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Study Finds Automatic Braking With Rearview Cameras, Sensors Can Cut Backup Crashes By 78 Percent (cbsnews.com)
A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that combining automatic braking with rearview cameras and sensors can cut reverse crashes by 78 percent. Rear automatic braking alone, which is an option in just 5 percent of new vehicles, is linked to a 62 percent drop in reported backup accidents in cars with that equipment. CBS News reports: Starting in May, all new cars in the U.S. will be required to have a rearview camera. Some automakers are going further by adding backup warning sensors and reverse automatic braking. For the first time, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested that combination of technology. Two models -- the 2017 Subaru Outback and Cadillac XT5 SUV -- earned superior ratings. Four other vehicles scored an advanced rating for generally avoiding a collision or substantially reducing the vehicle's speed. But there's some room to improve. One vehicle did not stop automatically when backing up to a dummy car parked at an angle. Automatic braking in the front will become standard in most cars in 2022 but there's currently no plan to make it standard for backing up.
I thought it was a big white wall, quite a bit farther away...
Fortunately I was moving quite slowly, and the trucking company was more amused than annoyed.
davecb@spamcop.net
If we're headed for self-driving cars this seemingly trivial problem should be closer to 100% not 78%.
I'm so old I remember back in the 70s the taxicab companies in New York discovered that putting a brake light in the rear window of their cars cut rear-ending accidents by 60%. The light was at eye level (for a driver) rather than bumper level.
You would have thought they had re-invented fire, the wheel, and all the rest of science and how marvelous everyone thought that was.
Now a car that brakes automatically before it hits something. My my.
Now, as then, my reaction is the only astounding thing is how absolutely anyone could be surprised at the result.
Or just let the car stall if the user doesn't hit the clutch.
I have a new car with a backup camera. It's great for parking in tight spaces and not much else. The resolution and quality is too low for it to be of much use unless I'm staring at it intently. I'm not sure if this is due to the screen or the camera. It's also not very useful at night or when it gets moisture or dirt on it.
I can see it now.
Senator: What do you mean there are no licensed drivers in the State of California?
Elon Musk: Well, you see, the government asked us to start a program in which we automatically reported every significant driving mistake, and it counted as a point on your license. After a month, we ran out of licensed drivers.
Senator: That's terrible. Can't you fix it so that it only counts the mistakes that got close to causing a crash?
Elon Musk: This is the fixed version. We started out with a version that included speeding tickets, and ran a 1% study. We went back to the drawing board when the number of licensed drivers dropped to zero within the first hour of driving.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Stop driving behind people when they are backing up.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Now that cars can detect objects in close proximity to the rear and automatically brake for them, why not take the next step by adding a feature to brake-check tailgaters? Ensuring a safe following distance in back would make it safer to brake hard to avoid collisions in front.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Annnnd, what happens when I'm trying to back away from danger into some tall grass; is it going to let me, or is it going to overrule the human? I'm sick to death of engineers, etc., thinking they've thought of everything, to the detriment of the unsuspecting users, decades later.
Brake pipes have never been secure, and it really isn't that big of a problem. So now someone can tap a wire and mess with your brakes in more ways than just draining the fluid to stop them working. Fantasies about controlling a car's brakes via the radio's Bluetooth connection aside, what threats do you actually see here? CAN networks have been separated between the high-speed engine management and safety network and the low speed infotainment, climate control and other "comfort" features on most cars for at least a decade now.
You can actually drive two at a time, dividing the mileage between them, a weekend fun car and daily driver, or motorcycle if you dare, or whatnot. Interestingly insurance tends not to be much more since you can't drive both at once. Cars also don't do well stored and unused.
Manual transmissions used to have advantages over automatic for fuel economy and performance. Those days are over. At this point, manual transmissions are for hipsters, and cars with manual transmissions should really only come with one of these as its entertainment system.
I rented a car with automatic braking, and the false positives are terrifying. I routinely triggered the autobraking when backing out of driveways onto the road, where there's a change in gradient. The ABS kicks in, and it sounds like your car has bottomed out and is grinding against the ground.
It's particularly annoying because you can see on the reverse camera that there's nothing behind you, so you start doubting yourself, the camera, and the car. It's kind of like a random punishment system. You don't know what's going to cause the next zap, so there's no clear corrective path of action to take to correct this.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
Even with all the safety features cars today are the cheaper than they were twenty years ago (compared to annual income). Modern build quality sucks, though.
I prefer manuals, it offers the driver more control.
I drove a newer van with an automatic transmission with fly-by-wire throttle and it was a terrible experience. You barely touch the gas pedal and the ECU goes "OK, half throttle start!" They don't do this with a manual transmission.
A secondary effect (at least around where I live) is a manual transmission is actually a pretty good antitheft. If there are two identical cars parked beside each other, one with a manual and one with an automatic, the automatic gets stolen every time.
Cameras are great, indeed. I just hope they're not going to mandate automatic backup braking with current backup sensors. Mine go "bip bip bip bip BEEEEEEEEP" when I'm still 40 cm from anything. If the car then refuses to move further, parking is going to become very difficult.
Nissan invented 360 birds-eye-view cameras years ago, and now quite a few cars have them. They work well, and at least with the Nissan ones have good night vision capability.
I find them very useful for parking. Not just for avoiding collisions, but for getting nicely aligned in the space. One of the biggest problems with parking is that spaces are too small to start with, and as soon as one person parks off-centre it screws everyone else up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC