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Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents
thesandbender writes "Ford is set to release a management system that will restrict certain aspects of a car's performance based on which key is in the ignition. The speed is limited to 80, you can't turn off traction control, and you can't turn the stereo up to eleven. It's targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance." The keys will be introduced with the 2010 Focus coupe and will quickly spread to Ford's entire lineup.
This is sure to make every one feel better... until some poor kid gets creamed because he couldn't get out of the way.
Do Fords even go up to 80?
Don't know if an external component speed limiting the Focus to 80 is really necessary anyway.
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
would have saved me the humiliation of "racing" my parents' taurus
A good old fashioned spanking will set them right.
No need to worry about this hi-tech gadget rubbish, that too in Ford. :)
slashdot rocks
as trying to keep porn away from your son.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
I would have thought that vale key limiting the holder to only accessing ignition and not glove compartment/trunk would be prior art to this. They are both keys that limit access for practical reasons.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
outstanding ideas -- in fact, i thought of some of these in the early nineties -- i should have patented them
That's absurd. If you're old enough to drive, you're old enough to take responsibility for the way you do it. If a parent can't trust her kid to drive responsibly, she shouldn't be letting him drive in the first place.
While there are a few situations I've been in where the ability to exceed 80 mph has been critical to safety (getting out from behind dangerous drivers on the freeway who are liable to cause a pileup, for instance), that's not the point.
If you can't trust your kid to drive responsibly, get his ass off the road until you can.
Just wait until Ford start up a subscription plan that forces you to buy a new key every two years for "maintenance" reasons, with the unwanted result of not buying a new key being that it no longer starts your car. I could be serious, I could not be. It's a thought, anyway.
In Finland, where I live, driving cars is for over 18 year olds only. While an 18-year-old is by no mean (emotionally) an adult, it's still a far cry from 16.
So, how does it work in the states? I understand 16-year-olds are allowed to drive under some circumstances?
.: Max Romantschuk
So you are stuck with the crap build in stereo also kids like to put in there own amps so the sound limit may not work that well then.
Anyone else get the feeling that this is a really cheap/pointless marketing BS that isn't actually meant to really accomplish anything ?
80miles per hour is plenty fast to kill a lot of people... yup, awesome safety feature right there. Wait, let's go for double the safety, 40miles per hour...hrm, can still kill plenty of people ...and you're prolly endangering others by driving too slow in areas where you're supposed to drive fast.
so pretty much ...pointless/useless equivalent of "security theater" ?
But wait, let's look at it from the direction this system oppresses kids/curtails their "freedoms" instead. Yeah, stick it to the man! (mum) fucking nazis making you do the dishes and not let you drive over 80.
Why haven't people realized that this kind of thing isn't compatible with the way teenagers think? When you restrict them like this, you're basically telling them that they aren't trusted. I don't care whether or not that's true, but that's how it will be interpreted by them. They're going to push against the restrictions, especially when so many of their friends don't have to put up with the same limitations. This is no substitute for teaching teens to be responsible drivers. Letting them know that you trust them and allowing them to use their own judgment is a huge step towards them becoming more mature and responsible. Chances are they'll probably have more respect for their parents and the vehicle itself. But yeah, if they screw that trust over this seems like a pretty good punishment. I just hope no parents enable these features on their poor children by default.
so, why do the parents need to drive over 80, turn off traction control, and turn the stereo up to 11? they all seem like pretty bad ideas whoever is driving the car?
Apparently, spelling and grammar help readers understand what others are writing.
Would be a car that logged exactly where it went and at what speed, automatically uploading it to a PC in your house. I don't think kids would be anywhere near as reckless knowing that their parents would see exactly how they'd been driving.
Much, perhaps most, dangerous driving by kids is caused by trying to show off to their mates. Limit the speed and power and the vehicle to its baic transport function. No fun trying to do a burn out in a car that refuses to do it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
km/h of course...
Is 80 MPH legal anywhere in the USA?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
you can get a license at 14 by doing the things you listed. getting a license at 16 is even easier
I don't see how limiting speed to 80 is very useful at all. That's already extremely fast. For you metric folk:
80 miles per hour = 128.74752 kilometers per hour
Not only that, but some of the most dangerous driving happens in much slower speed zones, for example residential areas, or around schools. How is this going to stop drivers from ploughing over children at 40 mph?
... and then they built the supercollider.
GM already did that in a car where cutting back the car's performance makes a difference - a
"valet" key limited the 1990-1995 ZR-1 Corvette to 225bhp or so, by shutting off the secondary intake runners and secondary fuel injectors.
Who's going to notice the difference in a Ford Focus? Limited power or not, 0 to 60 still takes about eight weeks. Traction control? Can a Focus actually break traction on dry ground?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's nice that you improved the valet key, but you'll need to do better than that to win back your old customers. Keep'em up, though.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I remember reading articles about Chevrolet Corvettes with a similar feature back in the 1990s.
I'm a little bit torn in this case about the merits of the idea. In principle, I sympathise with the idea that if you can't trust kids to drive responsibly, you can't trust them to drive. In practice, being out late at night with friends can turn otherwise sensible teenagers into wannabe street racers.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
... DRM for cars!
Tell me something. With all the safety features that have been added to cars in the last 30 years or so, from seat belts to air bags, all peddled as something that would keep our insurance rates from going up, how come everyone's auto insurance keeps going up, *never* down.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
80 is probably illegal in all areas of the USA.
I'm sure californians will feel very safe knowing they can't access every single horsepower to get off that bridge before it collapses in an earthquake.
Riiiiight... so the golden gate bridge is bucking and swaying, cars all around you are coming to a stop... and your going to slam on the gas in your Porsche? You won't get 10 meters before you have an accident on the bridge at the best of times... and your going to do during or in the immediate aftermath of an major earthquake...
That's just silly. Let's apply that logic to something (anything!) else:
If parents think it's ok to have an established curfew for their kids, what if the government thinks it's a good idea to establish a curfew for everyone!?
unenforceable. Ford is pioneering a technical means which would make it 100% enforceable, and, of course, irrevocably locked in, assuring you can't escape collapsing section of the LA freeway.
If parents think it's ok to monitor their kids internet usage, what if the government thinks it's a good idea to monitor everyone's internet usage!?
Telecom warrantless wiretapping was not limited to only phones.
"Arts + labs", as well as several congressmen, are actually trying to push this, with the encouragement of certain cable-co's who want to use DPI to lock out competition and turn the internet into the next cell-phone bill.
If parents think it's ok to send their kids to their room when they don't eat their vegetables, what if EVERYONE gets sent to their room when they don't eat their vegetables?!
between drug laws, copyright laws, and the patriot act, that's basically what the government can do now. When the government can't do it believably, they get their friend rupert murdoch to pull a dixie chicks on them.
So no there is no "much more important other side"... unless of course, you're silly.
Yes there is a "much more iportant other side", unless you're blind.
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FORD(Found On Road DEAD)
yep, that's one of the reasons why there's a "thinkofthechildren" tag...
This is part of the trend towards restriction being the answer to everything. I'm a liberal, but I have a strong libertarian streak, and it seems like whenever our society confronts a problem, increasingly the answer isn't to understand the cause and think about a solution, but to dumb the process down so much that it's impossible to do anything
Thank you Dave Raggett
You seem to live in a boolean universe. Parents sort of trust their kids to drive responsibly, but know it will vary with who else is in the car. It makes sense to loan a car that they cannot show off in, nor be *encouraged* to drive faster than they have competence. Also, distraction in the car is a problem is well. Slower means more time to react to a threat.
Stats show that males (prob females too these days) stabilize at safe driving only when over 25. Stupid to only allow them to borrow the car when that old. They need the socialization way before then. Slower accidents may cause injury, but are no where near as likely to be fatal.
As for needing to drive over 80. Yup, it is remotely possible that that might happen. They also would need a bottle of whiskey in the car to act as medicinal alcohol in case of accidents. Yeah, right.
my 2008 Ford F-450 is not only detuned from the regular F-250/F-350 pickups but also governed at ~84 mph, and even has an OBD-II code for speed exceeded! The underlying limitation is actually the load-rated tires which can only handle 87 mph at capacity.
Full Disclaimer: I tow heavy and actually *need* the F-450's capacity, though I hate the new regenerations found on all the new diesel pickups.
I'm noticing the following issues using the new beta index:
1. (Not really a bug, unless one is prone to seizures) When you click the links to get a previous day's stories, the page begins wildly flickering up and down as the stories are removed and then added back. Once all the stories are back, everything is fine, but you have to sit through 5-10 seconds of spazzing out before it resets.
2. Click on yesterday's stories, and take notice of the stories that appear on the page. Now click a link to go to one of the stories. Click the back button - you're now back to the home page with the current day's stories loaded!
Anybody else having these problems? This is on FF 3.0.3.
-Posted anon to avoid the karma burn in case this is modded down
I love it ...
I like how American parents push their responsibility on to everyone else. Maybe Ford will start out in Pittsburgh where students are always half.
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/23/1528259
Maybe the plate number could be added to the key ... so they know what car is theirs
What about when you overtake some big f***ing truck on two lane road (each lane going in different direction; this kind of road is typical where I live) and situation arises when you're doing 80 already, but it would be much, much safer if you'd hurry.
They could somehow mitigate this if they would allow higher speed for short period of time...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I routinely did 85 on hwy-170 in Los Angeles and I was in the bloody slow lane. I5? Shit, parts of that do 90 (or 95+ in the Imperial Valley parts that pass cow farms).
God help any kids who get this and then get on the highway.
"It's targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance."
It's a terrible idea. Teenagers need to be practicing setting their own responsibilities and limits. The more they're "protected" the less time they have to learn to be self-reliant.
Seriously, traditional societies recognize adulthood at, like 13. That's when you're physically mature. The more you fight that physical maturity vs. 2nd-class-citizenhood, the more fucked-up and schizophrenic people will become.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
So you are stuck with the crap build in stereo also kids like to put in there own amps so the sound limit may not work that well then.
This would be used to limit their (mis)use of YOUR car. One would presume that if they are installing stereos and amps, its their car, and if its their car, they'll own the 'adult' keys for it anyway.
In constant dollars it's actually not that expensive anyway... would you agree to work today for what you would have made 30 years ago.
I can remember buying gas in 1970 at 35 cents a gallon, but only making 75 cents an hour. And a gallon of gas only got me maybe 8 miles or so in a car that needed to be tuned up at least twice a year (for winter vs. summer) etc. And was worn out after 50-100 thousand miles.
This could be at, say, 3 in the morning.
I don't really care, though, since I won't be the one dying. I don't even have a driver's license.
My other car is first.
There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate.
My objection to this isn't so much that it prevents kids from doing things they might need to do for safety, but that someone who does the right thing only because they have no opportunity to do the wrong thing isn't really responsible.
Just as with alcohol in the USA, you know those kids -- when they finally get unfettered access to their cars -- are going to drive like maniacs and cause all sorts of wrecks.
Aside from random mindless fearmongering, your evidence for that happening is... what, exactly?
I assume you just pulled your data out of your ass. I googled around a bit and failed to find any nice reports to back you up.
I know my insurance rates are lower than they were 20 years ago even without adjusting for inflation.
I'm sorry, but most teenagers can barely drive in the first place, let alone when panicked during an emergency.
You mad
Can't wait till the first kit comes out to hack car keys.
Adults will use it to keep the dealers from gouging them on new keys (because hardware stores definitely won't be able to replicate them), and kids will take advantage of it to kill the restrictions.
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Add the word "faster"
The usual theme is that without these items the insurance will go up _faster_.
Hold on there!
Can a Focus even go 80mph?
:P
It seems to be popular to turn off traction control for parking-lot drag races, probably mainly for the visual/aural effect. On some cars where there was no way to switch it off, people would even install aftermarket firmware to let them do so (or on occasion there were undocumented button sequences to do so in the stock firmware); I seem to recall that being a big thing with BMWs for a while.
Probably not much of this frequently applies to a Ford Focus, though.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate.
Depends on where you live. I grew up in Atlanta, and with its size, the interstates are, quite often, the best way to drive to any given part of the city. Additionally, most of the miles I put on my car were spent on the way to Math tournaments an hour or more away. I'd be really surprised if most parents keep their teens off the highways. Any data on this would be appreciated.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it always seemed to me that the interstates were much safer than city driving. In an accident, you're much more likely to die, of course, but with most vehicles moving in a straight line at a near-constant speed, there's less chance for someone to run a stop sign, turn in front of you, or pop out from a blind driveway.
Easy solution.
Murder everyone under 21.
Ta-dah!!!
Aren't you the guy who was arguing that it was perfectly safe to eat and use your cellphone while driving?
Any tuner worth anything would be able to tune this "feature" out of the software.
The seat belt chimes can be disabled (according to my owners manual) rather easily using a combination of key positions and using the key less remote.
The "Speed Alert" "feature" has been available to me as well on my FPV F6 Typhoon (build #007) since I bought it new 4 years ago.
My speed limiter has been disabled, revs upped to 6k, boost cranked up to 12PSI and I'm making 320kw (429hp) at the rear treads, all done in software.
It won't take long for someone to just turn this off.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I would really like a survey on what proponents of this idiocy did in their youth. It may hold a key to all this control freakery.
Insert
I am an actuarial analyst for a major property and casualty insurer in the US.
Insurance rates tend to trend upward because inflation, loss costs, and adjustment/expense costs trend upward. Despite popular belief, they do not trend upward because of the profit contingency loading, and this is due to the fact that personal insurance is a very highly regulated industry in the US. If my company simply decided to increase our loading by even 0.5%, you can be assured that every state Dept. of Insurance would write back immediately, asking why we feel justified raising profit loading by that amount, right before they deny our filings.
In layman's terms, loss costs increase because the value of insured properties such as autos and homes tend to increase. What I mean by this is not depreciation, or the decline in value of a single purchased asset, but rather the idea that the average paid value of assets or services rendered increases over time, due to inflation or technological improvements. Health care 10 years ago did not cost what it does today. Cars didn't cost what they do today. And so forth.
Loss adjustment expenses also increase in coordination with inflation and the cost of doing business.
It is also in part because more people survive accidents that the cost of insurance goes up. More survivors = more injured = higher medical payments. Similarly, more technology = higher repair cost. There is also a loose correlation in that safer vehicles tend to lead to less safe driving habits.
I understand that the average consumer is naive about the nature of insurance. If the public truly wishes to decrease their premiums, then in roughly decreasing order of importance, (1) drive less, (2) drive slower and more carefully, (3) don't buy SUVs or large vehicles. Of course, this only applies to the population as a whole. As an individual insured, your exposure as determined by your insurer has to do with your age, gender, location, credit history (where permitted), type and age of vehicle, and driving record, among other variables. The extent to which a group of insureds incurs greater losses is the extent to which those people pay higher premiums. That is the principle upon which actuarial ratemaking is founded, and if the public is unhappy with how much it costs to insure their assets, then stop having so much loss. After all, do you think insurers actually want to increase rates on their policyholders? They don't, because there is so much competitive pressure to keep rates low, for fear of losing business. In fact, if an insurer files a rate change significantly lower than their indicated rate need, that is a red flag to the DOI, because it raises the possibility of insolvency risk.
