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Most Drivers Don't Understand Limitations of Car Safety Systems, AAA Finds (usatoday.com)
A new study by AAA found that most drivers don't understand the limitations of advanced safety technology installed on their new vehicles. "The study indicates that drivers overestimate the capabilities of features such as blind-spot monitoring systems, automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control," reports USA Today. "The findings raise questions about whether Americans are ready to adapt to partially self-driving vehicles, which typically require drivers to remain alert and ready to take over the steering wheel if the car can't handle the conditions it encounters." Here are the problem spots flagged by AAA:
- Blind-spot monitoring: Nearly 80 percent of drivers don't understand the limitations or thought that the system had greater capability to detect fast-approaching vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Relying too much on blind-spot monitoring, about 25 percent don't look for oncoming vehicles when they change lanes.
- Forward-collision warning and automatic emergency braking: Many drivers confuse the two. One is a warning system, while the other takes action. More than 40 percent of drivers don't know these limitations.
- Adaptive cruise control: About 29 percent of drivers who use this system, which accelerates and brakes on its own, are sometimes comfortable "engaging in other activities" while the system is activated, according to the study. The researchers did note that these safety features can prevent about 40 percent of crashes and 30 percent of crash deaths.
- Forward-collision warning and automatic emergency braking: Many drivers confuse the two. One is a warning system, while the other takes action. More than 40 percent of drivers don't know these limitations.
- Adaptive cruise control: About 29 percent of drivers who use this system, which accelerates and brakes on its own, are sometimes comfortable "engaging in other activities" while the system is activated, according to the study. The researchers did note that these safety features can prevent about 40 percent of crashes and 30 percent of crash deaths.
No matter how you look at it, having a human in the loop is a setup for failure. Public transportation yet again solves this problem in addition to just about every other problem you can think of.
Hire a well-paid, attentive train driver, hold him to the flame, and be done with it.
and generally only the higher end cars have these features anyway. This is a first world problem for the top 10-20%.
I will say this, I got caught on the freeway in the rain once. Real rain, the kind where you just get the f*** off the road and wait it out because you can only see 5 feet in front of you. I kept having numbnuts in Audis and BMWs pass me at 70 mph because the had driver assist features that kept them in the lane. I did manage to get off the freeway without getting creamed, but those shmucks don't seem to realize that somebody in a 20 year old car can't do what they do.
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Try taking a train in the US. It's seriously fucked up.
I got my license in the UK. It was very difficult, 3-point turn, emergency stop, hill start, reverse around a corner.
When I moved to the US, I studied the written material for over a week. The written test was about 20 multiple choice questions. The driving test was about 10 minutes, drive around the block, stop at an intersection, pull back into the DMV.
Recently I got my motorcycle license. I took a 2 day driving course on a 250cc, which I passed plus a written test. Now I'm allowed to drive a 1000cc sports motorcycle.
the individuals are not even bothering to check behind them, or check their side mirrors, etc.because the safety devices in the cars would warn them. The industry has been dumbing down driving. I have always seen this as a problem. You tell individuals buy our car and you won't need to worry about something they won't.
;)
Also if the safety devices may be perfect, How are driver less cars to work at this point in the development cycle. I believe in driver less cars but feel they are further in our future than most think.
Note the Tesla driver putting his car on auto pilot and then watching a movie before his wreak. Can't say that was really Tesla's fault! They say your supposed to be poised with your hands hovering over the wheel and aware of the situation and be ready to take control. In that case I would just be doing the driving to help me stay aware and awake.
Just my 2 cents
Your first mistake is believing that software engineers strive to build idiot-proof programs.
Your second mistake is thinking that software engineerd aren't primarily building those oh-so-important devices (and in-car entertainment systems).
Report Status: WONTFIX; working as intended.
not sure about the car company but i'm with you on everything else.
The problem with this stuff is that the interaction with the tech is too vague unlike say Cruise-control. The operation of cruise control is very straight forward, arm it, set your speed, and brake or cancel when you want to stop. These other systems provide little in the way for you to understand the limits of the tech and get a feel for them. The manufacturers want some of these systems to function similar to air-bags or anti-lock brakes, but people want to rely on them more actively than this.
I believe Home assistants (Alexa, Siri, Google Home) also have a similar issue in a way. I've watched my parents that are almost in their 60s now interact with the Google Home assistant. There aren't any readily available manuals to help you understand how to work with the Home Assistant so I've often caught them trying to talk to beyond what its capable of. ex: They expect G.Home to maintain conversation context. They expect it to be able to handle some actions without using very specific commands ("Ok Google, turn the living room lights all the way up."). They expect it to work out of the box on things like Reminders. They expect it to be able to tell you what it can and can't do ("Ok Google, are you able to turn my sprinklers on?").
Got a new car with all this shit in it recently.
- Adaptive cruse control sounds good in theory, but what it means in practice is that you stop paying attention to how fast you're going only to suddenly realize as people blow by you on the left that you've been stuck behind someone doing 15 below the speed limit for the last half hour. To get regular cruise control you have to hold down the cruise control on-button for about 5 seconds every time.
- The thing that beeps at me when it thinks I'm not going to brake in time can't be turned off without also turning off the emergency stop thing. I'd rather leave that part on I suppose, but I've strongly considered turning it all off just to stop the fucking beeping.
- The thing that beeps at me when it thinks I'm drifting out of my lane can be turned off thankfully.
- Finally, the thing that beeps at me because I don't use my seatbelt can still be fooled by wrapping the seatbelt around the back of the seat and keeping it fastened like that forever. Thank god cars still aren't smart enough to see past that trick.
Side note: Somehow all this garbage came standard, but I'd have needed to buy a more expensive model to get keyless entry.
"WARNING: This device has a 30% chance of getting your dick torn off if used improperly."
Politicians and marketers learned you have to be short, blunt, dramatic, and over-simplistic to get anybody's attention these days.
Table-ized A.I.
The assistive technologies increase the average response times of the drivers according to German research. The response time can be as long 6 to 8 seconds, with 90% drivers taking 12 to 15 seconds to check mirrors and become fully aware of the traffic. The out of sync brains need to re-synchronize with the speed of traffic, probably. Maybe an automatically administered UN-forbidden stimulant with some repeating electric shocks could help? Everything for safety is the word on the street, after all.
Well that cruise control confusion has been around a long time. It was a big deal when cruise control was new and some drivers actually believed that they could take their hands off the wheel and do other things. The prevalence of such stories has gone down over time as people got educated but never really went away completely.
Some people will just insist on doing their makeup, looking at the phone, or plucking nose hairs while commuting.
Disclaimer: Opinions follow
1. Technology is magic - Joe consumer doesn't seem to understand just how far apart technologies are. "Hey Alexa order more toilet paper" is just as magical to them as self driving cars.
2. The tech industry - to hear them tell it we've entered the AI age, machine learning, buzzword buzzword buzzword. But most of what is being called AI is really just really clever data analysis
3. The media - the media makes my previous points worse by playing up the buzzwords and "technology is magic" ideas
4. Personal responsibility - Joe consumer overestimates the capabilities of technology and places too much trust in them on the assumption the manufacturer is looking out for the consumers best interest. See also: Skepticism
5. Skepticism - Joe consumer doesn't think skeptically. Most of these systems are considered to be assistive. Look at the words used "warning" "avoidance" "alert" even "assist". These words are used to shift responsibility from the manufacturer to the owner/operator. And the owner's manual... The owners manual is mostly a place for disclaimers and more warnings. See also: Personal Responsibility
6. RTFM - this is the combination of my previous thoughts. It is your responsibility to understand the capabilities and limitations of the technology and the stakes. It is perhaps less problematic to not understand how Siri and your iPhone work than it is to understand how the assistive systems on a massive, high speed projectile guided by distracted and minimially trained humans work.
Replace lazy ill-informed hubris-filled humans with bots designed by lazy ill-informed hubris-filled corporations. Genius!
Table-ized A.I.
Some of these numbers seem about like what I've observed of drivers who probably don't have these technologies. Within the past week I've had at least 4 drivers I can remember, including a bus driver and a truck driver, switch lanes while I was beside them. I doubt I drove more than about 80 miles total during that time - all in city traffic. I don't think the vehicles I remember were new enough to have blind spot monitoring or that I was really in a blind spot. Also, I drive about the same speed as the other traffic, so I was not approaching fast or anything that could have caused the issue. None of them looked.
Also, I've seen people going down the interstate reading newspapers, reading books, shaving, etc. most of my life. They were likely using plain old-fashioned non-adaptive cruise control. I don't know that 29% feeling comfortable doing other things while using their adaptive cruise control is a significant increase over regular cruise control without seeing the control group data.
AAA is all about changing people's behaviors. Even if these technologies show no increase in problems, they would still publish this story because they see a potential for improvement if people change. And they would always leave out the control group because they want to shock people.
In general, if a technology requires driver education to be effective, forget it in this country. The only question that matters is whether the statistics indicate there is a reduction in accidents with the technology. If there is, use the technology. The fact that some get killed who might not have without it is irrelevant. Only the average matters when looking for societal progress.
Heck these days most men are oblivious too.
It involves moving a couple of these levers, IIRC.
Have gnu, will travel.
Some do of course, and the idiots in question aren't always customers but can be other people in the vicinity. Ie, customer wanted us to turn off the power LED on the devices that are put up on telephone poles, because the customer said that in their state people like to shoot at boxes with LEDs for target practice.
And there are better idiots being generated of course. One radiation therapy machine put on two buttons to initiate the process far apart on opposite sides of the console to ensure that two operators were present, to avoid operator error on the dangerous machine. At one site when servicing a machine the technician noticed that the operator used a weight to depress one of the buttons.
> the car should stop moving.
FYI, that's one of the more dangerous things you can do. You're quite likely to get rear-ended or T-boned. Some people's default reaction of stomping on the brakes whenever something unexpected happens is a leading cause of accidents.
Relying entirely on one car is never as good as owning 2 or 10. Car owners may sometimes choose to use one car in certain circumstances.
I was responding to the never part, which is clearly wrong. Showing examples where a car is better - is it too much of a stretch to call that a strawman?
lack of rules, proper education and loads of stupid people, and this is not only car safety problem. why can i drive 230+ km/h (~140 in retard units) with my old shitty golf5 on the autobahn? better and stricter rules and lots of mandatory driving lessons for everyone.
And that include my family and friend. Most drive very aggressively, as much above the limit they can get away with, many ignore stops and crossing lamp at night, think they are the king of the road and two wheeler should just fuck off (bicycle, bike, moped) and that right of way or stop dont exists if the other road has a bike only. Everyday there us at least 20% if the driver bypassing me at less than a foot between us. I love truck driver on the other hand. So far in decades i had only one monkey too much near my bike. So hearing that they understand as much security measure as they understand rule if road is unsurprising. Most driver should only be allowed autonomous vehicule frankly.
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Most drivers can't drive.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And that's a problem that extends into self driving cars or cars with semi-autonomous functions. The car appears to do more or less the right thing for the most part and naturally the driver becomes less and less attentive. The problem is that even the smartest automated software is only edge case away from catastophe and a driver MUST be attentive to mitigate from that risk.
The problem is that car manufacturers aren't doing enough to ensure they are. We see that every time a Tesla runs into a semi or whatever because the driver was staring at the pretty clouds or playing with their phone.
Baloney. I love driving, especially offroad in the desert, show me a viable public transport alternative.
That is an entirely different class of situations. Here you're not considering "driving" as a mean of transportation to get from point A to point B, but as a hobby.
That's beyond the point of this discussion.
BTW: horse-riding is probably an example of a type of hobby where you enjoy getting around scenery, while offloading part of the driving to some (natural, non-artificial) intelligence.
Now back to track:
Until a train or bus can immediately pick me up right from home on my schedule not theirs, and drop me right at the door of wherever I personally want to go just as fast as I can drive there, public transport can never be as good as owning a car.
This has been extensively developed in some countries (e.g.: Switzerland) and has some fancy name like "hybrid transportation". :
- The logic is that a very good train system links the big cities and other cities accross the country, with a very decent density of time slots.
- Then there are several car-sharing options (either classical stations based, or more recently free floating are starting to appear in some cities). that help you get fast from your door to the train station and from the arrival station to your destination's door. Studies show that such system decrease the reliance on owning cars (1:4 according to study done by ETHZ).
(In addition to cars there are even other possibilities
- there are both clasical multi-station based bike/e-bike stations, and free-floating e-bike/e-motorscooter
- a year-long ticket for your own bike on train is rather cheap)
So even if you're not in a city center with a tram or a bus right in front of your street that can get you to the train station, you can still quickly and conveniently get to wherever you want.
Also keep in mind that local train drive usually at somewhere between 150 and 180 km/h, whereas highways' official speed limit is 120 km/h.
(Train seldom drive at the max 180-200km/h speed supported by the hardware. Also means that whenever there's a problem or delay, the trains can simply catch up the delay by driving faster. Delay are a very rare thing here around).
So given your critera of "I want to arrive as fast as possible" :
- such hybrid plans will get you faster : you don't need to wait hours for some bus because you live in the outskirts, you can drive yourself to/from train station at both end-legs of your journey (the nationnal train system's app even integrates these hybrid solutions when giving you routes)
- the train will be much faster between the cities even if completely neglecting any traffic jam on the highway.
And to go back to the article's subject:
- this also reduces the amount of time/kms that are driven by stupid humans in the loop (As mentionned by the top poster).
- Instead sizeable chunk of the trip (the train part) will be driven by a highly specialized human who has a lot of train and is assisted by tons of modern safety features in modern trains. (Though we still have a couple of short stretch of regional train where the driving is still done 100% manually).
- Also, this specific part - driving mostly straight on the highway - is the part which is done at a high speed and where the stupid human car owner is the most likely to get bored and commit the mistakes mentioned in the summary (letting a simple class 1 do the driving alone)
(As opposed to short in-city slow trips in desnely packed city traffic).
----
Last few things :
- I'm considering only long distance commuting, which is the type considered usually by proponent of the "door-to-door" car owners.
- For in city (same city) commuting, (even i
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
> Victim-blaming much?
I prefer to not be dead. I don't want it to be the other guy's fault that I'm in a crash, I want to not be in a crash. Your inability to think on terms of the consequences of your actions, instead framing everything as you decalring what other people should do tells me something interesting about you. More on that in a moment.
> There are plenty of situation where coming to a full stop as quickly as possible is the only viable and safe option.
The situations where avoiding the obstacle by other means is safe are fewer since it often involves switching over to an oncoming lane or going into an area designated for pedestrians.
In a word, shoulder. The shoulder is where you can pull over to the side and you will neither be in the oncoming lane nor in "an area designated for pedestrians". You will be next to the car that was in front of you, rather than intertwined with it.
In more words, those who study these things, such as the school at A&M, and probably every tactical driving instructor in the world, disagree with you. The numbers are - going around the problem is safer twice as often as slamming on your brakes. If this seems counter-intuitive and you want to see it for yourself rather than read a study, watch a NASCAR race once. You'll notice the million dollar, best drivers in the world NEVER slam on their brakes when a crash is happening in front of them. They always steer.
Not sure how to go around the problem because it's a high speed crash in front of you and you don't know which ways the cars will end up going? Again NASCAR has the solution for you. Two cars crashing at high speed can move in unpredictable directions, but they WILL move. The one place they WON'T be, the guaranteed clear path, is where the cars are right now. Guaranteed they won't still be there two seconds from now. Aim for where the car is - it'll move, if it's going 60 MPH right now. This why you'll see NASCAR drivers steer "the* a crash rather than trying to go *around* a crash that's immediately in front of them. Of course if they are in the extreme left lane and the crash is on the extreme right they won't jerk the wheel to aim for the impact point.
So what we know about you:
Even when in reply to me pointing it out, you're unable to think about the consequences of your actions, blaming others while insisting on continuing to cause yourself problems.
You point out what *other* people should do, rather than have any concept of your own actions having results.
What you tell other people to do is wrong - it's an objectively worse idea.
