Slashdot Mirror
Auto Safety Tech May Encourage Dangerous Driving
longacre writes "Modern highway planning schemes designed to make roads safer combined with the comfort and safety technology found in the modern automobile may actually be putting us in danger, according to a compelling piece in Popular Mechanics. Citing studies and anecdotal evidence, the article points out that a driver on a narrow mountain road will probably drive as if their life depends on it; but the same driver on an eight-lane freeway with gradual curves and little traffic may be lulled into speeding while chatting on his cellphone. Quoting: 'Modern cars are quiet, powerful and capable of astonishing grip in curves, even on wet pavement. That's swell, of course, until you suddenly lose traction at 75 mph. The sense of confidence bred by all this capability makes us feel safe, which causes us to drive faster than we probably should. We don't want to make cars with poor response, but perhaps we could design cues — steering-wheel vibration devices, as in video games? — that make us feel less safe at speed and encourage more care. ... In college I drove an Austin-Healey 3000 that somehow felt faster at 45 mph than my Mazda RX-8 (or even my Toyota Highlander Hybrid) feels at 75 mph. That was a good thing.'"
Do you have stats to back this up, or are you handwaving?
I'd expect most accidents to be in urban centers simply because that's where most of the cars are.
A modern airliner is actually safer than the usual small plane (Cessna etc).
Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot.
But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
The problem isn't the safe car. It's the idiot driving it.
The Alabama region SCCA has a new driver car control clinic program that teaches kids around the age of 16 how to handle a car when it loses control. The courses look like regular autox courses and it truly makes a huge difference in their ability and confindence, without making them feel like they can drive dangerously. http://www.alscca.org/
Whale
Basic economics says that we we are endowed with something like safer cars, we will use:
1) Part of it to actually increase safety, and
2) part of it to trade-off against things like speed, convenience, etc.
The fallacy that the headline implies is that safer cars lead to less safety.
The only thing worse than not having a parachute, is having one that doesn't open.
If we 'teach' people to ignore warnings that their car is losing tractions, such as wheel vibration, we are taking an active role killing people. There are reasons we have traffic laws, policemen with laser and radar, and traffic courts.
All we can, or should do, is punish stupid behavior. Teaching people to ignore danger signals, will simply lead to people ignore a very serious warning. I'd much rather see someone in traffic court paying a hefty fine, having their insurance fees jacked up and possibly lose driving priviledges - than see them dead. This is especially true, because we all know that when a traffic accident occurs, the people killed are often innocent passengers, and/or another totally innocent vehicle who simply got in the way.
In particular, how SUVs separate the driver's experience from the road in a dangerous way. And on the shopping habits of American car buyers in general. It's a favorite article of mine.
Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety
"In the Jetta, the engine is clearly audible. The steering is light and precise. The brakes are crisp. The wheelbase is short enough that the car picks up the undulations of the road. The car is so small and close to the ground, and so dwarfed by other cars on the road, that an intelligent driver is constantly reminded of the necessity of driving safely and defensively. An S.U.V. embodies the opposite logic. The driver is seated as high and far from the road as possible. The vehicle is designed to overcome its environment, not to respond to it. Even four-wheel drive, seemingly the most beneficial feature of the S.U.V., serves to reinforce this isolation. Having the engine provide power to all four wheels, safety experts point out, does nothing to improve braking, although many S.U.V. owners erroneously believe this to be the case. Nor does the feature necessarily make it safer to turn across a slippery surface: that is largely a function of how much friction is generated by the vehicle's tires. All it really does is improve what engineers call trackingâ"that is, the ability to accelerate without slipping in perilous conditions or in deep snow or mud. Champion says that one of the occasions when he came closest to death was a snowy day, many years ago, just after he had bought a new Range Rover. "Everyone around me was slipping, and I was thinking, Yeahhh. And I came to a stop sign on a major road, and I was driving probably twice as fast as I should have been, because I could. I had traction. But I also weighed probably twice as much as most cars. And I still had only four brakes and four tires on the road. I slid right across a four-lane road. " Four-wheel drive robs the driver of feedback. "The car driver whose wheels spin once or twice while backing out of the driveway knows that the road is slippery," Bradsher writes. "The SUV driver who navigates the driveway and street without difficulty until she tries to brake may not find out that the road is slippery until it is too late. " Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn't the solution; it's the problem."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Unless you arrive at your destination exhausted because the car was nagging at you the whole way. Back in my college days, I drove from Northern Calif to Southern in a noisy, rattletrap. I pulled into Pasadena around 5 hours after starting and was bone tired from the drive. So tired in fact, I didn't notice a kid crossing in front of a stopped car in the next lane. The stopped car driver realized I wasn't slowing down, saw that the kid was in jeopardy and so he leaned on his horn. Had that driver not blasted his horn, I could well have hit the kid. As it was, I'm sure the kid never realized how close he came to being hit because he stopped and glared at the horn blower.