If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or the California wildfires. On the one hand, they'll tell you how insurance saved them, but on the other hand, if you don't live in a risk-prone state, you'll wonder why these people thought living on an island right along Hurricane Alley would be a good idea, and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice.
What? I've been driving on the interstate since I got my learner's permit at 15. So has everyone else I known with a license. Anecdotal, of course, but that seems a pretty odd generalization (especially since it's next to unenforceable).
You're dead-on with the other points though. Responsibility is doing the right thing when you have a choice to do wrong, not when it's your only option.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
"After a little while, of course, you'll pay an additional fee if you *don't* take this feature."
In most states, insurance is a competitive, open industry, so no one can get away with raising prices without good reason (I had about eight choices when I signed up for insurance in California). I think what you mean to say is once enough car owners opt-in, those who refuse to opt-in still won't receive the now-standard discount. Logic dictates that safety devices, which ultimately should decrease the payouts from insurance companies, would only lower mean insurance costs.
"how come everyone's auto insurance keeps going up, *never* down."
Actually, car insurance costs had been, before this year, decreasing for some time (e.g., in 2007: http://www.city-data.com/forum/florida/161382-auto-insurance-costs.html) due to lowered payouts. I believe prices increased in 2008 - I'm not sure why.
I'm 24 and I more than vividly remember my young teen years in my car. 2001 wolfsburg Jetta, I bought it off the lot with 10 miles on it. The car itself is only 150hp, still even kinda measly by today's standards, but although I did my fair share of speeding, I'd have to say the biggest thing that I should have been limited on (even if it would have limited my fun) was the acceleration. Acceleration is what gets you in trouble, making a fool grabbing attention.
The 80mph limit wouldn't have stopped either any of my tickets either (before or after turning 18).
There is a far easier method to go through tho, parents buy their kids grandma cars. Although, I guess by the time I'll be having kids, my car will be a grandma car, so how does this little paradox work?
Aren't you the guy who was arguing that it was perfectly safe to eat and use your cellphone while driving?
Back in the day, i'd say yes. A cell phone back then was dialable by touch, and no more distracting than changing the radio station.
Now.. you have to look at it continuously, navigate through nine menus, etc.
As for eating.. it depends on what the food is.
Trying to eat a steak dinner isn't exactly the safest thing in the world, but reaching into a bag and popping gummy bears into your mouth every once in a while is, once again, no more distracting than changing the radio station.
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You stupid cunt, Fuck you. I've lost friends during highschool and on into college because they or someone around them panicked while driving.
I knew a girl who had her music so loud she didn't hear the fucking police car till they crossed into the intersection, where the cop plowed right into her going 60. I lost another friend who was killed after loosing control at a rail road crossing at 100. I've lost 11 friends to car accidents, some their fault, some not their fault.
So fuck off you arrogant piece of shit.
You mad
...so that they won't die because they didn't have the utmost available acceleration with which to get out of the way.
Blah.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Most accidents involving teens aren't 80mph freeway crashes - they're taking slower roads too fast. I was in a wreck (car written off, I walked away with bruises) with a friend driving - he tried to take a roundabout at 50 instead of 30 on a wet night. The problem isn't a function of power, speed or traction - it's recklessness. Trust me - I was in a freaking Metro when it happened. Limiting the speed to 80 just means that kids will get their kicks driving 60 in a 30 zone or something similar.
SURPRISE: An INSURANCE group commissioning a biased study so they can "justify" more rate hikes.
"Society for intelligent design study shows science should be removed from schools"
"Fox news study shows liberals 50% more likely to betray their country"
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I've lived in a place where you didn't really need to get on the freeway, although it could be faster. Most kids weren't allowed to drive on the freeway for a couple of years.
Where I live now I"m not even sure how you could get around without using freeways. They're integral to the city...so I imagine it varies quite a bit depending on locale.
Even if the computer has it locked on and the little opt out dash button doesn't work, all you have to do is break or disconnect one of the wheel sensors. You lose abs and traction control but you don't really need either. Then you can peel out in your *Focus* as much as you can. Since I doubt the wus cars can peel out anyway, don't break your parent's car. Now on the Mustang GT and up, that is a different story. The traction control just robs power, and since the GT's come with a limited slip differential anyway, you don't need the gimmicky traction stuff. The little cars have front wheel drive, so they don't need the traction stuff, but you may be a dumb driver and benefit from ABS.
I do think it's fun to see high school kids trying to race me.. Mom's car isn't gonna catch up to mine. Your v6 is not an 8, and those noisy exhaust tips don't make your rice burner quicker. Yeah, my car's grumble was factory designed and it sounds mean.
One more thing I would also like to address in response to your comment....
From a pure ratemaking perspective, it makes no difference whether a discount is applied to those insureds who have a particular characteristic, versus surcharging those insureds who do not. Actuarially speaking, the relative difference among the two risk classes is what matters. If the insurer prices the product correctly (and by correctly, I mean by following accepted actuarial principles), the indicated rates for each risk class will be the same whether the insurer views the characteristic as a surcharge or a discount.
Your statement, then, reveals a misunderstanding about how a rating plan works. Initially, a base rate is selected from the exposure base (which for personal auto is usually number of car-years). Then a series of multiplicative factors are applied depending on the insured's characteristics. So for example, they might start from a base rate of $500, and if they are 35-40 years old, they might have a factor of 0.9 applied to their rate, which becomes $450. If they are male, then they might get a factor of 1.05, and so forth. Now if having a special feature of the vehicle qualified you for a 5% discount (factor of 0.95), and no feature is 0% discount (factor of 1.00), then that's one way to look at the rating plan. But if it were instead a surcharge, so having the feature gives a factor of 1.00, and having no feature gives a factor of 1/0.95 = 1.05263..., then in order to get the same indicated rate, the base rate would be adjusted downward by 5%. In either case, the actual rate stays the same in both risk classes. Not adjusting the base rate while changing the factors would result in an overall 5% increase that would have to then be justified in the rate filing. It cannot be done capriciously or out of a desire for profit, because that is not where the rate can be taken--the DOIs would not approve it.
The other 20% were able to make it home.
Anything distracting the driver is a huge danger, I can't even count the number of times I've been in near collision with a driver on his cell, looking on a map or otherwise engaged in anything but making sure there isn't a bike in his way when taking the next right.
And as to the people claiming you need the extra horse powers to get away; not bloody likely. Most will panic and do silly things, you don't need horsepower to get away from an accident, you need to keep your head cool and go around it. Going faster doesn't help you if you are already doing the wrong thing.
...if the goal is to limit casualties.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Anything distracting the driver is a huge danger
I think we need to get rid of:
AC
windows which open
stereos
adjustable seats
tilt
cruise
GPS
the tach
map lights
that clicking you get from the turn signals
all seats except the driver's seat.
You can't be selective about your distractions if you really believe that.
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it's nice to see impartial mods on /.
there is no -1 "i disagree"
flamebait does not substitute.
have a nice day.
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You're a cunt, and if I had mod points your karma would reflect that. Not just for this post, but all the other stupid ones in this thread.
How are you supposed to drive any reasonable distance going 80? I guess they've never driven alligator alley let alone the roads of oklahoma/texas/etc.
Speed as an absolute number is meaningless without taking into account road conditions. On most divided highways even 100mph is perfectly safe in light traffic, dry roads and good visibility. True, stopping distances increase and reaction times decrease, but the dangers are not much higher than at 80mph.
Now change the ideal conditions above to a snowstorm, or to a two lane twisty road (think Deals Gap), etc and 80mph can become suicidal.
I would even argue that knowing that the car is limited can create a sense of false security, especially in inexperienced drivers. The top speed should be assessed on a case by case basis, depending on road conditions, driver alertness, etc. Having an artificial upper limit removes some of the responsibility of makeing judgment calls, replacing them with "the car will tell me when I drive too fast".
.
When a kid screws up badly enough on the road there often aren't any second chances.
Top 20 Causes of Death - Older Teen (15 - 19), Teen Drivers Responsible for 31,000 Auto Accident Deaths
You're a cunt, and if I had mod points your karma would reflect that. Not just for this post, but all the other stupid ones in this thread.
I wish you luck.
Have a nice day projecting your bitterness on people who don't deserve it rather than the holy, blameless police officer and someone who decided to approach a 6 inch high road obstruction at 100 miles per hour.
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bullshit, I managed to scape a patrol car when I was 15 and driving without license.
i think distracted drivers are far more likely to kill someone's kids than a governor chip preventing them from getting off of a bridge during an earthquake.
so save your righteous indignation.
BMW, Jaguar, and a few other manufacturers have been doing this for a while with valet keys. The valet keys put the car in "valet mode" where the rev limiter, top speed, etc are set pretty low. Good to see the feature trickle down to more affordable cars.
A friend of mine who I also work with had an incident like this a few years ago during his senior year in high school. He was at a friends house with some people and one of them was playing with a semi-auto glock and put a round into his stomach.
If his friend hadn't been able to floor the pedal in his car, he would not have gotten to the hospital in time and would not have survived.
Incidentally, his friend was on learning permit and they were chased by police for about 6 miles through town. They gave him a warning that if they ever caught him doing anything wrong while driving after this they'd not be lenient.
Anyway, I think this, while perhaps noble, is a misguided idea. The ability to fully control speed, traction control, and other features can be critical in extreme cases, such as emergencies. It would suck if your kid got stuck on a train track, traction control making them unable to move, and they got hit by a train. Extreme, but possible.
I'd rather let the kid have free reign over the speedometer than knowingly limit the vehicle.
Now all this is sort of extreme cases, perhaps extreme enough to be bad examples. 80mph should be fast enough for most situations, and even in emergencies, its unlikely to be controllable at 80mph in a city in a hospital rush scenario. If the limit is that high, it should face few issues. Traction control is stupid though. Limiting the speed to 80mph should be enough to deter any kind of street racing behavior.
If the bridge was going to collapse, I would give it my damned best to get out of there. And I have traversed that span > 130 mph at times. Do I recommend this, never. However, I just post to refute your claims of impending collisions.
"I'm sorry, but most teenagers can barely drive in the first place, let alone when panicked during an emergency."
When did I say my friend was panicked, my first reaction to his death was rage at what a "stupid fucking bastard" he was.
Most teenagers are stupid when they drive, yet you justify your dislike of this device by stating they shouldn't have any restrictions on the speeds they drive at.
You mad
As someone who has many friends in the insurance industry (one at GEICO, one at Allstate, two at State Farm) your post is spot on. I hear them rant about everything you've said. So, IMNSHO, mod parent up.
i think distracted drivers are far more likely to kill someone's kids than a governor chip preventing them from getting off of a bridge during an earthquake.
so save your righteous indignation.
how about teaching responsibility, rather than teaching them to depend on others to make sure they don't do something wrong.
We already see that from the first encroachment of this mentality on previous generations:
wall street malfeasance.
the continued election of officials who spend money they can't cover through taxes.
parental negligence giving rise to bullying intense enough to prompt school shootings, and to the teenage use of guns as a solution which could have been prevented.
The increase (seen in articles) incidence of people graduating college and moving right back in with parents because they can't handle the real world.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Additionally.. what happens if your kid, or someone around him, is in an emergency, and must push the car to its limit.
Why do we always have to find strange ways of justifying things simply because we feel our freedoms are threatened? Let's just tell it as it is - we want to have access to ever single horsepower because our competitive nature, our thirst for power, because it is thrilling, and because it is -our- horsepower which -we- purchased. Maybe we won't use it. Maybe we will. It is more than a little unlikely that people will use it to save their lives, and much more probable that people will use it to drive head-first into a tree instead, but that doesn't make it wrong to possess.
Now having said that, if I tried to push my current car to the limit, I doubt I'd get up to 80 even without a restrictive management system, and I can only dream of luxuries like traction and audio....
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
you do realize that one of your uses of the word "your," highlighted above, is not consistent at all with the others, right? and that's probably because the word "your" means something entirely different than what you have attempted to use it for (twice).
Riiiiight.. so the golden gate bridge is bucking and swaying, cars all around you are coming to a stop... and your going to slam on the gas in your Porsche?
They kept driving over the Tacoma bridge while it was bucking and swaying...
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao
This makes the problem even worse.
Now for the limiting sound volume, I can agree with that. AC/DC doesn't sound right when some moron is talking about his bitches so loud you can here it through his and your closed windows.(I can't figure out how to work the Mexican bump buump bump buump bump in here)
Racing and driver distraction causes the vast majority of accidents and I don't see this system doing anything to prevent it, in fact it makes the problems worse (talking to your car while driving, this isn't KITT here).
Limiting the top speed inherently means you don't trust the ability of the driver to control the car. And in some instances you do need to increase speed for safety reasons.
I leave in New Mexico and 75+ speed limits are common. (In fact seeing 60 or less is just plain weird to me know). Unfortunately New Mexico has more than it's fair share of drunk/stoned drivers. As a result you occasionally have to speed up to make sure the moron behind you doesn't kill you.
In Germany the cars aren't limited. In their driver's ed program you are *REQUIRED* to master driving at 120MPH before you can obtain a license. I have relatives in Germany so I know. And as pretty much everyone knows Germans are some of the safest and courteous drivers in the world.
Being unable to turn off traction control is also stupid. One of the major automotive magazines (can't remember which, if someone else can help me out) tested driver control with traction control on and off. Most expected a professional driver to do better without it, but the fact is that under decent driving conditions even a regular driver does better without traction control! Now under some circumstances snow, ice, and rain some people absolutely need it, so it is best to leave it as an option
For a bit of background I drive a 81 280ZX Turbo. No anti-lock brakes, no TCS, no ACS, no RPM or throttle limiters, no other stupid controls. For 15 years I have driven this car without incident in all sorts of weather. I can out-brake anti-lock systems, I can out control TCS and ASC systems. I have avoided many accidents by avoiding collisions by understanding my car selectively using all if its basic systems to get me out of trouble.
And before someone clueless says its an import with no power, speed, ricer, etc. keep in mind that from 1981 was faster than a Corvette, was the fastest car imported from Japan, and was about the fastest non-exotic you could buy.
If you don't know what some of the abbreviations mean, your opinion has no merit.
This is Slashdot. You can't post sensible educated posts like this! ;)
.: Max Romantschuk
I trust my son more than I'd have trusted myself at that age, but still...
I'd like him to be able to use the newer more reliable car, but prevent him from being pressured into being a dick.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In that case, two, four, ten people _MIGHT_ die _BECAUSE_ of that feature.
