Dias (BR-381, the "highway"[***] connecting Belo Horizonte [*] to Sao Paulo [**]) this weekend (went halfway thru to Granny Saturday and back again Sunday == 2*350km) and I got loads of trucks on the road.
[*] 3rd largest city in Brasil, ~ 4 million people in the metro area
[**] largest city in Brasil, ~ 11 million people in the metropolitan area
[***] the quotes are because:
1. the road is two lanes coming, two going most of the time; and
2. it's a mountain road at some points, with lots of curves and the fscking trucks passing one another while climbing!!
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Homer Simpson
He's the greatest guy you'll ever see,
From the, town of Springfield,
He's about to hit a chestnut tree...
*crash* Doh!
We wouldnt have timeless classics like that with all this assisted driving!
I am a gliding instructor in Australia. We are currently introducing new technology to assist in avoiding collisions (an unhappy concommitant of gliding as we frequently fly very close to many other gliders). This is GPS based system (see http://www.rf-developments.com/page008.html).
Gliding, more than any other air sport, has put considerable resources into training glider pilots to have and use excellent lookout skills - and yet mid air collisions with other gliders still happen (one person was killed, one injured and two gliders written off in such an incident last year).
We are at the trial stage of this new technology - we had 60 gliders fitted with the units at a competition just before Christmas - and there is considerable debate as to whether this technology is a good idea or not. Collision warning systems like this can only warn you about other gliders that have ozFLARM fitted - and can do nothing to alert you of gliders or the many other users of the air (including large eagles) that are not fitted with this equipment - or if the unit in your glider fails. So - it is essential that we continue to train pilots to acquire and maintain excellent lookout skills if (as seems likely) we will require this equipment in competition gliders and recommend it for all other gliders.
In other words, we train for equipment failure as well as in using the new equipment.
Unfortunately, current driving training does not seem to do this - and yet there is an increasing amount of extremely important safety equipment in most vehicles. Probably the anti-lock braking system (ABS) is the most critical.
Learning how to avoid skids and how to handle them if they do occur is probably the most vital piece of driver safety training!
Thus, this was the first winter where ABS has been an issue for me. I feel it has significantly lengthened stopping distances... to the point where I actually missed one turn because my car was not stopping. Not only was it not stopping, but I didn't feel like I had control over the brake. If I hit an ice patch and slide a little, fine - I'd like to think my winter driving style adjustments can handle that, but the ABS stays on way too long for my liking. I think I was going about 20 mph at that point, so it's not like I was tearing up the road.
A camera at the back of your car--That's good. ABS--That's good. A car that drives it's self--I'd rather not. You'll never know when the car's 'AI' will malfunction while on the road and create a huge accident. Who knows, if cars drive themselves, we might have more accidents than manually drived cars today.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
Yes, the infamous "video game researcher" is back at it again.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I suspect that automatic gears save more fuel than they waste. Your estimate surely assumes that people would shift gears properly. This is unlikely to be the case.
Don't forget the energy costs associated with building replacement parts for all the people who would burn out their clutches, break their transmissions, and needlessly wear down their tires or brakes. It takes oil to build new car parts.
I'd like to see loud piercing cabin alarms triggered by front-mounted tailgating sensors and failure to use signals before turning the wheel.
Metamodded unfair, btw.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
When I learned to drive, the training car (a 1990 sunfire) had no right hand mirror, no power or anti-lock brakes, and no power steering. Today I can still drive my 1966 dodge dart without worry, since I know how the car will behave and what it is capable (and not capable) of. Besides, it's thick steel detroit frame would pulverize anyone dumb enough to crash into me. Shouldn't we just change driver's training? A C-class license should mean you can drive any car - not just one packed with safety features.
Yeah could it be a sports car brakes better then a suv? Suvs are crap cars. They are a danger on the road and not just because they are driven by assholes.
Chill out Mr. Sierra Club, I think I can see where you're heading.
They are also heavy, have a high center of gravity making them worthless when the shit hits the fan as they react badly.
My SUV weighs ~13% more than my sports car. The stopping distance is approxamately 30% longer.
You are comparing the braking between a car designed to have good handling vs a car designed to appeal to the asshole in you.
Anything other than a Yugo is designed to appeal to the asshole in you. Be it a big honking SUV that most people don't take off-road or haul anything in. Or a sports car than can go 120 MPH on highways where the speed limit is 75 MPH. Or even the hybrids that are designed to appeal to the self righteous assholes who want to feel better than everyone else.
ABS on the same car has been proven time and time again to shorten brake distances. The only exception can occur with REALLY good drivers. You are not a really good driver.
Can I borrow your crystal ball? Or do you have some other method of divining information about me?
I know my vehicles. Bottom line. I know when I'm better off with ABS and when I'm better off without it. Maybe you don't and that's fine. But your inability to anticipate your car shouldn't doom the rest of us who can.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano