Government Recommends Cars With Smarter Brakes

mrspoonsi writes The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is adding crash imminent braking and dynamic braking support to its list of recommended advanced safety features for new cars. The former uses sensors to activate the brakes if a crash is imminent and the driver already hasn't. Dynamic braking support, on the other hand, increases stopping power if you haven't put enough pressure on the brake pedal. Like lane-departure and front collision warning systems, these features are available on some models already — this move gives them high-profile attention, though. And for good reason: As the NHSTA tells it, a third of 2013's police-reported car accidents were the rear-end crashes and a "large number" of the drivers either didn't apply the brakes at all (what?!) or fully before impact.

Comments

I have an even better idea

[EmagGeek]

Let's just enforce existing laws and get dangerous drivers off the road. THERE IS NO RIGHT TO DRIVE. If you are a dangerous driver you can and should be taken off the road.

A coworker of mine was hit a couple of weeks ago by a woman who, after fleeing the scene, was discovered to have had caused FOUR injury accidents in the trailing 12 months, had been dropped from her insurance two months prior, and who, despite all of that, had not had her license suspended, and was not even ticketed for leaving the scene of the accident she caused with my coworker.

It's our complete unwillingness to hold people accountable for their actions that has created the need for EVAN M0AR government regulation to "protect us from ourselves."

People who are incapable of driving shouldn't be driving. Period.

Re:I have an even better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a right to freedom of movement, though.

I'd be fine with only a small driving or needing to drive. I live in a major city in the UK. I can walk or get the bus or train almost anywhere I'm interested in going, both for excursions and my daily life.

You'll find it's the same around most of the world.

Sadly, though, the USA has a large number of places that basically have no infrastructure whatsoever. The only way to get about, to live your life, is to own and use a car. In these places, not only are dangerous drivers tolerated, but so are dangerous cars (clunkers) -- because the alternative is to deprive most of your citizens the ability to get about.

This could've been fixed in the past (avoid urban sprawl), but it's too late now, and people have a right to get about the place. Banning them from driving in a place where there's 20 miles between where anyone lives and where any food is sold or any places of employment are, and there's no public transport whatsoever, is basically a death sentence.

What are you going to do about this?

Re:I have an even better idea

[ShanghaiBill]

Let's just enforce existing laws and get dangerous drivers off the road.

That is not a better idea, just a different idea. There is no reason we can't do both. But for every accident avoided, the cost of improving brakes is likely to be far, far less than the economic cost of excluding millions of people from driving, in a society where driving is nearly essential for daily life. Also, the brake improvement can actually happen, while the probability of politicians banning a significant number of people from driving is about zero.

Re:I have an even better idea

[thegarbz]

Don't be absurd. The right to travel does not have anything to do with the method used for transportation. Your road is missing? So sad for you, catch a bus, a train, a taxi, ride a horse through the bush, or if you're not landlocked use a boat or any one of the many other things you can do to exercise your right to "travel".

People most definitely do NOT have any protected right what so ever, in any law or any country or even international regulations, recommendations or otherwise to operate a motor vehicle.

It is a privilege requiring you to register your intent with a governing body.

Re:I have an even better idea

[TWX]

It's not the "dangerous clunkers" here that are so much the problem as the uninsured, who cause accidents and cannot pay for what they've done to other people. I'm starting to think that automatic impoundment should be the default when certain kinds of paperwork are not in order, like no insurance and no or suspended license, and that the car cannot be gotten out of impound without proof that the paperwork has now been corrected, and if the paperwork condition was discovered as a result of an accident investigation, the victim (the other driver) can petition to be awarded the vehicle as compensation for the damage they received if there's no insurance and no forthcoming reimbursement.

Driving isn't a right, it's a privilege. I've paid for that privilege my entire adult life, maintaining my registration, my insurance, and my license despite having no at-fault accidents. I expect others to do the same.

Re:I have an even better idea

[kheldan]

Let's just train and test drivers more thoroughly to keep unqualified drivers off the road in the first place. Driving may be a privelege and not a 'right', but just beefing up the punishment side of things isn't going to help much compared to making drivers competent in the first place. We're living in an era where people are getting less and less skilled at pretty much everything, and have need to learn fewer and fewer things, because of the internet and because of more and more cheap gadgets.

I do not approve of any system that will arbitrarily override my basic controls of the vehicle, it's a bad idea. Why should I or anyone relinquish control of braking to some anonymous software writer(s) that may or may not have covered all possible contingencies properly? Just one more system to fail in your vehicle. No, I propose we educate, train, and test drivers more rigorously, and if they're not truly competent, then they don't get to drive.

Re:I have an even better idea

[HornWumpus]

That's more or less how it is. So they drive even worse clunkers as they know they will lose them every time they talk to a cop.

Then the cops stop doing anything out of frustration, leaving the laws selectively enforced.

Re:I have an even better idea

[tibit]

This government regulation isn't about protecting you from idiot drivers. It's about protecting you from the long tail of accidents that happen in spite of everyone following the rules. People aren't infallible. Occasionally, we make mistakes even with the best of training. Unless you're a race driver, your driver "training" is nowhere near the amount of training the olympic athletes receive. Yet, invariably enough, in every olympics there's a bunch of snafus committed by the best trained people. That should be the only thing you need to see to realize that, once again, no matter how well prepared you are, you will make mistakes even if your weally, weally wish not to. I mean fuck, these people are fucking competing for olympic medals. They are the best of the best worldwide. And they do mess up. So yes, no matter how good you think you are, you will commit random errors on the road that may prove deadly. The regulations and the technical means here are to make those random things less deadly. That's all.

Re:I have an even better idea

[PPH]

This.