How many lives you think are going to be saved every year if teenagers now suddenly can't speed anymore?
Apparently, spelling and grammar help readers understand what others are writing.
Yes but you need to put the right key in for it to work
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao
Because they will just download their own cars, for free.
You was lucky-when I was a lad we used to eat, drink and roll cigarettes whilst driving.
Once again Ford spends their R&D money on anything but fuel efficiency.
Okay, I have gotten into a ton of accidents, speed was a helper in a lot of them. Not paying full attention was a biggie too. I like my father would be very hesitant about handing the keys of my car to my kid. All I have to do is think about all the stupid stuff I did growing up.
Things people did growing up in my area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8141CkKo1LE
This isnt like health insurance where you can opt out. How pleased would the local bookies be if they found out that you had a bit of a gambling problem and couldn't stop yourself from betting every single game?
..and the sickest thing of them all, like most insurance, is that you are betting against your own safety and welfare.
Mandatory auto insurance is similar to a gambling problem, except society doesnt think that you are "sick" and "need help," instead they think "you better place a wager motherfucker!"
Driver: "I'd like to bet $600 on my driving skills for one year please"
Bookie: "Do you want the over or the under?"
Driver: "I'll take the under, and dont expect me to drive any safer cause I'm trying to win!"
The insurance industry is insane.. and mandatory insurance is so far from being a reasonable idea that its hard to figure out if you should laugh or cry.
"His name was James Damore."
I think they picked 80 because they figured most people would be ok with that as an upper limit for their kids even if they didn't expect them to follow the speed limit all the time. It's silly though - the worst accident I ever had was at 35 mph. Speed isn't the only factor at work in accidents; if anything this just gives parents a false sense of security.
You'll just be trapped in the subway and die of starvation after you run out of people to eat.
Feel free to mod me down, but the issue needs to be raised.
We need a cars category. Many of us like to talk about this kind of stuff. ca.driving was one of the most popular newsgroups on ancient Usenet (and had a wonderful signal to noise ratio to boot).
We do not need the invisible article title text featured by the beta index and the firehose.
Back on topic:
I learned to drive in a large vehicle too - my parents' Plymouth Satellite. My mother screamed when I (slightly) misjudged the clearance on the right the first time I used my learner's permit (no harm, no foul, no accident, no ticket).
I suspect I'll do something similar when my wife gets her US license.
The same reason the $1000 you deposited in your bank account 10 years ago keeps getting bigger...
Inflation is always rising. To prove ANYTHING about costs "THEN" versus "NOW" you MUST adjust for inflation.
Personally, I'm paying about a 1/3rd as much for car insurance now as I was 3 years ago, but that's primarily due to switching to a better company.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
But I agree entirely with this statement: "If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, or the California wildfires."
My case doesn't involve natural disasters but a simple car crash. My hunk o' junk car was totaled by an uninsured driver a little over a year ago. I had liability only at the time (stupid, stupid, I know, but it was a sub $2,000 vehicle). Had I bothered to pay just a little bit more, I could have avoided small claims court and the extremely drawn out collection process which is doing little more than pay the interest on the debt that has accumulated not only from purchasing and repairing a new car but also from the other associated bills - a car rental, lost wages, time spent looking for a new car, etc.
I now drive a $1,600 car, with full coverage as well as double minimum state coverage in all areas. It is the ultimate peace of mind knowing that if I were to get into another situation like this I would be out, at most, a few hundred dollars.
Insure yourself. Do it now, and do it right. An extra $100 or so could have saved me from the financial nightmare I've been living for the last year and a half.
No, but I'll bite your nice bit of trolling since you also seem to be one of the unsafe drivers around here.
AC are a nice feature, but should be inoperable while the car is moving, ditto for the radio (in fact as I recall you are not allowed to fiddle with the radio while driving in Britain), same for GPS, seats and map lights.
Clicking from turn signals is needed since you get audible feedback from your action so you don't need to look at the dashboard to see its blinking. Also the clicking actually tells you if one of the lights has gone out since it will be clicking faster - again a safety measure.
Cruise control should be abolished, it just helps the driver falling a sleep - and on top of that people I've seen with cruise control take their foot of both pedals - this means their reaction time is now measured in seconds.
Getting rid of all seats except the drivers is just silly and kinda removes any insightful input you might have wanted to come across. Any passenger in the car should however not be allowed to engage the driver in casual talk.
Not being native English I have no idea what "tilt" or "the tach" is.
Much, perhaps most, dangerous driving by kids is caused by trying to show off to their mates.
Are you talking about their girlfriends or their friends?
Property is theft.
I hope that I am not the only one that is worried by this sort of thing. It seems that we are constantly restricting the freedoms of our children to the point where we are quite possibly damaging them mentally.
Being young means taking silly risks occasionally. Yes, a few will take a risk that is too big and kill or seriously injure themselves and that is very sad but if that means that millions of others can experience life than I think it's a price worth paying.
It will be interesting to see what happens to society as these children grow up and begin to run the show. Will they realize the importance of freedom and cause another 60s style freedom revolution or will they continue the trend to ever more draconian control.
On a personal note though now that I am passed the driving stupidly fast phase of my life I would acutally quite like a GPS based speed limiter on my car so that I never get a speeding fine.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Both were declared state emergencies. Those without insurance still got reimbursed for their losses.
"Insurance" isn't an inherent scam, but MANY of the companies offering insurance are cheaters liars and scammers.
See Allstate offering ridiculously, illegally low levels of coverage. See any of the insurers that up tons of risk, and teeter on the edge of bankruptcy when they have to pay-up. See insurance companies offering plans that have fine print to specifically EXCLUDE the MOST LIKELY form of natural disaster in an area, so that the plan you're paying for is utterly worthless.
Conversely, I also believe it is being forced upon those that don't need it in many situations:
Those who drive safe, and/or very little, still pay ridiculous amounts for required automotive liability insurance in some states, because it is blanket required. Those who could afford to pay off more than the liability amount aren't allowed to, unless they jump through ridiculous hoops.
Home-owner's insurance for a cheap house in a very low-risk area should not be required for a mortgage... I consider that equivalent to a hidden premium levied on numerous home buyers. And for the reasons above, it often doesn't help, anyhow...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
to "fix" the key when you were that age? I'd probably destroy the first key trying, but I bet I'd get there on the second one. That's not a prevention mechanism, that's a challenge :-)
apparently sub 1000000 Slashdot UID's don't hold the prestige they once did, ok so new rule, everyone with 967726 UID's or below are now the respected few , that the rest of us should look to and mod up when the situation allows :P, until they forget how to spell and start to transpose their there's :)
-not usually a spelling nazi, but...LOL come on :D
It won't take long for some whipper-snapper hackers to break Ford's key restriction system, which is probably a joke. A cottage industry will sprout up, with kids huddled around a key-cracking pusher selling override keys for outrageous profit.
Some geek kid hack's Dad's car and disables the blackbox and speed limiter, and the Men in Black come and arrest poor old Dad on unlawful modification of a safety device.
I give this device 24 hours on the street before some Norwegian hack's it and posts a howto on the internet. (Don't ask me how the Norwegian got his hands on an American Ford)
I give it 48 hrs before Ford files a DMCA takedown notice.
I give it 48 hrs and 2 minutes before it's downloaded and multiplies by 10,000.
I give it 72 hours before you can buy the shirt with the howto from ThinkGeek.
Then everyone will know how to defeat them, and render another stupid bit of DRM useless. Except in this case it's not actually DRM per se, or is it?
Safe to assume, my daughter won't drive one, because she'll actually know how to drive. God forbid we should take responsibility for teaching teenagers anything. If I find a black box in my car it's history! Even it it means ripping out all the wiring and redoing it - not something I relish.
The REAL question is, why does an ADULT need to be driving over 80? wink wink... And yes, the gov't WILL be asking this question as soon as this is implemented for teens = bye bye freedom. No one EVER *needs* to speed, right? This is the dumbest thing ever. Parents need to teach their kids responsibility WITH power, as well as TRUST their kids. Trust goes farther than you think... This is the same as public schools giving every kid 50% no matter what. We are going to breed lazy, snotty, bratty, little s***s of children by dumbing the world down for them, so they can safely make it to the point where they can yield supreme nuclear power. Remember that bad grade you got in school? I bet it hurt your feelings, poor thing! Well, sometimes everyone's feelings NEED to be hurt, and power needs to be transferred, it's called growing up. Last time I checked, that's what teen years were all about.
As for the person saying "it's just a key, people that you can choose to give" -- let's be realistic... it's a choice NOW, but that's how the drug of the illusion of total control acts as the REAL gateway towards totalitarianism.
So now computer geeks will turn into car geeks too, and kids will admire the ones who'll be able to hack the key lockdowns in their cars :)
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
My parents had this installed in my first car. They got me an '89 Jeep Cherokee... Couldn't go faster than 65. If you get your kid an old car...chances are they'll drive safely.
That is until you get them a Mustang for graduation and he's a dummy that drives too fast.
"You'll wonder why these people thought living on an island right along Hurricane Alley would be a good idea, and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice."
According to some dude on NPR it's so that when Russia nukes the cities there will be a lot of survivors living out in the boonies. No one would build there house in the path of a wildfire if they couldn't get government subsidized insurance.
When you first get your license, that is the worst time to be speeding or driving crazy - I remember. I think that this is a usable tool for responsible parents to curb the retarded shit that happens when kids get their licenses. Too many die.
But, what would be even more useful for a parent is to be able to prevent the kid from driving drunk or high if you knew whose house they were at that night by simply going to a website, and inputting a time after which they could not start the car.
Freeway driving was part of both my formal and informal driver's education. It is just part of life in some places.
... if your son knows his way around a car like he does the internet. That's not so common nowadays, in case you were wondering.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Britain just changed it's rules so you can now be imprisoned for causing death by careless driving (previously you could only be fined). Death by dangerous driving was and still is a greater offence. Careless driving means being distracted by mobile phones, the radio, pretty girls etc.
A/Some car manufacturer(s) did once remove the clicking noise (originally made by the relays in the flasher unit) since it was simple and much more reliable as a piece of solid state electronics. This however led to complaints from people who didn't realise they'd left their blinkers on.
Alternatively parents could try having a mature and trusting relationship with their teenage children...
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
It's a pity he survived, now we have yet another idiot potentially polluting the gene pool.
My first car was ... a 1978 Chevette. (And no, it wasn't even *close* to new, so you don't need to get off my lawn).
Simple really ... it wouldn't do 80mph if it was going downhill with a tailwind.
Never did I contemplate trying to do donuts, burnouts, or high speed. There simply wasn't a chance of any of those things being possible.
(We saved that for my friend with the vintage GTO. )
Because it's car insurance not life insurance. These features make no difference to the number of accidents, and no difference the amount of money required by insurance companies to pay for these accidents. They're there simply for your own safety, and do nothing for the well-being of the car.
This thing is different. It doesn't just protect you from the worst, it tries to protect you (or your loved ones) from the worst.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
1) Only on slashdot will someone try and shoehorn DRM into a debate about car safety. What is this? torrentfreak?
2) What percentage of your car journeys involve speeding off a bridge during an earthquake?
3) given 2) happens, you are stuck behind the car in front anyway dude.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
For those people who haven't seen this before, I'd like to point you to an article about a guy who's decided that leaving a gap is a good thing:
http://trafficwaves.org/
My distilled thoughts based on what he said:
Ask me about repetitive DNA
And if they really want to screw them over, they block back seats or open all windows automatically if the inside humitity of the car reaches certain percentage ;-)
There are degrees of distraction - I don't know about you, but I tune out what's on the radio when I'm needing to pay attention to an emergent road condition. But I have a harder time doing so, if i'm looking down at my passenger's seat, checking a map.
Distractions are things that take your eyes off the road, or that you cannot trivially interrupt when you have something that needs your full attention - phones count, because having a sensible conversation takes processing time. Passengers do, but less so, because they'll typically STFU when you're maneuvering. (Or at least, realise exactly why you started ignoring them)
Personally though, I think cars should be running heads up displays for most things - looking down at a dashboard is IMO just plain bad design, as it takes your eyes away from where you should be looking.
Tire chains are illegal in most states because they destroy the pavement very quickly. A quality set of snow tires are more than adequate in most cases. I recommend Blizzaks -- had a pair for 5 years and it was a dream using them in winter compared to all-seasons.
It amazes me the amount of people that will choose to white-knuckle their driving during every snow storm, or get in an accident with their $25k car causing thousands in damages, rather than spend $300 on a set of snow tires that will last for 5+ winters.
Some water-scooters are using this concept already - you have your own key which allows full speed, and a key for your girlfriend, which limits the max. speed to around 60% of the original top speed.
WTF?!
I looked away for a couple of seconds and when I glanced back over to her she was starting slowly stray halfway over in my lane still dabbing makeup on.
At this point I'm think - no, surely she's not going to hit me. Is she?
Then suddenly I thought - yep, FUCK ME - she IS going to hit me!
It scared me so much that I panicked and dropped my electric shaver, which in turn knocked the bacon roll out of my other hand.
Mother fucker! Ok, now I'm pretty upset with this tart.
In all the confusion of trying to straighten up the car - fortunately I was steering with my knees anyway so it wasn't too bad but my mobile thingy dropped out my ear fell straight into my coffee causing it to splash and burn BIG JIM AND THE TWINS, this caused me to scream, which made me drop the cigarette out of my mouth, ruined my shirt and DISCONNECTED AN IMPORTANT CALL.
Fucking Women Drivers!!!!!!
(old joke, but that copied from a post on ocuk.co.uk)
It's not quite illegal but such actions can be taken into consideration when facing eg a dangerous driving charge and can increase the sentence. Smoking at the wheel & eating food are also mentioned as aggravating factors. So the tip is, fiddle all you want, just don't crash.
1. Most accidents don't happen on motorways (the only place where speeds of >80 mph would be likely). You'd have to have location-dependent speed limits to make significant inroads. This is already being done, the new Nissan GT-R has (in the Japanese version) a 120 mph speed limiter which is swiched off automatically when you're on a racetrack; it uses GPS to decide where you are. IMO, this is a nightmare scenario. It reduces the driver's freedom even more, and encourages people to just drive at the governed limit blindly, instead of paying attention to circumstances. The lack of dynamics in the traffic around you (everyone going at the same speed) lulls you into a false sense of security (see below).
A governed limit means there'll be small differences in speed due to calibration errors, etc, which means people will be overtaking with 1 mph speed difference all the time. In Europe, trucks already have a speed limiter, and as a result you get huge tailbacks behind two trucks going 50+/-1 mph side-by-side. To prevent this, you'd have to mandate radar-guided cruise control as well, and before you know it fully autonomous vehicles are mandatory.
2. Most accidents aren't caused by speeding, but by not paying attention. This means that having a speed limiter won't have much effect, and due to the false sense of security it provides, may increase the number of incidents.
Hell, most kids I know these days couldn't roll a cigarette to save their asses. They all use bongs. What's the world coming to????
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Useless. Nobody I know has ever crashed in a straight line or because they were doing 80+. They crashed because they did not have the experience, because they did not see a car, because they were doing 5mph more than they should have in a corner, and ESP is not going to help you that much once you overshoot the turn in speed. And as for the stereo, shouldn't it be restricted by what the speakers can comfortably take, and not to what somebody thinks is 'appropriate'? If they want to destroy their ears & speakers at the age when they are legal to drive (16/18), let them, and then make them pay/suffer because they really should not be that dumb.
So sick of this "parental controls > parenting" BS.
Not everything is learned automatically by aging. There's no reason a 40 year old driver isn't prone to abuse a car less than a teenager, so leaving it up to the parents to slow the teenager "heat" a bit down while still allowing them the means of transportation and learning how to drive responsible is a good thing.
If you think insurance is a scam, tell that to the people whose entire earthly possessions were wiped out in Hurricanes Katrina and Ike
I remember hearing a lot from people who didn't get anything because their homes were (according to the insurance companies) destroyed by the flooding (i.e. storm surge) of Katrina, and not high winds, and they didn't have flood insurance because they were rather far inland and weren't in a flood-prone region.
Don't get me wrong; the rest of your analysis is spot-on. But the profit motive in trying to find ways to reject claims can't be ignored.
but that someone who does the right thing only because they have no opportunity to do the wrong thing isn't really responsible.
I'd rob you blind in a fucking second if I knew I could get away with it 100%. Sure I'm not responsible, but from your perspective does it really matter that I'm not robing you because I don't want to spend my life in jail and not some sense of responsible citizenship? and do you really think it will matter to the family in the minivan that the teen in the next car isn't plowing into them because of a speed limiter and not responsible driving?
if I tried to push my current car to the limit, I doubt I'd get up to 80
My car has a book-figure top speed of 122mph, but by driving flat out I have managed to get it to 135...
You expect parents to allow them to fit that sort of stuff if they get one of these limited keys??
They shouldn't be allowed to drive at all. Get some real amount of lessons, a strict theoretical exam and a practical exam. Then you can pick up your license. None of my friends have had an accident, and I'd like to think that's because in NL you actually have to show you're a good driver before you can get a license.
Thanks for clarifying that - in my opinion one of the more sane laws being made and I would like for it to get to EU level.
I don't know about my child, but I sure might use it with my wife!
So, I heard you like Mudkips?
In the UK the driving test is harder than ever. You must take a theory test, a hazard awareness test and the standard practical exam (which now takes a considerable number of lessons to pass).
My dad just turned up for his car test and passed first time without lessons. My gran had her driving license *bought* for her as a birthday present.
I've actually noticed that the quality of driving and knowledge of the road is better in younger people. And I expect my children will be required to pass a tougher test than I did. So maybe it is not the younger drivers who need some technological restraints!
Aren't you the guy who was arguing that it was perfectly safe to eat and use your cellphone while driving?
Eating while on a cell phone is hard enough! I can't imagine throwing driving into the mix.
GM today annonced a management system that will restrict certain aspects of a car's auxiliary system based on which key is in the ignition.
It will be possible to restrict the playback of music with a BPM above slow jazz (ie. euro-techno). As well as the limiting the angle of the drivers seat to 2 degrees from vertical.
This new concept will be called bald-man-wan-mode.
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
Great move by Ford, one can only hope that it will extend to all cars. Then we can get rid of all these timetraveling teens in lifejackets.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Because it's car insurance not life insurance. These features make no difference to the number of accidents, and no difference the amount of money required by insurance companies to pay for these accidents. They're there simply for your own safety, and do nothing for the well-being of the car.
As far as I know, security features can actually make accidents more expensive. If someone dies in an accident, that is bad for them, but quite cheap for the insurance. Same person with safety belt and airbag may spend six months in hospital fixing two completely crushed legs, which costs a lot more.
Adjusted for inflation, my insurance rates have done nothing but go down since I started driving daily at 17. I currently pay around $50 a month for full coverage on a compact sedan.
There is a war going on for your mind.
What are you on about? I use the same foot for braking and accelerating. It doesn't take me any longer to move my right foot from the floor to the brake than it does to lift it off the accelerator and do the same. It also reduces tiredness in the leg, which means the driver can brake quicker. I get cramp if I do a lot of highway driving in a car without cruise control, I can't be the only one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, if you really think about this it could have it's up and down sides....
First, lower speeds tend to be more fuel efficient, correct? So why not limit it to 70MPH for the kids and allow some extra speed for when the situation warrants it?
Or even better, have the car be programmable. We could make it so when our kids turn 16 and can drive we only allow them the ability to go 40. They can stick with driving through town and leave the highway to the more experienced drivers. Then we feel they are running safe, as a responsible parent should pay attention to, and push the speed up to effective highway speeds.
Hell, we could even limit ourselves this way... chronic speeder? Limit it to 65/68 or 70 and save yourself troubles. Town commuter? How about 35/40 MPH?
I guess my whole point in writing this is that both minors AND adults have bad habits and this really is a fantastic idea IF properly introduced. It could potentially save lives, lower road rage, save gas and give peace of mind.
Just my two cents. If you've read this far only to flame then I'm guessing you'll find plenty wrong with my stating my opinion. Personally I'd like to see some intelligent replies though, thank you. =P
"It is also in part because more people survive accidents that the cost of insurance goes up. More survivors = more injured = higher medical payments. Similarly, more technology = higher repair cost. There is also a loose correlation in that safer vehicles tend to lead to less safe driving habits. "
which is why my motorcycle is only $278 per year!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Inflation?
Funny, here's me thinking they weren't bad:
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/ford_focus_2004/204.aspx
Still, seems you know better. Thanks for the heads-up ... I'll certainly be watching out for Ford Focus engine blocks next time I drive on the public roads!
No sig today...
Exactly. And imagine how much less insurance companies would have to pay if every car was a known death trap. Those who would be stupid enough to drive recklessly would be eliminated quickly from the gene pool, and everyone else would drive much more safely.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
if they cannot turn of traction control? That's not something you wish your children, being bad at racing.
Here in Europe the very worst Focus (1.4 Duratec) will go over 100mph.
Source of pesky facts: http://www2.fordconnection.com/fordconnection/multimedia/gbr_en/001/yyv/gbr_en001yyvfuelspc.htm
No sig today...
How long will it be before the government mandates these things?
They'll do it in the name of "protecting the children" or "reducing emissions" or "to save us from ourselves."
More freedom for less security... business as usual.. Thanks a lot, Ford..
Do Fords even go up to 80?
You're probably looking for Kia, Daewoo, Fiat, and the many other econoboxes that seem to make it either extremely small or extremely expensive.
If it was designed as a car with at least 6 cylinders and >170hp as a base model(for what Ford/GM/Chrysler have made), making and sustaining 80 isn't a problem. It's the 4 cylinder "econoboxes" like the Focus, and many Far Eastern makes that have an issue with sustaining higher speeds (even a modified GM Quad-4 has had a ton of issues with that). That is a problem best solved by allowing something similar to a 90's Impala SS or Crown Victoria in hybrid form (without it being deep in >$20k+ territory) to be built and sold.
If they're worried about the Focus having it, it's only just to get enough acceptance to run it through the whole model set - no thank you sir. I'll just buy used, Detroit built, and with at least 6cyl/200HP, tyvm.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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What does the teen learn from this "good idea"? That the parents have no trust in the teen? That cars of the future will have this type of restriction for everyone? That the teen does not have to be responsible because the car will prevent him/her from doing anything bad?
I can't wait to see the lawsuits this will generate.
It's not about "need", it's about being a teenage kid and needing to push limits.
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Tell me something. With all the safety features that have been added to cars in the last 30 years or so, from seat belts to air bags, all peddled as something that would keep our insurance rates from going up, how come everyone's auto insurance keeps going up, *never* down.
You see, a greater percentage survive accidents now. That means hospital bills. Those are WAY more expensive than funeral home bills.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
I seem to remember some after-market ECUs you could buy in Australia, with a very special feature of particular interest to performance car modders.
A feature they added was "valet mode", where the ECU could be instantly reprogrammed to severely restrict the engine's power and torque output. The idea being, that if you find yourself needing to hand over your hotted-up pride and joy to a parking attendant, they wouldn't get enough out of the engine to do any burnouts.
TBH, I think it's an excellent idea, and I'm surprised noone's thought of this any earlier. As it stands, some modern car keys are "paired" with the car's ECU cryptographically. If the key doesn't respond correctly to the challenge sent from the ECU, the car doesn't start at all.
Those who drive safe, and/or very little, still pay ridiculous amounts for required automotive liability insurance
I guess it's quite hard to assess how safely people drive, but I certainly agree with you about how often you drive.
I own a car that most insurers consider to be a "performance"/"sports" model so I have to pay more for my insurance - most likely due to the value of the car and some kind of "risk factor" because my car can go a lot faster than others...perhaps our actuarial analyst from further up the tree may care to comment...
Anyway, I pretty much use my vehicle on weekends, I use public transport during the week (I'd rather have fun with my car on the weekend instead of sitting in traffic getting angry driving to/from work.) No insurer I know of will factor this in to premiums - surely the less you use the vehicle the less risk you pose?
It would be pretty easy to enforce the policy as well - you could sign up for a maximum quarterly mileage figure as part of your policy. When you renew your policy the insurer checks your mileage and charges you extra if you have gone over it. I'm sure a few more details need to be worked out but you get the picture...
Oh and by the way - anecdotal evidence would suggest that your rates go up the faster and sportier the car. Do the insurers ever consider that some of those vehicles actually have a lot of good safety-contributing features as well? For example: ABS, Traction Control, very good disc brakes... A lot of lower-end cars that you buy brand new don't even have any of those features.
Opens the door for hax. If I've been drivin liek an hero, hack hack hack... I'm teh hero!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well IANAAAFAMPACI, so thanks for the info!
Being a parent would be so much simpler if it were all binary choices. I don't trust you to make a smart decision every single time, so you're not getting a car until you buy one when you turn 18. Or, I trust you, here's a new BMW. When we don't go to the extremes, we get something that makes a little sense. How about, here's something that's chipped so it won't go over 80; be home by midnight. I trust you on this (not very) short leash; when you demonstrate that you're safe with that, we'll give you a little more rope to hang yourself. That makes much more sense.
I've heard of limited mileage policies, but they might only be available for rare or classic cars.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Laws vary from state to state, but my insurer gives me a break for having airbags and ABS. Now that airbags are mandatory on new cars, you are not likely to see the break but when pricing an older car it is definitely there. Same with ABS, except that it is not mandatory.
You may also be eligible for a break on your insurance, or may already be getting it, for low mileage. Depending on your insurer, there is often a "low mileage" category, of X number of miles or lower per day. I think on my policy it is 8 miles or less per day, which is just slightly above the distance to and from the bus station for me.
It is quite complex, but overall the risk that *you* specifically pose is not adjusted into the rates except by the allowable demographics - age, driving experience, gender etc.. Other than that, it is a community based risk, as you say based on the value of your vehicle and its risk. So if you have a Subaru WRX-STI, not only do you have to pay a higher premium because of the performance potential, you also have to pay higher premium because of the number of accidents those vehicles are getting in (well, here lately parents have been buying them for teenagers and killing off their kids in record numbers)
Actuaries are not just about figuring how to screw the consumer more. It is all about balancing risk and revenue/profit. It is about coming up with new, creative ways to manage the risk or assign the risk to as granular a level as possible, while not overburdening either the company or consumer with too much detail. And as the GPP says, property & casualty insurance in the U.S. is highly regulated by each State Department of Insurance. The goal of these agencies is to regulate the industry so that no company is going to a) go out of business from too much exposure to risk, thereby leaving thousands of customers without coverage in a time of need or b) add illegal caveats, conditions or other fine print that will void policies in a time of need. Just about every piece of printed paper you receive from an insurance company (on the P&C side anyway) has been first past legal review and secondly with state regulators.
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The numbers actually suggest there are quite significant savings of lives and serious injury.
From DFT websites 2004 survey...
Overall 42% fewer people were killed or seriously injured. At camera sites, there was also a reduction of over 100 fatalities per annum (32% fewer). There were 1,745 fewer people killed or seriously injured and 4,230 fewer personal injury collisions per annum in 2004. There was an association between reductions in speed and reductions in PICs.
Also, the cameras have to be placed where there have been at least 4 fatalities in a stretch of road due to accidents caused by speeding in a rolling period of three years, as well as a total number speed-induced (ie including non-fatal ) accidents. So for all the speed cameras you see put in place in the past 10 years there have been at least three times as many deaths at that site that have occured.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
...Instead of spending all this money trying to restrict everyone's abilities to drive we teach them how to drive properly? If someone has the proper education the won't feel the need to travel over 80 mph.
In southern California, it's pretty hard to get anywhere useful without going on the Interstate (or a US or State highway).. limited access divided highway (aka freeway) in general. Heck, there's several places near where I live that allow bicycles on the freeway because there is no alternate non-freeway route.
Besides, the accident rate (either in terms of per hour or per mile) is lower on the freeway than on surface streets. Everyone is going pretty much the same way at the same speed.
Totally depends where you live dude. In the Northwest if you don't use I-5 its next to impossible to get to where you need to go unless you have 6 hours to spend doing it and know the way.
You think Ford though!
Not being able to drive over 80 would be quite the pain where the speed limit is 80 (this is the speed limit in rural west Texas, as well as other places I'm sure.) Imagine trying to pass a vehicle going from 71-79 erratically. I'm not saying that this isn't a good idea, but needing to go over 80 is a valid need in some places.
p.s. don't give me the blah blah about driving over the speed limit when passing, I've taken defensive driving for my job upwards of 8 times, it just ain't reality.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Today: its 'optional and for the kids'. Buy up!
Tomorrow: You get a discount on insurance.
Next week: You get gouged if you don't have it, or refused insurance.
Next month: The government wants speed control ( and records ) of your car.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Can it keep old people from running down shoppers on the sidewalk? Can it keep old people from driving the wrong direction on the highway? No? Oh I guess it's a just a parental proxy for people who are too lazy to drive their kids around.
Tell you what, America - raise the driving age to 18.
My car insurance has never gone up...I am 30 years old and my first car was also my least expensive car, and never has my insurance gone up.
I was in a crash when the driver of the minibus I was in was distracted by changing the radio station. I wouldn't however support a ban on changing radio stations while driving, because the problem, as always, wasn't the action itself but the way it was carried out.
There's no reason changing radio stations, eating, using a phone or many other simple tasks can't be done safely. The accident I was in happened because the driver was looking down at the controls of the radio for an extended period while trying to tune it in just right; obviously looking away from the road and not thinking about driving for an extended period is an unsafe thing to do while behind the wheel! Whether you want to change radio station, eat, dial a phone or anything else, the question to ask yourself is whether you can do it safely without interfering with your ability to drive - if you can there's no problem.