Quieter, smoother cars just don't fatigue you as much as cars used to. I think that's a good thing. Being in an accident because you're tired, not so much.
When he wrote "Unsafe At Any Speed" people were still getting impaled by their steering wheels which didn't collapse and crumple out of the drivers way.
I remember as a kid driving by an accident where most of the car was torn away except for the engine and the steering column which we sticking up and through the young woman who'd been driving the car.
The other car that had slammed into her from the back and propelled her into traffic in the intersection was also dead from the impact with his steering column.
I'll never be able to wipe that image from my mind so ... joke away but realize that the idiots behind the wheels were sometimes innocent victims.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
According to all of the statistics I have seen, injury and fatality rates continue to steadily decrease (latest US statistics). I understand the point the article is trying to make - and in specific cases it is probably true - but on the whole, making vehicles and roads safer does in fact translate into an increase in overall safety in spite of the idiotic driving habits of the general public.
I tend to think that having a more extensive driver training program where drivers are exposed to poor conditions and limits of vehicle handling are a much better idea than purposely making roads and vehicles worse. Maybe even have rigorous enough testing that the incompetent are actually weeded out and not allowed to possess driver's licenses.
The problem there is that jets aren't flying 10 feet from eachother, and aren't controlled by road-raging madmen swerving around traffic dangerously to attempt to save 30 seconds from their trip.
Long story short, it will never happen on the ground. Even if spontaneously every single car in the country (or even world) were changed at the same time to all be as automatic as jet (and hell, for the sake of it, we'll say even antique or older cars were also changed to be automatic somehow), you WILL have tons of people who will find a way to change it manual again so that they can CONTINUE driving like madmen even moreso now, because all the OTHER cars on the road are so predictable now.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
A modern airliner is actually safer than the usual small plane (Cessna etc). Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot. But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
The point you raise about safety brought something else to mind. The emphasis the summary placed on speeding really did not sit well with me. Generally speaking, it works this way:
Speeding == a way to generate revenue for the state while talking a good game about safety. Failure to yield, following too closely == two things that receive very little emphasis which cause a hell of a lot more preventable accidents that speeding could ever cause.
A close third would be those people who don't seem to understand the purpose of the passing lane and why they create a hazard for everyone else when they try to monopolize it. Ideally, drivers should have patience for this and value safety above immediate gratification. However, the reality is that if you make it that tempting for people to weave in and out of lanes or to cut right in front of you because there's no other way to get by you, they will do it, count on it. The people who do this should know what situation they are setting up.
Like the summary, I am of course speaking of highways. I think speeding can be an important issue when you're talking about a residental area where there might be pedestrians walking or children playing. The mistake is to think that this must be some sort of universal truth because of such a special case. When you cover a few basics like discouraging tailgaters and not allowing the pacers to hang out in your blind spot, speeding in and of itself is hardly a threat on an open highway. If you don't cover those basics, strictly obeying the speed limit isn't going to do very much for you if something unexpected happens.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...people will drive as fast and with as much care as they feel safe getting away with. Some think we should come up with ways to make people feel less safe than they actually are.
Of course, then people learn to distrust feedback and cues, knowing that they are designed to fool them. End result, people start driving fast again, only now they have no cues that they trust, including the real ones.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
A. Putting a parachute on takes enough time that if you aren't wearing it, it's not going to help you in anything but the most unlikely circumstances.
B. I'm sure you've noticed those little masks that drop from the ceiling in "the event of sudden air pressure loss". Those are needed because most commercial flights operate high enough that there so little oxygen (or air pressure) outside you'd be unconscious in a matter of seconds without supplimental oxygen.
C. Unlike exploding cars, those action movies where the hero opens the hatch on a plane and everything suddenly gets sucked out aren't that far off from the truth. Overpressure in the cabin means even at low altitude, opening that hatch is likely to get a lot of people hurt.
D. Actually, parachutes require a lot of training to use properly. Even if you got one on, and the plane was low enough to jump, and you didn't get screwed over when the door opened and suddenly everyone is in a pile in the aisle, you still have a really low chance of actually surviving the fall.
Those are the 'reality' reasons why.
But also remember that airlines already have to deal with the issue of people considering them unsafe. Would you want to be the airline that introduced "Parachutes for every passenger" as a marketing campaign? When they are counting the number of peanuts you get in each bag, do you think the idea of inspecting each parachute before every flight to ensure the last passenger didn't screw theirs up is going to go over well? How about the liability when someone lives a crash but ends up a paraplegic due to their failed landing?
At the end of the day, there's just too little benefit anticipated from such a plan for anyone to consider it.
That is almost the definition of speeding.
No, it's not even close. "Speeding" is driving faster than a number written at the side of the road by people sitting in offices 300 miles away. Every driver is responsible for assessing traffic, road, and weather conditions, and adjusting speed accordingly.
Exceeding the appropriate speed for conditions is what gets you into trouble.
"Speeding" just gets you ticketed.
If we 'teach' people to ignore warnings that their car is losing tractions, such as wheel vibration, we are taking an active role killing people.
Wheel vibration isn't a useful signal that the car is about to lose traction. It's already "taken" by other problems: It's a signal that a tire has blown out, or you have a wheel out of balance, a misaligned front suspension, a severe engine misfire, or a very cheap car.
Making the wheel vibrate artificially to signal the edge of available traction only makes sense if the rest of the car is in ideal condition (including design).
The big yellow triangle with exclamation point that flashes in the middle of my Mercedes' speedometer is a much better indicator. You really can't miss it, and it can't be mistaken for some other minor problem.
Putting moderation advice in your
I'm blowing my mod points here, and hoping that I'm redundant to other, earlier and wiser comments, but you are clearly too young to know a simple truth.
Greater Speed=More Energy=More Lethal Crashes
It's just this simple, peeps. There is literally no case you can postulate (including "being chased by tyrannosaurs") in which ADDING energy is the best escape strategy. Don't bother: Asteroids? Tanker truck explosion >just starting in the tunnel behind you? There isn't. Simply because the costs of your GUESS ("oh, hockey-mask-clad killer coming up behind me!") if you prove to be wrong, are fatal. Risk requires understanding probabilities and humans do not have a facility for that. We see the hero survive, we envision how it'll work, we "just know" it was the right thing to do, and it simply never is.
And so, we have this public health problem: too many people, driving too fast, making preventable crashes into fatal ones.
Don't get it? Note all the appropriate agencies no longer call them "accidents" they're crashes, and they all have the same root-cause: someone was going too fast for the conditions. The investigators' jobs are reduced to finding out who and how much.
So let's be done with this "speeding is safe" meme. It's crap. I, for one, cannot wait for our automated-car overlords to take over.
Less throttle, more tunes.
18-25yo males are the most likely group of drivers to have a serious accident due to speed, reading the comments here demonstrates the self-delusions they suffer from.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This is correct. You can use the highway fatality data before, during, and after the no-daytime-speedlimit years in Montana if you want to put some observational data to it.
Highway fatalities went way down, then way back up after the limits came back.
Generally, people driving on the highways during the no-limit conditions weren't going _that_ much faster, but were wearing seatbelts more often and paying better attention.
I've driven on destricted sections of autobahn. It is both exhilarating and taxing. But at no point did I ever lose focus on what I was doing. I also had the benefit of a lot of race track experience here in the US before I went to Germany. I find that 1 hour of continued driving at elevated speeds has me wanting to take a short break. 2 hours of US-speed driving has me wanting to take a long nap.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.