No mod points left, but I agree. We ae trying everything to get people out of private cars and onto public transportation with little effect. Just pull the licences from the worst drivers and hand them a transit pass. Reduce traffic volume and save money by postponing expansion projects. And do so by getting the crappiest drivers off the road.

Re:I have an even better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Any tests should be based on experience, not age. And the training to get your license should be way, way higher.

Any tests should be based on competence , not experience or age.

FTFY.

I don't care how much "experience" you have behind the wheel, or how old you are - prove that you are competent to operate the vehicle safely, and you can drive. Fail to prove that, and get your license revoked.

Re:I have an even better idea

[ColdWetDog]

You don't have a right to be able to afford anything. At least in any society beyond pure communism - which has never existed in groups of more than say, 100.

It would be a nice societal benefit to allow persons without much economic means to freely travel - but nothing on the order of a mandate. Now, most societies agree that people should be allowed to travel freely without undo government interference but there is nothing that says somebody else has to pay for it or allow an individual to put others at risk for economic or any other reason.

Re:I have an even better idea

[houghi]

If you do that 4 times in a row, the yes. there is a clear dfifference between a dangerous driver and somebody who had an accident.

And if you do not knwo that difference them yes, you should not be on the road anymore.

Re:Not a fan

[ShanghaiBill]

it takes away the driver's discretion during the times braking is not advisable.

Real life involves tradeoffs. For almost any safety feature, there will be some corner cases where it is detrimental, but it is still a big win overall. Even airbags kill people occasionally, and about an extra dozen infants die every year in hot cars because their car seats are in the back instead of the front. But airbags save thousands of lives overall, so the cost is worth it.

Re:Not a fan

[OzPeter]

If the safety feature enables the brakes when a crash is 'imminent', it takes away the driver's discretion during the times braking is not advisable.

And if you look at the stats, about 1/3 of crashes are rear end accidents, and within that group a significant number of drivers didn't even attempt to apply the brakes. That last part was even in TFS!

You can't take away something that doesn't exist.

Re:Not a fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Real world example: My car has traction control. It also is relatively light, has front wheel drive, and has an anti-roll bar on the rear suspension.

So here's what happens; when I go into a long left hander (like a freeway interchange), the weight transfers to the right and the body rolls. The outside (right) rear wheel suspension compresses, and the anti-roll bar lifts the left rear wheel off the ground. It is a stable driving configuration, they just overbuilt the anti-roll bar for the vehicle weight. The inside rear wheel would be unweighted and providing negligible traction even if it were touching the ground, so it is not a risk.

But here's what happens next: The inside wheel is not being driven, nor is it touching the ground. Air friction slows the wheel, and the traction control system kicks in. It sees that I have three wheels going 60 MPH and one wheel going 20 MPH, and assumes that I am in an aggressive spin. It brakes the three fast wheels; aggressively. And the vehicles bucks like a horse that just saw a rattlesnake. That does cause a very real risk of losing control.

Sensor-based driving assist is a fine option. It's great for people who want the freedom to text while driving, because it keeps them from killing me. Making it the norm may reduce accidents overall, and we may reach a day when it is superior to any human. But we have not yet reached the point where economy-priced driving assist is less dangerous than an attentive and skilled driver.

This and things like my traction control (that freaks out when there is slush on the ground and needs to be turned off so that I'm not stalled in an intersection) and pre-emptive braking systems that are so paranoid that people now complain that they cannot get into a parking garage because the gate is triggering the braking system before they can get close enough to swipe their card or hit the ticket button are why I laugh whenever someone claims that we'll have self-driving cars by 2020 or some other unrealistic date.

Re:Not a fan

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yes, yes, I'm sure you can imagine any number of situations where your lightning reflexes, superb judgement, and superhuman driving skill will produce a better outcome than some dumb automated system.

But even if you are much more skilled than the average driver -- and it does seem like 80-90% of drivers are quite convinced that they're "better than average" -- you're still likely to do dumb things behind the wheel more frequently than you do brilliant things behind the wheel. If you have a human brain, you're kind of stuck with that. There are a million things that can distract you, impair you, or confuse you, and any one of them will knock you down from that pinnacle of performance.

There will certainly be times when an automated system produces a worse outcome than a skilled human driver. But those times will be overwhelmingly outnumbered by the times when it's the other way around. It's really, really hard to reason objectively about risks like this, especially when there's a perceived loss of control involved. But if you don't let objective reasoning drive policy, you're going to end up with more dead and injured people.

When I was a kid, the debate was over seat-belt laws. There were an amazing number of people who absolutely refused to wear them. "I remember this person who was trapped in a burning (or sinking) car because they couldn't get out of the seat belt!" "I'm too good a driver to get into an accident where I'd need a seat belt to save me!" "If I'm wearing a seat belt, I can't be thrown to safety, so I'll be trapped in the collision!" Yes, I'm quite sure that some people have died because of seat belts. But that number is absolutely dwarfed by the number of people saved by them. It's cold consolation to the handful of seat-belt victims, I know, but you're still an utter fool if you let those few tragedies convince you not to use the belt.

Please don't let fear of a few extremely unlikely scenarios block a robust solution for an entire class of common problems.

Re:Not a fan

[zieroh]

Real world example: My car has traction control. It also is relatively light, has front wheel drive, and has an anti-roll bar on the rear suspension.

So here's what happens

You seem to be arguing that automated driving aids tend to interfere with real-world situations, while describing a real-world situation that is actually a glaring example of a horrible design defect with your car. You should have four wheels on the ground in all "real world" situations, end-of.

Your car is broken. And that's a piss-poor reason to be against automated driving aids.