Honestly my first thought when I saw this story was 'Gee. A lot of teenagers are going to be grabbing Mom's keys instead of their own.'
So all this means is kids will learn to be creative in taking the full access key and doing whatever they want. Unless the keys are radically different and easily discernible at a distance all this is going to accomplish is a lot of key swapping.
Actually, this sounds like a dongle. And we all know how well those work out. I can see a kid shelling out $25 to get a new key made and actually reading the owner's manual to register it to the car. Then they walk out the door proudly showing their bright red key to mom and pop and reach for the full access key in their pocket.
Mandatory insurance is not meant as a restriction on drivers who want to under/uninsure their vehicles, but to protect everyone else from them. If I get hit by a driver without insurance, *my* rates go up regardless if I was at fault or not. In other words, I essentially get charged more for unsafe driving even though I may not have been doing anything wrong. Wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing. With mandatory insurance, it gives peace of mind to me that another driver isn't going to get to walk away without paying his/her share of the accident and it keeps me out of court, where it could take a year or more to settle for damages.
There is no question that insurance is legalized, regulated, and in some states, required gambling.
Apart from the "fact" that is legalized gambling, I am interested to hear why the industry is insane. It is highly regulated, for sure, but what makes you want to laugh or cry?
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Initially you'll get a break on you auto insurance if you opt in to this feature.
BFD. The "feature probably means keys that will be even more expensive than the current insurance-industry-favored "theft proofing" keys that cost upward of $150 to replace.
Wanking off to a Playmate of the Month is somewhat less likely to kill him than running into a telephone pole at 95 MPH. I'd say it's worth trying to make cars a bit safer where possible.
Yes, but if he runs into the pole at 95MPH he might still get into heaven if he's been good. OTOH, wanking off to Playboy means that even if he gets 120 years on our sin-filled earth, he'll definitely burn in hell for eternity when he dies.
So the solution is obvious- buy your son a car, the faster and more dangerous the better.
(Note: The bit about getting into heaven is nullified if he runs into a pole at 95MPH *because* he was too busy wanking off to Playboy).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Tell me something. With all the safety features that have been added to cars in the last 30 years or so, from seat belts to air bags, all peddled as something that would keep our insurance rates from going up, how come everyone's auto insurance keeps going up, *never* down.
This is simply because the insurance industry in America is a for-profit enterprise. It's in their best interests (aka, profitable) to charge as much as they can for insurance while paying out as few claims as they can. And competition only goes so far in reducing our rates.
Just so I'm clear, you were 100% proficient in every skill you tried from the first time you tried it right?
Well, not everyone has the Taskmaster's powers, and for them, a margin of safety may be necessary, even if it's parentally enforced.
You want humour? Give Joe's other comments a good read. I've been laughing at him for years.
I just wish Ford would come up with something that would cause drivers to stop, and then both look and see when they come to a junction.
I've had two friends killed in 4 months by other drivers failing to stop at an intersection, and pulling out into oncoming traffic.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate.
Where in the holy fuck do you live? Here on the San Francisco peninsula, "the interstate" is only two blocks from a hell of a lot of people. It's the only way to get anywhere unless you have all day.
Not too long after getting his license, my son routinely drove down I-280 to get to school, about a half hour away. He also took another kid with him.
The most dangerous thing that he ever saw was the day he made a U-turn right in front of our house in a residential neighborhood when soome son of a bitch came blasting over a blind rise and nearly took my son and the other kid out in mid-turn.
If I'd been able to catch him, I'd have gutted the cocksucker and left his ass right there in the middle of the street as an example to others too fucking stupid to learn how to drive in a residential area.
Lack of full control = no control.
I'd never subject my children to such an unsafe vehicle system, just as I'd never buy them an iPod for the same reason.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
There are many areas in Michigan, not far outside Detroit, where the speed limit is 70 MPH. Traffic typically moves at 75 and you can approach 80 before drawing much attention from traffic cops. So a regulator set to 80 lets you merge safely and keep pace with traffic but prevents you from doing outright stupid things like taking an exit ramp at 95.
In Florida, they could market this to the kids for their parents...
All cellphones are still dialable by touch... what are you talking about. You don't *have* to go through menus, it's just that people do because they're stupid.
The talking part also happens to be very distracting. For some reason, talking on the phone detracts more from the road than talking to your passenger.
Where there's "Someone to Think Of", there's a way. My town figured it out.
1. Close all businesses by curfew. "Think of the overworked Cops" in our case.
2. Enforce Anti-Loiter rules.
I might need a new sig. "Never understimate Big Brother."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I retract my previous statement. I just read that this is not 80km/h but 80mp/h. This should be made mandatory for most 'parents' too, not just their kids.
You can't handle the truth.
And what happens when they decide to limit the car's speed limit to all drivers? To extend your rationalization, there's no situation where anybody should need to go XXX MPH/KPH, right? Slippery slopes my friend, slippery slopes...
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
The Segway scooter has a color-coded key scheme for top speed (and maybe other operating capabilities). I wonder if there is any IP involved.
I'm sure plenty of us here were driven to learn more about their computers in order to circumvent the restrictions placed upon them. This will encourage youngsters to learn more about how their cars work, and how to "upgrade" them. Finally, the smart kids will be faster!
There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate.
While I didn't drive on the interstate for my first few months of driving, by the time I got my license, I would drive on the interstate rather regularly: somewhere on the order of 90% of my trips.
The interstate is a great deal faster than the side roads, with less chance of getting lost, as well as being noticeably safer in several ways. You have two basic options for types of roads in many places: The first is about ten to twenty miles per hour faster than the other, and the second has lots of intersections, many of which are unregulated, and is rather twisty at times, as well as being small, and perhaps not as well lit or maintained. Would you take the interstate or the side streets? Which would you want your kids to take?
While the interstates are certainly faster, and while I would never put a brand new driver on them, I would tend to believe that they are otherwise safer for less experienced drivers under many circumstances than an alternate route composed of side streets.
1) Only on slashdot will someone try and shoehorn DRM into a debate about car safety. What is this? torrentfreak?
Were you paying attention at all? This story's a lot like an analogy, really.
3) given 2) happens, you are stuck behind the car in front anyway dude.
Then he'd better be speeding, too.
The 'upgraded' ECU software on my car has a 'Valet Mode' that limits the maximum speed. I can also plug my laptop into my OBD port and set the governor to whatever max speed I want. It's nice to see it as a factory feature though.
How about that annoying beeping that occurs when I place something weighing 20 lbs in the driver's seat and the stupid sensor thinks that it's a person sitting there who is not buckled up? That's about the only annoyance I've ever had with my Corolla XRS...
Speeding and drag racing are not issues. Cars mangled in the parking lot are the issue. ("Ooops! I pulled in too far!") There are exceptions, of course - I even know some of them.
Why should ANY street car in the US go over 80?
Traction control is dangerous sometimes...
If they really want to improve safety in the car while teenagers are driving it... they should install a cellphone jammer in the car.
Because most parents remember what it was like being a teenager.
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Perhaps instead of adjusting the top speed more effort should be spend adjusting the power/performance curves.
In a modern car they're all computer controlled anyway. Increase the 0-60 times, preclude jackrabbit starts, and in general keep the driver from behaving like he's auditioning for The Fast and the Furious 4: Dead Meat Walking.
If it's a real problem, however, I think some of the other solutions like speed/g-force monitoring would tend to be safer. Leave the performance envelope alone, and instead notify parents if the car is frequently undergoing high accelerations, hard braking, sharp turns, and sudden steering corrections (concentrating on talking or texting instead of the road).
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
perhaps they enjoy track days and high performance driver's education?
http://www.nasaproracing.com/hpde/index.html
Go to a couple of track days and you will not want to speed on the road. Building these skills up (even if it is merely time on a skidpad) should be required for a license.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
all the way across Nevada.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Sounds like those would be decent design goals for every Ford vehicle for every Ford driver except for the traction control thing. Of course they could make a button or something that enables/disables traction control. I don't know what it is used for so I'd rather have a toggle rather than kick the feature entirely.
At first I was going to moan about parents regulating their kids driving. This looks more like how the damn cars need to be designed from the get go any way. Kids can race anything almost anywhere. Equal speed limits is just something that makes skill stand out a bit more anyway so this won't have any real effect. O.k. it'll keep the drivers of these vehicles from racing unregulated cars. Heck, I bet even with GPS and all sorts of parental monitoring that kids could find a way to race and if any one gets a red flag on their monitoring or get pulled over for anything than they are automatically disqualified.
Aren't you the guy who was arguing that it was perfectly safe to eat and use your cellphone while driving?
If he is, I'd like to know where he buys his cellphones.
CAPTCHA: delicacy
If you feel that your kid would need such a feature, don't let him or her get a drivers licence, period. Safe driving is all about making the right decisions under a given set of circumstances. Not going over the speed limit of 80 mph is an easy one, even if factoring in things like peer pressure of other adulescents sitting in the car.
The feature does however give you a false sense of security -- "My kid is safe because he or she can't drive more than 80." That is complete, utter and very dangerous bullshit.
Accidents at 50 mph can be just as deadly and easy to produce than at faster speeds. Some little anecdote to illustrate that: I used to live in a rural area, directly next to a quite sharp turn that leads to a quite narrow bridge, which was the only way to get back from some popular disco. Living next to it was no fun, since on average we'd get one car per weekend not making the turn, crashing into the bridge rail, penetrating the bridge rail and dropping into the riverbed, missing the bridge and dropping into the riverbed, ...
Sometimes there where two or three weeks without accident, sometimes there'd be 3 in a single weekend. Since we felt compelled to respond whenever possible -- what choice do you have if you live right next to it anyway? -- we got to see them in quite a level of detail. Most of the victims where quite young. Many of them where quite nasty, about 1 to 10 per year died, most survived though.
None of the accidents involved speeds in excess of 50 mph. None of them could have been avoided by this 'feature'. Most of them could have been avoided if the parents had been more dilligent. Ask yourself the question if your child can be trusted with a car; this can be answered without taking into account such 'features'. If he or she can't be trusted with a car that can be driven at 90 mph, there is no way in hell one should trust them with a car that can 'only' do 80 mph.
The answer of this question -- do you trust your kid to drive a car or not -- can result in that your child can't get a drivers license with 16; this may sound hard, but it is the only responsible choice.
If you really want to cut down on teen drivers accident rate, after your kid got a license, consider driving one or two thousand miles with him or her -- with them driving of course. Also, you might want to get involved in a lobbying effort to improve what passes for 'drivers education' in the US, because most of the rest of the developed world thinks yours is a bad joke at best and cross neglicence at worst.
Only in Europe!
The USA doesn't get a decent Focus because Ford doesn't want small cars to eat into sales of their low-quality-but-Humongous SUVs (which have much higher profit margins than well-built, small cars do).
If you go to the USA Ford Focus page you'll see buttons with labels like "towing guide" (which basically says "don't!!!") instead of buttons for things like "handling" and "performance".
USA: http://www.fordvehicles.com/cars/focussedan/
UK: http://www.ford.co.uk/ns7/focmca/foc0108_tech/foc_model_st/-/-/-
The differences between USA/Rest of world versions of the Focus are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Focus
No sig today...
I agree with all that except cruise control.
I live 700km from the nearest city. In between, there's three gas stations, and nothing else.
In ideal conditions, it's impossible for surprises to pop up. The road is dead straight, there's plenty of room on either side so you can see possible problems minutes before you have to deal with them, if you're not an idiot you've established a large zone of control in front of your vehicle, and overall it's a perfect scenario for cruise control.
If I've got cruise control, I can set it and forget it. I can hit the speed limit to within +/- 1% of full scale and stay there for 7 hours. If I don't have cruise control, I'm more likely to speed, possibly substantially, resulting in a much less safe trip.
It's been a long time.
Jeez, you watch too many movies.
Indeed, depending on the sight lines / traffic around here, they come to a near stop. Never proceed through what you can't see. Especially with Ladder One (damn that thing is HUGE).
SIG: HUP
~
NoName
Shoot Yourself In the Foot
Dunno about tilt, but "the tach" is probably referring to the tachometer, the gauge that tells you the RPM of the engine.
Not sure I agree that AC should be inoperable while the car is moving, unless we're not talking about the Air Conditioning. I don't know about you, but for me, being hot and sweaty while driving can be very distracting.
Have you never avoided an accident on the highway by speeding up?
Short answer? No.
Long answer? Certainly not by going faster than 80mph which is what this key restricts the car to. I've sped up to avoid getting hit by traffic in an intersection and while merging but have never in 20 years of driving needed to speed up past 80mph on the highway to avoid an accident.
The decision to lock out the traction control toggle also seems a bit bizarre. I don't know of anybody (teenagers or adults) who have ever actually turned it off.
I do. Adults/kids who are into sport compacts sometimes do it because it makes it easier to "toss" the car around and do various unnecessary and dangerous stunts. Stuff right at the limits of traction. There are rare cases where it is actually useful to turn traction control off but teenagers generally are not experienced enough drivers that they ever should turn it off.
Personally I think this sort of thing is a good idea so long as it is optional and the restrictions are reasonable. Gives the parents the choice rather than the State playing nanny.
I call b-u-l-l-shit.
So why should insurance go up if I get rear-ended, it wasn't my fault, only minor damage to both vehicles(less than the deductible), I've never made a claim before, and they only reason you're even finding out about it is because the other person wants it to be reported.
You have no "lost cost" here, you didn't even have to cut a check, I paid out of pocket, yet my insurance goes up.
Don't sit there and tell me it doesn't happen. You're a liar or a fool, probably both.
I seem to remember Allstate dropping almost all of their customers in the 90s hurricane because they didn't have enough money, that they "would go out of business". Well they should have paid everything they could and gone out of business. But they didn't, they screwed everyone over and made millions off the deal. Just like they current Wall Street farce right now.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2007-01-11-state-farm-katrina-damages_x.htm
http://trenches.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/allstate-accuses-homeowners-of-fraud-to-avoid-paying-katrina-claim/
And these aren't the only examples. So f-u-c-k you. Insurance companies are there to MAKE MONEY not be nice to people, you condescending bitch.
I'm sure californians will feel very safe knowing they can't access every single horsepower to get off that bridge before it collapses in an earthquake.
Says the man that has apparently never been in a car during an earthquake...
Ok, a few comments. First, there really is no reason for blasting the stereo or driving over 80- so I don't see an issue with that. On that same note, I see this as more of a "marketing" gimmic than anything else; to make parents feel better for their lack of time spent teaching their kid how to drive. What I do have a problem with is the innability to disable traction control (at least within certain limits). I grew up in areas where we got a lot of snow and traction control is AWFUL if you are trying to get your car unstuck. I completely understand the need for traction control over 15mph because it DOES help you maintain control (my Saabs ESC is awesome at speed); but for that initial "getting the car moving" it can be nothing but an unpredictable hindrance...just when you go to rock the car- the power cuts out...awful, or sometimes it doens't cut and the car moves more than expected...not fun. Now some might say "well they shouldn't drive when its snowing". What I am talking about is getting out of that "leftover from the plow around your parking spot" snow...you don't always have a shovel handy and there is definately a real chance of getting stuck somewhere if you can't rock the car effectively in some of our snowier climates. In my opinion the BEST safety equipment is driver training. I cannot say enough for real behind-the-wheel defensive driver training. Not the "driving school" you take to get your permit (in NJ anyway); but where they simulate "bad" conditions and teach you how to drive safely through them.
Cruise control should be abolished, it just helps the driver falling a sleep - and on top of that people I've seen with cruise control take their foot of both pedals - this means their reaction time is now measured in seconds.
Are you saying that people should drive with both feet on the pedals or that they should keep a pedal (I'm guessing gas or clutch, not brake) depressed while using cruise control?
Both situations aren't optimal. Try driving for 12 hours, you'll sure love cruise control after that, it also helps you be legal by setting a speed. Without cruise, I'd end up doing close to 90 mph, but I can set it at 70 and forget about it.
btw for tilt the gp means steering wheel up/down adjustment and the tachometer is a gauge for engine revolutions per minute.
I know a road that crosses a railroad on a curve and hitting it at 30 is sketch. I know others that are perpendicular and it's still a hazard that requires a slower speed. You are totally correct about the Darwinism of hitting a track at 100 mph, especially if the road rises up to meet the track.
Traction control and ABS brakes are for people who want to feel safe without being safe.
That is demonstrably not true.
ABS brakes will put you under the trailer. Locking the brakes up might stop you from being decapitated by stopping your car from going under that trailer to begin with.
If you are that close to the trailer you are driving WAY too close to begin with. ABS is for stopping when the traction sucks and locking the brakes would induce a dangerous skid. ABS is no substitute for safe driving technique.
ABS won't let you lock your brakes up at all, which can get you mangled up in rush hour traffic if you're not used to it.
A) If you aren't that used to the car you shouldn't be driving in dangerous conditions. B) If ABS comes on and the weather isn't horrendous, you are driving WAY too close. C) If the weather is horrendous, you should be providing even more distance to the car ahead anyway and ABS will help you stop faster than without.
You are wearing that mandated seat belt, yes? Ever try to think of unbuckling it so you can dive for the floor in a panic situation?
No. That would be retarded. I cannot even conceive of a reasonably likely scenario where I would ever want to do that while moving. I'm also not aware of case where that would have saved anyone. Want the best odds of survival in an accident? Wear your seatbelt.
FWIW, I lived in the Cleveland/Cuyahoga County area for 25 years without needing snow chains.
I lived in Geauga County, right in the heart of the snowbelt for 20 years and my parents still live there. You are right, snow chains are not necessary there, though snow tires aren't a bad idea if you have the cash to get some. I did however keep a set of snow chains just in case and did have occasion to use them once. However go to Tahoe or various parts of the Rockies and snow chains are not only a good idea they are often required.
It's my opinion that ABS and traction control are NOT needed if the driver is properly trained in local conditions.
Normally you are correct in most locations. ABS and traction control are no substitute for safe driving technique. That does not however make them useless. They demonstrably improve safety which is why their use has been mandated.
The posted speed limit in parts of I-10 in Texas is 80 mph.
I always keep a safe following distance, but not all dangers on the road come from in front of you. I've avoided accidents by accelerating on more than one occasion, usually when some idiot decides to cut into my lane without looking at the same time that another idiot is tailgating me. It depends on your relative positions as to whether it makes more sense to slow down or speed up in that situation.
Furthermore, when the speed limit on the interstate is 75MPH and the flow of traffic is 65-80MPH depending on what lane you are in, the ability of accelerate quickly above 80MPH is important.
abs brakes do not really help or hurt your stopping distance in most cases
That is demonstrably not true under many driving conditions.
But reducing stopping distance is not even what they are supposed to do.
Actually that is EXACTLY what they are supposed to do. With most cars under most conditions cars equipped with ABS will stop FASTER than those without. Hell I used to work at a test track and I've seen it first hand myself. They ALSO let you steer while braking but that is an added benefit.
I know they tell you that the direction of front tires have no effect on where the car is going when the brakes are locked
If you are skidding you are relying solely on the friction of the rubber on the ground to stop you. That contact patch does not change size (significantly) regardless of what direction you point the wheels. If you regain traction, the wheel direction will matter but without ABS you cannot modulate the brakes and steer at the same time as effectively as with ABS.
Would not buy a car without ABS again.
Good luck with that since they are mandated on nearly all vehicles sold today. And please don't drive anywhere near me.
So then you're saying don't insure your home, wait for the state to declare an emergency, and let the taxpayer bail you out, put you in a FEMA trailer for months?
Look at your basic homeowner's policy. It does not only cover the primary dwelling, but it also covers (up to certain limits) separate structures, contents, loss of use, liability, and medical payments to others. From certain companies, if you buy certain endorsements, you can extend coverage further, even into areas that one would not necessarily consider to be part of a typical homeowner's policy (e.g., identity theft). Let's see your federal taxpayer pay for these things and save your ass the day after the catastrophe.
The problem with letting the taxpayer bail you out is that you create a moral hazard. Since you pay nothing in premium, you have less incentive to prevent loss (e.g., you might not think twice about moving to a catastrophe-prone state). The reason why insurance works is that it is a mechanism by which those who have more exposure to loss pay proportionately more than those who do not. When you talk about socializing this process by letting the taxpayer pay losses, then you disconnect this critical link. In either case, the money has to come from somewhere.
As for insolvency risk, blame the state DOIs for not monitoring that more. Insurers are in an unenviable position--if your rates are low, then you invite adverse selection (poor risks flock to your book), and if too low, you may have insolvency risk. If your rates are high, you lose business, and the state DOIs may refuse your rate increases (e.g., Allstate recently filed for an increase in Personal Auto and Commissioner Poizner, who btw is running for Governor, single-handedly told them they had to cut rates by 20%, ignoring the actuarially indicated rate need entirely). And even if you have priced your product perfectly, you still have to deal with the ignorant public, such as yourself, who are under the terrible misapprehension that insurance is a waste of money unless you file a claim, and even then, you end up getting charged more anyway. People have a really hard time understanding that the premium you pay is for the contractual transfer of risk from the insured to the insurer, an intangible that only becomes tangible (and very much so) once a loss occurs.
I don't deny that there are some insurers that behave less than ethically when it comes to certain non-actuarially related business practices. But you hear about these things only because people only like to talk about bad news. You don't get to hear about how insurance companies often end up paying on claims that are due to specifically excluded perils, because paying is cheaper than fighting in court, and the insurer has to think of what's best for the rest of their customers that are in fact playing by the rules.
This idea of a handicapped key is not new. My jetski has this. It's a great way to make sure your friend doesn't destroy $10K worth of toy his first time riding it.
oh.. you mean buy them any honda.
Never driven a proper Honda eh? They don't do big smokey Corvette burnouts but most Honda cars (especially the older ones) with manual transmissions can do little burnouts and are at least fairly capable performance*-wise. You don't need a big V8 to drive fast (or like an asshole). If you're talking about cars with automatic transmissions...yeah, you need 6-8 cylinders for any power to make it through the slushbox and you've lost a lot of control over power delivery and your engine braking is gone, so performance has gone out the window.
*Performance consisting of much more than 0-60 times and other things measured at a drag strip.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm sure all the other comments say this same thing b/c it's so very obvious but in case the message hasn't been driven home - none of the idiots I've seen driving badly while on their cel phones were dialing at the time, they were talking. Dialing takes a few seconds, talking can take your whole trip.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Flood is a specific exclusion on any standard homeowner's policy because it is a peril that insurers consider to have too high severity and too low frequency to appropriately model. In many flood-prone areas, insurers will refuse to underwrite a property unless the owner purchases separate flood insurance through the appropriate state agency, even if the policy contract language contains a flood exclusion. This is because insurers have been taken to court by insureds who claimed losses that were due to flood, and subsequently won (judges are very sympathetic to insureds), despite such exclusions. The problem with litigating flood losses is twofold: first, it increases the premiums to other insureds (since legal and settlement fees are part of loss adjustment expenses), and second, exposure to flood is not modeled in the rating plan. A very large flood like Katrina could literally bankrupt most small to mid-size insurers, unless there is some sort of reinsurance contract in place that covers such a contingency (but then why would the reinsurer pay if your contract excludes flood?).
Insurers actually have a duty to protect the rest of their insureds from having to bear the burden of those who file claims for losses specifically excluded in the contract. That is the extent of the insurer's reluctance to pay for losses, because if the ratemaking is done correctly, the developed rate should be sufficient to provide for future expected costs. Failure to set the rate sufficiently leads to insolvency, adverse selection, and intervention by the Departments of Insurance, which have the sole power to revoke the insurer's Certificate of Authority (their ability to write business in the state). An insurer does not (and should not) deny claims through a profit motive because this would distort the reserving trends, and risk many other regulatory issues that are frankly not worth the surplus that the insurer or reinsurer has, not to mention it is VERY bad from a competitive standpoint.
Best advice for a concerned parent: buy a POS for your kid's first car. A 3 cylinder Geo Metro comes to mind, this way they will be too embarrassed to showoff, and wont be able to drive over 60 let alone 80.
"There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate." Where do you live where parents don't let their teenagers drive on the interstate? That sounds fairly impractical in any large city.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Apparently you've never heard of an ambulance. Much safer, legal, and has on-board medical equipment and trained medics to take care of such situations.
You're lucky they didn't crash and cause more injuries. Fucking idiots.
That's a relief. I can only imagine the repercussions if this applied to DeLoreans.
I think they should limit their speed to 60MPH. I'd have been one pissed teen back in the day but I would have gotten over it.
Whose going over 80MPH anyways? I live/work/commute in the DC area and I can not think of a place where I can do 80MPH, safely, aside from in the middle of the night. Areas like LA have even more congestion. Speeding tickets in VA are insane as well. I'd have to get a loan if they booked me to the full amount for doing 80MPH in a 65MPH zone.
Also, I'd gladly limit my car to 80MPH if there was an insurance discount.
I think it should be tiered:
60MPH for 18 and under
80MPH for 18-25
unlocked for over 25
Whats really sad is that roads where your likely to be doing 80mph are normally safe at that speed, this will not stop Jr. from doing 60mph in a 25mpg zone and running over a crossing guard...
I would wager that you could in fact get in more trouble going faster than posted at a lower speed than on a highway...
ABS does increase your stopping distance by letting go of the brake instead of letting the stopped tire scrape losing rubber on the roadway surface. Tire life is longer with ABS as usually is control of your vehicle, but it trades stopping distance for control. I am a former Auto Mechanic, now an engineer.
911 is a joke.
"I'll call a cab because a cab will come quicker" -- Public Enemy
I did not encourage it at all. I simply pointed out that insurance companies saving the day is more fantasy than reality. The reality (in large-scale disasters) is just as often, insurance companies going into bankruptcy.
I would say you have the same problem with insurance. Homeowners are disincentiveized to make safety improvements to their home, from fire safety, to paying more for repairs. If your insurance cost isn't going to go down, and you don't bear the loss if something happens, clearly, it's economically better for you to be cheap and dangerous.
There's nothing intangible about it. It's a simple transaction set in the paperwork. You pay X dollars every month, and you are (vaguely) covered for damage up to a (strict) maximum dollar amount. Above that, and you're on your own. Consider the same amount of money going into a bank (C.D.) account, estimate how often natural disasters occur in your area, and then determine how long it will take before you have paid out enough money that you could cover the damages out of pocket yourself... The only problem with that system is if some "accident" happens very early on, you haven't accrued significant capital to cover the losses. Just a few years, though, and you're better off without insurance.
And you don't have to deal with an insurer that will try to shirk their responsibility because of the fine print, or just giving you a raw deal with some ridiculous excusing, hoping a significant number of people will just give up and take the deal rather than fight them for the full amount owed.
But I suspect I'm just ranting now. I'm really NOT opposed to insurance, or insurance companies in theory. It's just in practice that you can see that the reality tends to have infinite pitfalls, and very likely little if any benefits for you. You can blame whoever you want, but it is reality. What's not real is insurance companies making a show of coming to a disaster area in a van and handing out signed checks... THAT is just a PR stunt to get their name in the news, which doesn't actually happen for practically anybody.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is more like user permissions.
Never did I contemplate trying to do donuts, burnouts, or high speed. There simply wasn't a chance of any of those things being possible.
A world without donuts? AAAAIIIAAAAA!!!! -- Homer (gets back in time machine)
ARGH
someday i hope to figure out this site....
Why the hell are pages 1,2 and 3 identical and how the hell do i continue reading comments where i left off :/
Bullshit. He is not being pressurized into being a dick, he simply is, if he accepts.
There is no such thing as 'unless tempted' trust.
"There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80"
-- It would be very unusual, yes, but "no situation"? When the flow of traffic is already close to/at that speed a driver may need to accelerate to avoid an accident. And argue as many will that the teen should not be keeping up with the flow of traffic at those speeds, from experience I can tell you that in most instances it is more dangerous to go slower than the flow.
"Most parent probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate"
-- That really depends on where you live. I learned to drive (learner's permit at 15) on the highways of Southern California in rush hour traffic. (My high school was 25 miles from home and the only reasonable way to go was by highway)
The real issue as far as I'm concerned is parenting. If you have not been teaching your children responsible behavior already, then there is no way they should START learning it behind the wheel of a deadly weapon. Those lessons should be firmly instilled years before that. I am sick of the coddling I see going on all around. How in the hell do some parents expect to raise adults who understand responsibility and consequences with this kind of constant "safety net" mentality. Life is hard and most people you meet are not going to be willing to continue with the child's chin-wiping routine.
On a side note, my first car was an 8cyl. 1968 Mustang. It would easily go over 100mph. Hmmmmmm ... I must be dead ... and there's no way that Mustang can still be sitting in my parent's driveway in pristine condition.
Please.
--40 yrs old and no accidents or tickets EVER
Move to a real country then.
In layman's terms, loss costs increase because the value of insured properties such as autos and homes tend to increase.
So when do we start seeing homeowners insurance rates decline?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
damnit, I'm 19, been driving for 3 years, and have a better driving record than you (never been pulled over, no moving/standing violations, no accidents....)
The problem is not age, it's idiots who can't drive, regarless of age.
And commuting to school/work has put over 20k miles on my car in 3 years, so it's not like I don't drive.
When I was learning my Dad took me onto the Interstate my second or third time in the driver's seat. I've never understood why parents keep their kids from going on the highway... it's no different than any other street except for the speed limit. Still gotta watch out for the same retards no matter how fast you're going, and if you give people the right amount of room, you still have the exact same amount of time to react.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Ah yes, that's you alright!
I still think you're absolutely as wrong and dangerous as when we first had this conversation, and you still don't get it, but hey, cheers for consistency at least!
What kinda crappy cell phone do you have? Mine calls my wife when I hit one button that's easily locatable by touch and say "Call wife". And even better, it can "read" the address book entries, so I don't have to spend time training it. I just say "call " where is in my address book, and it does! Even the "free" phones you get with service any more do that.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
how about teaching responsibility, rather than teaching them to depend on others to make sure they don't do something wrong.
No, how about teaching responsibility (in this case, safe driving and not being a douche who talks on the cellphone, etc) and PUNISHING people who are dangerous and do something wrong.
You can be as responsible and as good a driver as the world has ever seen, but all it takes is one driver yapping on a cellphone running a light, or one person grabbing for that gummy bear that slipped away and merging into your lane, and everything YOU can do as a driver is irrelevant.
Now.. you have to look at it continuously, navigate through nine menus, etc.
Now I just have to press one button on the side and say "Call {name or number}" and it will dial for me, turning on speakerphone if I left the phone closed.
Not to mention bluetooth connectivity.
Seems safer to me.
For cars, most states used to allow full licensing at 16. Many are now doing graduated licensing at 16 through 18. Some states such as Texas allow "hardship" licensing for those as young as 15 or 14. Motorcycle licensing is generally different, and available at even a younger age (especially for scooters and lower powered motorcycles).
I really can't wait for all the US automakers to go bankrupt. When, OH WHEN, will they focus on the real problems with their cars and stop producing FUD and fluff?
Hello, wake up call, maybe you should Focus (pun intended) on Customer satisfaction, reliability, resale value, and gas mileage??? Why on earth do you think you are losing so badly to Toyota and Honda???
"Have you never avoided an accident on the highway by speeding up?"
I've heard reports on this and it seems that this was taken into account. The top speed is set at 80 miles per hour. IMO it's not a bad idea but it needs a few tweaks.
1. Set the maximum speed lower at about 70 mph which is the maximum LEGAL speed in most areas.
2. Allow you to go faster but only for a short period of time (a minute?). Also put a maximum of times that you can use this feature in a given time.
3. Perhaps it's also a good idea for everyone using that car to be treated equally. (Adults and teenagers.)
4. Insurance companies should give a premium price break for using this device.
I agree with you on the real advantage to ABS for even headed drivers. The other thing ABS does is reduce stopping distance for drivers that stab the brakes and don't think to let up when they start sliding in a panic stop.
According to research by this company
http://www.racelogic.co.uk/
Dry pavement stopping distance is best at about 15% slip and wet pavement stopping distance is best at 0% slip. Seems to make sense that additional energy is dissipated in the transition from not skidding to skidding.
I agree, we should not allow passengers in the car because they are distractions.
Likewise, might as well ban radios, sun visors, windshield wipers, door windows, pretty much everything in the car that you might be able to look at, touch, or listen too once the car has been started.
While I agree that most people who use cell phones while driving are dangerous, you're an idiot to think its the cell phones fault. The DRIVER is the problem, and most drivers on the road are too inept to handle driving and talking on the phone, but they also shouldn't be talking to someone else in the car either as they ARE NOT GOOD DRIVERS IN THE FIRST PLACE, with or without the phone.
I just got back from a 1200 mile road trip, during that time I was cut off twice, once on the crowded beltline around Atlanta, and one in the middle of no where on open highway with no other car within 500 feet of us. The one in Atlanta could be argued that its just they way you have to drive in Atlanta to get somewhere, if everyone kept proper safe distances no one would get anywhere. The one in the middle of no where was probably just a driver who was day dreaming due to having spent several hours driving down an uninteresting highway. Neither of them had any noticable distraction, certainly no cell phones involved.
And for the record, if your bike is in the way when I'm making a right hand turn, you should have paid a little more attention to my blinker and not been there, YOU have a responsiblity as a biker to be aware of the cars that are roughly 20-50 times your weight, hundreds of times more powerful, and far less manuverable than you are. If you don't pay attention to your enviroment, its rather retarded that you expect the driver of a car to do so as well. That sort of statement is exactly why I feel no sympathy when a cyclist gets hit, you think because you have 'the right of way' that you don't need to be aware of the potential dangers. Having the right of way doesn't mean jack shit when you get hit and killed.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
that unlocks the car only after you pass the test (and use the MyKey key as well!). Or will that result in potential drunk drivers beating the crap out of sober passers-by, and get them to breathe into the Breathalyzer..
If you think insurance is a scam
I don't think many homeowners from Katrina and Ike said that until their claim was refused because their loss was caused by "storm surge" instead of wind damage, when more of the damage was above the water line.
and why you should be asked to partially subsidize their choice
Even those of us that live in relatively safe areas of states with certain parts that are risk prone frequently argue the generally rich people who live on the coast, in the mountains, or wherever, shouldn't have to subsidize their lavish and risky lifestyle.
Now.. you have to look at it continuously, navigate through nine menus, etc.
Then you're doing it wrong. *holds down 3 without looking at phone, it autodials wife's cellphone*
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Whether you want to change radio station, eat, dial a phone or anything else, the question to ask yourself is whether you can do it safely without interfering with your ability to drive - if you can there's no problem.
You are of course right--to a degree.
Studies have shown that talking on a cellphone--regardless of whether you use handsfree, headset, whatever--significantly impairs your reactions. This does not occur with passengers in the car. Does that mean that it's ALWAYS unsafe to use a cellphone--no probably not. If you're on an empty highway, you're probably ok. If you're in sparse traffic and not passing and not changing lanes, you're probably ok. But damn if I see one more dumbass zooming around a parking lot with their cellphone out, or unsafely weaving lanes while yacking... it's irritating to say the least.
Likewise eating--if you're holding food in your hand, you're being unsafe. Sure, maybe you can eat from a bag of M&Ms safely. Can you eat a burger safely? I say no.
While I agree that most people who use cell phones while driving are dangerous, you're an idiot to think its the cell phones fault. The DRIVER is the problem, and most drivers on the road are too inept to handle driving and talking on the phone, but they also shouldn't be talking to someone else in the car either as they ARE NOT GOOD DRIVERS IN THE FIRST PLACE, with or without the phone.
No.
A cellphone can make a bad driver worse, and it can make a good driver a bad one. As studies have shown, EVERYBODY'S driving is impacted by using a cellphone. It's true if you're a bad driver to begin with you're going to be worse with a cellphone, but don't pretend that you are some kind of superhuman who can talk on a cellphone without losing any reaction time, etc.
That sort of statement is exactly why I feel no sympathy when a cyclist gets hit
Damn, that's pretty unhuman and extreme!
Please explain to me WHY THE FUCK my credit history has anything to do with my insurance rate? I hope your explination includes a good example of someone with bad credit history having bad driving records or something like that. I'm shocked to see you defend the rates insurance companies charge and tell us about how controlled it is while throwing in something that has no bearing on danger of the driver like credit history.
Insurance companies get monitored because they are such a ridiculously profitable industry that has mandated by law. Remove the laws which require insurance and then watch how quickly the prices come down. I'm not really sure who you expect to believe the bullshit your spewing, but I think you're targeting the wrong crowd at slashdot, most of us have brains. You need to target the same people as Comcast with thier 'network management' rules if you want anyone to buy your bullshit.
Those people who's possessions were wiped out all likely paid several times more to the insurance company than they got back over the course of their lives, possibly some of the younger people made out ahead, but on the whole, everyone lost money except the insurance companies. If they weren't making money, they wouldn't be in business, so drop that bullshit. Insurance IS a scam, anyone with a clue knows this. Most intelligent and wealthy people avoid insurance where possible, knowing several people with small aircraft, none of which have insurance, of these people, all of them have owned their aircraft long enough that had they kept paying for insurance since purchasing the craft, most of them would have already paid for it twice, some of them more than 4 times.
I personally have paid more for car insurance than I have paid for both of the cars I've bought new, including ALL of the interest I paid on those cars, and I've never made a claim. I've paid for people like you to come try to feed me a bunch of bullshit about how great insurance is. I'm sure you'll tell me how its there to protect the other guy, blah blah blah. Don't bother, they've already hired enough lobbists to make it required by the goverment, you've won this round.
If you want people to think its not a scam, stop running a scam.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Traction and ATTraction, CONtraction, REtraction...
I find that these ARE related, as they increase the likelihood of surface-to-surface floatation.
Maximum traction leads to greater penetration, while traction control delays the onset of losing control. You do realize what ATTRaction control actually does, right? It prevents initial deep-spin on/beyond body surfaces to which you really have not any attraction. During initial deep-spin, CONtraction offers a chance to REtract and get the hell out of that pit (most people ARE built to transfer power from one hand or palm to the knee or foot for rocking to and fro to penetrate or retract from the snow...). That is ABS, Automatic Body-Shifting, and it helps you rev up your motor for another spin. Butt, too much can be fatal or even lead fetal flaws (unintended creation). ATTraction and REtraction can be opposites. ....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"Now.. you have to look at it continuously, navigate through nine menus, etc."
By "now", do you mean 5 years ago?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You seem to live in a boolean universe
Well, that's the thing about living in a boolean universe: You either do, or you don't.
Oh, don't tell me you drive with a foot on each peddle? That is very dangerous.
"Cruise control should be abolished, it just helps the driver falling a sleep "
No, irresponsible drivers do that.
I can change my stereo without looking at it.
"Any passenger in the car should however not be allowed to engage the driver in casual talk."
I suppose if you lack the ability to look forward and drive. Fortunately most people can look forward and have idle chit chat.
"the tach" is a tachometer. It tells you your RPMs. Useful when driving with stick. Often a point of bling with aftermarket rice burners.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All your examples prove the posters original point.
Although I doubt the cop one. They don't plow through an intersection. There could be exceptions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't see many people here saying it is unfair parents monitor or control their kids. What has been said is this is just like alcohol and the dichotomy of US and Europe. If you "protect" kids, when the limitations end at the arbitrary age of majority, they frequently make many more and dangerous mistakes.
I think it would be safer and wiser for parents to not limit the car, but to discuss appropriate behavior with the car, and monitor its location and speed. When the kids violate appropriate behavior, parents can chose some type of punishment.
Also, parents are legally responsible for most behavior of their children, as they should be. Since we don't allow children the rights of an adult, we should not hold them responsible for most poor "adult" behavior. But saying parents are accountable, any further than financially, for their children's behavior is dangerous to do and generally inaccurate. The only counter example I can think of is truancy, and I don't agree with putting parents in jail for children's truancy unless they are an enabler.
How the hell is the possible?
I assume you mean vehicle traction control and not train traction control. Train traction control failing could kill people.
Kids need to more the the extent of what the vehicle can do. They need to to mature emotionally as a driver. I new far more about me car and how it handles then most kids. My dad sent me to a profession driving school. That dd not stop me from doing very, very stupid things at high speeds.
Very few people can actually control a vehicle at 80. Driving in a straight line is not control. Control comes into play when you need to do something.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But still, I don't want to have to go rescue a kid from a broken down car at midnight.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If a cell phone is always evil, so is a passenger. Wheres the ban on passengers, or screaming babies?
Personally, I'm okay with a ban on cell phones while driving anyway. No one who is driving themselves around is so important they need to be that connected. Honestly, I'm about sick of the 'always connected' world that cell phones have created and people who think they need to be that connected.
But ... if you're going to claim cell phones are evil, there are plenty of other things available to the driver that are just as bad. The passenger is a distraction. Yes, I know the passenger is aware of the situation in the car better than the person on the cell phone, but in both cases the driver can simply ignore the other person either way.
I'm not saying talking on the phone is safer, or even the same, it is a distraction, but its dumb to pick that one to single out when there are others that are just as bad and have existed FAR longer. I'm sure my reaction time goes down some when I'm singing along with the radio too, but there are other things that can be done that are more effective at making driving safer, like better training and higher requirements for getting a license. If you address some of the flaws with the way people all essentially drive by their own set of rules, then you'd have a much safer drive than worrying about the phone. Getting EVERYONE to use turn signals would be a good start, learning proper lane changing, safe distance between cars (i.e. stop tailgating or cutting off truck drivers), learning not to SIT in the blind spot of another driver, getting slow drivers to realize that going slower than the rest of the traffic on a highway IS DANGEROUS TO EVERYONE, things like that, any of which would result in more effective safety measures than worrying about the phone.
As for cyclists, I'll care more about them when they realize they have to play by the same set of rules I do, no set of laws is going to save them from being stupid and oblivious to the world around them. They shouldn't be on the road if there is ANY possible place for them to be other than the road, you know, like the side walk.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
But ... if you're going to claim cell phones are evil, there are plenty of other things available to the driver that are just as bad. The passenger is a distraction. Yes, I know the passenger is aware of the situation in the car better than the person on the cell phone, but in both cases the driver can simply ignore the other person either way.
I've seen articles in the past that refute your claim that talking to a passenger is the same as talking on a cellphone.
I'm not saying talking on the phone is safer, or even the same, it is a distraction, but its dumb to pick that one to single out when there are others that are just as bad and have existed FAR longer. I'm sure my reaction time goes down some when I'm singing along with the radio too, but there are other things that can be done that are more effective at making driving safer, like better training and higher requirements for getting a license. If you address some of the flaws with the way people all essentially drive by their own set of rules, then you'd have a much safer drive than worrying about the phone. Getting EVERYONE to use turn signals would be a good start, learning proper lane changing, safe distance between cars (i.e. stop tailgating or cutting off truck drivers), learning not to SIT in the blind spot of another driver, getting slow drivers to realize that going slower than the rest of the traffic on a highway IS DANGEROUS TO EVERYONE, things like that, any of which would result in more effective safety measures than worrying about the phone.
I completely agree with you. It would be great if people learned all those things. There's also a correlation between people doing those things and talking on a cellphone, and it's non-zero!
When braking, you are always using dynamic friction to stop - the question is whether the dynamic friction is between your brake pads and brake disks or between your tires and the road. You'll stop in the same distance either way, but only one of those lets you stop *AND* steer.
ABS works by preventing the force of your break pads on your break discs from exceeding the force of friction between your tires and the road. That keeps your tires spinning so you can steer, but doesn't change your stopping distance either way.
paintball
Then don't buy insurance and see how long you last. Go live in a state where auto insurance is not mandated, if you are so opposed. Move to another country. We won't miss you, really. You are not the type of insured that any insurer in their right mind would want to underwrite for anything. I don't need your money, and neither do our competitors.
Why is credit score used? It is used because it is predictive of loss frequency. In every actuarial model and rating plan I have seen, it is one of the single most strongly predictive variables. Since you have not seen the numbers, you are not in a position to dispute this. It is a measure of financial responsibility, which is a subset of personal responsibility, which in turn correlated with propensity for loss. It is not strongly predictive of loss severity (that is to say, amount of loss, given a loss has occurred).
I think that it is important to educate people about what insurance is, what it represents, how premiums are calculated, and the role actuaries play in modeling the financial impact of risk. I think it is important because I find the general public to be terribly uneducated about these matters, and that if they understood these concepts better, they would help to drive down the cost of insurance for everyone. If you want to get upset and accuse me of being a paid lobbyist or a company shill, then it's clear that you've made up your mind and are not interested in learning about what you pay for. Misinformed attitudes such as your own are one of the reasons why insurance costs what it does. And as someone who pays premiums to transfer the financial risk on assets I cannot afford to replace, I also am personally invested in wanting to keep the costs of my coverage low.
The world is full of unscrupulous people. And some of them work for insurance companies. But that is why you, as a consumer, have a choice. Don't buy the product if you feel like it's a scam. On the other hand, insurers are also often the victim of fraud. Our company estimates that in as many as 40% of suspicious fire claims on homeowners' policies, the cause is believed to be arson but the adjusters cannot prove it--and we end up paying for it anyway. From the claims adjustment standpoint, it can be notoriously difficult to figure out which claims are legitimate and which are not. This type of adjustment expense is unfortunately an additional cost to the consumer. Maybe before you accuse the industry of defrauding the public, you should actually try to learn about what goes on inside the companies themselves, rather than look from the outside with little or no credible information.
FWIW, I think health insurance is lousy. I disagree with its fundamental assumptions and its implementation in the US, and this is why I decided I would never work for any health insurer.
Actually, my family is one that lost everything they had in hurricane Katrina. We lost two houses, they were covered by insurance. And the insurance company refused to pay.
The claim was made that if they paid out to all the people filing claims, they would not have enough money to cover future potential claims. And they got away with it.
Well, that's absolutely wrong and I'm very sorry to hear that, not that my words have much meaning in the face of such loss. I sincerely hope that it was not my company that insured your family.
Not all insurers are alike. And if you think about the total incurred loss from a single event like Katrina, it is dwarfed by the bailout bill signed by the US government recently. It is dwarfed by the sum total of reinsurance contracts and retrocession agreements for the major P&C insurers. The justification (which in my view, may have actuarial basis but is nevertheless flawed from an overall insurance viewpoint) for denying claims from Katrina was that this event was considered so rare and severe that there was no way to create an appropriate provision for it, and therefore the insurers could not pay out on the claims. Again, I think that is the wrong way to look at it. I think that for the insurance mechanism to work properly, insureds must have confidence that the insurer will fulfill its contractual obligations.
Stats show that males (prob females too these days) stabilize at safe driving only when over 25. Stupid to only allow them to borrow the car when that old.
0|0 ?
I had my own car when I was 17, I had to help rebuild it before I could first use it and I never ever had the use of my parents cars. It was a 1.3 litre Ford Escort mark 1, 1967 model I think. This was in around 1983,84. It cost the princely sum of around £150 IIRC, (that's engine + chassis, + tyres + paint + ministry test). Consequently, any damage was down to me and my pocket. No ABS, no disk brakes, no computer, no airbags, no inertia seatbelts, no crumple zones, no air-con, etc etc.
I'm still alive !
As to the rest of it, if you limit a car to 80mph then they'll just keep it stuck at 80 as much as possible. Far better to have an intelligent chip that keeps track of how much time you spend stuck at 80, against how many times you accelerate hard to get up to 80. So if you spend a lot of time accelerating and hammering it, the car would gradually drop that 80 down and restrict acceleration.
In England, they recently came out with a report proposing mandatory speed governors, which they called "intelligent speed adaptation". It sounds a lot better than "the government in your car", but the effective year is 2045, making it just outside the current population. Breaking in the "kids" to be used to this is the incremental creep we all need to watch for. After all, "the kids" can't be trusted. "the other guy" also can't be trusted. Once we make that leap of logic, then "you" can't be trusted. ISA...no, thank you.
"Additionally.. what happens if your kid, or someone around him, is in an emergency, and must push the car to its limit."
You kid will not have the skill to push the car to the limit and live.Not only that but what???? Life isn't a Rambo movie. It isn't likely that you kid will have to flee from a bunch of bad guys in a Hind.
"I'm sure californians will feel very safe knowing they can't access every single horsepower to get off that bridge before it collapses in an earthquake."
You do live in a fantasy world don't you.
Odds are ever one will stop. Your best safey factor in that case really isn't more HP but better brakes and tires.
You have about 0.000000000001% that even if you where on the bridge that you could manage to drive your way out of trouble.
But if you where heading to that bridge good brakes could keep you from driving into trouble.
So yea everything you said was pretty dumb.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And what happens when they decide to limit the car's speed limit to all drivers? To extend your rationalization, there's no situation where anybody should need to go XXX MPH/KPH, right? Slippery slopes my friend, slippery slopes...
Come to think of it, it has been a long time since I have driven over 80 mph. I think I did 90 once for a short while about 4 years ago, and prior to that, I hadn't gone over 80 since I was probably 22 years old. And I was stupid to be going that fast in that situation, but you don't figure these things out until you mature.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think you sound like the typical lobbiest/sales person trying to tell me why I need your scam without actually providing any proof to back it up, all you are saying is 'trust me, its real'.
If you'd like I can give you the URL to my web page that says I'm always right. You have to trust it because you don't understand the math and logic involved because you've never seen it.
Insurance is a business, it would not exist if they were not making more money than spending. Its not really that hard to see the logic as to why its a scam. You charge me more than you give back to me. Its that simple. Sure if I got in a wreck when I was 16 and hadn't been paying you for years I would be at an advantage, for the moment, but over the next 40 years of my driving life, you are certainly going to make back every penny and more several times over because I am required to keep insurance.
You're just throwing numbers around and pretending they have meaning, I estimate that 99% of the insurance claims paid are not paid to the amount they should be, insurance companies do their best to pay as little as possible. When a car for example is totaled we both know that you aren't going to give out the money to replace the car with an identical one of the same value, you're going to pay out based on a value which you have determined the car to be worth, which is NOT what I have to pay to replace it with an identical car. If that weren't the case there wouldn't be retarded crap like GAP insurance which is nothing more than insurance to make up for the fact that insurance doesn't actually cover the car for the value it has.
Seriously, want people to listen to your story? You're going to actually need to have some valid points and proof, not just 'your word' and 'you haven't seen the numbers'. You don't WANT me to see the numbers, it blows your story right out of the water.
My attitude has NOTHING to do with my premium, again stop with the bullshit. I'm going to have to get a certain amount of coverage, doesn't matter if I like it or not, or agree with it, I have to do it. THAT is why insurance costs what it does, you don't actually HAVE to make people get something to their advantage out of the service, we are REQUIRED to have the service. If you were competing on the merits of your service the insurance game would be a lot different, and would likely not involve owning some of the biggest most beautiful and expensive buildings and assets in the world.
You should probably go ahead and tell me banks don't make any money either. Of course I'm sure you'll point out the current economic problems and tell me its my attitude that cause the problem, not lenders being retarded and giving loans to people who don't deserve them and can't pay on them anyway.
All you've done is tell me how I don't know what I'm talking about and you and the insurance companies do and are doing the right thing so I should trust you ... Do you work with Bush on a regular basis, or just trying to live up to his standards for spewing bullshit?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Mandatory insurance is not meant as a restriction on drivers who want to under/uninsure their vehicles, but to protect everyone else from them. If I get hit by a driver without insurance, *my* rates go up regardless if I was at fault or not.
You argue that I need to have auto insurance because you choose to have auto insurance.
You've spent your entire life being brainwashed by a bunch of bookies into thinking that you should place a bet with them that is statistically in their favor, and now you rationalize mandating this wager upon everyone because you engage in the gambling yourself.
Why do you suppose it is that during prime-time T.V. in america, there is always 4 or 5 commercials on each station pitching you an insurance policy of one kind or another?
Apart from the "fact" that is legalized gambling, I am interested to hear why the industry is insane.
It is not legalized gambling. It is state mandated gambling. Legalized gambling is those scratch-off tickets that you probably don't buy (because you do sometimes know what a bad bet looks like), or that casino on the indian reservation. This isnt anything like that at all. This isn't poker, either.
This is the State demanding that its population all place bets with bookies, and there is no chance that this bet is favorable towards the population (the insurance company cannot pay out more than it has recieved.)
Insane is the fact that the only way to turn this bet in your favor is to stack the deck by driving like a maniac, taking every risk in the book. Tired of your current car? Smash it into someone elses! If accidents make you nervous, report it stolen, rip apart the stearing column, and then push it off a cliff!
Your rates are higher because people like me who know how to turn a bad bet into a good one are forced to wager, my friend.
It may be illegal, but at least its not immoral (like mandatory insurance.)
"His name was James Damore."
I think that you will find that the states which grant learners permits at 14/15 do so because they were at one point or are still farm based states. This allows the children of farmers to drive farm vehicles to assist their parents. I know that is the reasoning for Alberta, Canada.
I'm really not sure why you are making personal attacks on me. I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to learn something about actuarial science before you speak about the supposed scam that is insurance. But you don't need that kind of "fancy math," so I guess that request is in vain.
In fact, I am an ardent Obama supporter, not because I like him in particular, but because Bush, McCain, and the Republicans (neocons) have been so incredibly bad for the US on virtually all issues of importance (foreign policy, economy, energy, environment, civil liberties, healthcare, education) that I am just hoping in my heart of hearts that we don't go through four more years of failed policy.
As for the current economic problems, they are largely unrelated to the personal insurance market, but rather, the collapse of the mortgage lending market due to the issuing of vast amounts of credit to individuals who were not credit-worthy. When housing prices crashed, mortgagees had less incentive to pay back loans on properties that were worth less than the loan amount. Foreclosures led to the invocation of credit default swaps, which then led to a loss of liquidity in the market due to insufficient reserves to back so many defaulted mortgages. And now we are presently in a state where most banks have run into problems due to the inability to borrow from other banks. The situation is dire, but my belief is that these institutions must be allowed to collapse and fail, rather than be bailed out by the taxpayer, thereby creating moral hazard. Privatization of profit and socialization of loss is not capitalism, it is highway robbery, and that is what the bailout is.
Have you ever compared the annual statements of a bank and an insurance company? Do you know what a mutual insurer is? You can demonize insurance all you want. I'm not going to continue to try to dispel your beliefs any further, since it is plainly obvious you have no interest whatsoever in understanding what you hate so much. Your problem is your failure to understand the distinction between the insurance mechanism versus insurance business practices. The former is what I defend because it is rational. The latter, I do not necessarily defend. As I have said, not all actions by an insurer are morally sound. That does not mean ALL actions are thereby morally unsound. Your inability to reason logically does a terrible disservice to those who have been properly indemnified from loss as a result of their insurance.
You should not expect to receive further correspondence with me on this subject, as I feel that further discussion with you would not be productive as you have not expressed any sincere interest in the nature of actuarial science.
There's no situation where a teenager needs to drive over 80, probably; that only occurs on the highway, and most parents probably aren't going to let their teenagers drive on the interstate.
Seriously? How old are you?
Let's head way off topic. ;) While I appreciate a fellow geek trying to educate others, the problem is that insurance is often an emotional issue. Your ability in actuarial science lets you see the purely logical point of view.
Consider that the insurance most people interact with are: health (which you admit is fucked up), home (lots of stories about "except that's not covered"), car (required by law in most states) and worker's compensation (expensive and known for fraud). None of these are really known for being something people enjoy for the sake of enjoyment; rather, they're mostly something people get because they have to.
Now, add on top of this the unscrupulous people that take advantage of the situations (like all the insurers that didn't pay claims during some of the big hurricanes) and you have a lot of resentment on an emotional level. If I just lost my home to a hurricane, I don't want to hear how "flooding isn't covered because of blah, blah, blah", I want to know why the fuck I was paying your company all that money to protect my house and now you're not doing it; the whole BS about, "it was more the storm surge than the wind that destroyed your house" sounds like a complete cop-out to the affected homeowner. The answers just don't resonate on a basic level for the homeowner.
So, I'll agree with you wholeheartedly that insurance is a great thing and it's even better when it works as everyone expects. Unfortunately, a lot of times it's the details that cause the problems on an emotional level.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
Ah, we share an opinion, then.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
I'm an atheist as well, but being an atheist does NOT have to imply being immoral and self centered. For example Kant's categorical imperative says that one ought to do actions as though the outcome is going to effect you exactly like the second party, this does not involve gods, goddesses, or other unquantifiable "energies" yet does remind us to take others into consideration when we act.
I still maintain that Americans callous utterly self centered attitude and it's closely correlated greed is why we are hated in the world. And yes it does effect me and my safety should I chose to travel to the third world so thanks for being assholes, assholes!
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
You have yet to provide one bit of verifable information, you just keep saying it exists.
Please post verifiable facts and leave your political choices out of the discussion.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
My mistake, I read it as focus when it isn't, obviously.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
In the US, they stopped bothering with incremental regulations. They just get the first increment, then ignore the limits (see NSA security letters, secret wiretapping, PATRIOT act misuse).
Right, because none of those laws have anything at all to do with actually preventing hostile organizations from attacking the US. This is self-evident, because since those laws and directives were enacted, there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil. It couldn't possibly be that the measures taken to prevent terrorist attacks in the US actually prevented terrorist attacks in the US.
...
Besides, everybody knows that the reason that those fascists enacted these measures was to listen in on your conversations with your bro about how much Bush suxxor, and then arrest you! And also, Cheney really intended to read your emails, for the same purpose. And the whole administration just wanted to spy on your internet browsing habits, and arrest you if you "accidentally" look at too much gay porn.
You want to talk about "foot in the door?" How about Social Security? How about Welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid? What about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? These are all Democrat inventions, and they've all failed spectacularly. The intent of the Democrats in these cases was (in your own words), "To keep you safe, we need to..." So the real world is rife with examples of liberal policies, implemented in incremental steps, that have failed. We have evidence that Democrat policies like that fail, and do so horribly. Sorry to digress, but rest assured that if you know anything about history, you'll be able to figure out I didn't digress too far.
Anyway, you're claiming that this awful intrusion into your "right" to look at porn in private is of the same ilk. OK, so when has this been misused? Has it ruined our national economy yet? Are you in jail now, because you emailed something critical of Bush to your buddy, or looked at the wrong kind of porn? Seriously! You probably can't name one example where a completely innocent American citizen has been detained under one of these homeland-security-type acts for a reason totally unrelated to the prevention of another terrorist attack on US soil.
And, in your mind, your imaginary, never-before-seen abuse of this power is worse than the violence it is intended to prevent, and has prevented.