Your suggestion is simple so you don't have to think, about how to do it or what the actual results are.
I bet I can tell which party you vote for. :)
I had a typo. For a high-speed crash in front of you, professional drivers often steer THROUGH the crash.
If you watch professionals you may be surprised how often they steer through the middle of a crash rather than going around it. That's because they know that crashing cars may bounce off to the left and right, but they WILL move from their current positions, so aiming for where the car is now guarantees it won't still be there two seconds from now.
Which is why it needs to be all or nothing. Either fully automate everything, or else keep the human actively responsible for everything.
We humans are not good at partial attention. At least most of us aren't.
Blind-spot monitoring:ÂNearly 80 percent of drivers don't understand the limitationsÂ
Funny, I was guessing that nearly 80% of drivers don't understand there is a blind spot at all.
Most drivers probably don't understand how anything in their cars work.
I bought a Volvo with blindspot warnings about 10 years ago. I've never found it helpful mostly because I spent 25 or so years driving cars without blindspot avoidance. I've basically ingrained blindspot checking into my driving behavior and retraining myself to rely on the technology and drop manual checks seems hard, and by itself it doesn't add much to manual blindspot checking.
It could also be a function of the implementation. Mine uses orange lights in the car near the region where you look at side mirrors. Despite being more or less in your field of vision, they're not easy to "see". My wife's 2015 Acura uses an audible system with dash display (combined with the turn signal being turned on? I don't drive it enough) but the audible alert seems more beneficial than needing visual indicators. I've also driven rentals with the alerts embedded in the side mirrors which makes it hard to avoid.
Overall though, if you've learned to drive safely and deal with blind spots manually a new technology really doesn't appear to add much value and can be a distraction.
Collision avoidance has been great, though, I'm pretty sure it's saved me once or twice. Distance sensing cruise control I think would benefit all drivers and might even be useful as an automatic function because it maintains a constant speed and constant distance.
> BUT you need to STOP trying to defend someone that rear ends another car.
Where exactly did you see me defending anyone who read-ended another car?
In fact, I sued the guy who t-boned me. The thing about suing them is that it helps to be alive while suing. It's hard for me to blame the other guy when I'm dead. So I'd rather not be killed by their fault.
(Were you trying to be funny, Pope, or did you just get ahold of some bad weed??)
I dispute the likelihood of this story being accurate... for the simple reason that we didn't have Millenials back then.
I have a relative who works as an actuary for an insurance company. She constantly goes on how these new "safety" features are unreliable and are the reason why premiums are going up around the country.
They're the first safety add-ons that truly make driving more dangerous for the 1 out of 10 times it doesn't work. The same argument does not apply to power steering, antilock brakes, and stability control. Why? Because these systems provide a consistent experience each time they engage.
The newer ones? Not so much, in fact they engage in a more fuzzy manner. If the manufacturer has to say "check your blind spots because sometimes the sensor won't see something" then it's a half baked safety feature that will kill someone and make all of our insurance rates go up.
Go back to 100% manual everything and force drivers to DRIVE THE DAMN CAR!
Going up hill downshift.
Stop sign, stop and back to First Gear and smoothly release the clutch.
So easy even you grandmother could do it.
The AAA lobbies for road building (as opposed to public transit, bike/pedestrian facilities, etc), claiming that it's large membership is behind them. If you don't want to support their lobbying efforts and are just looking for road service, there are other organizations out there...
Blind spot monitoring is so useless if you know how to adjust your mirrors. Every rental car I've driven that's had a BLIS system didn't tell me anything the mirrors couldn't tell me faster. Then again, I adjust my mirrors on anything I drive to where I don't see the side of the vehicle in them, I had to learn that trick on my own. They didn't teach that in driver's education.
It's a pretty well-known effect-- or at least, it's a commonly strongly suspected effect-- that safety equipment can perversely encourage accidents by providing a false sense of security and encouraging risky behavior. Clearly we need a name for this effect in order to encourage discussion of this possibility (and, of course, intimidate people who haven't learned the name yet). As far as I can tell, it hasn't been named yet, so if anyone has a good, catchy idea, the glory may be yours.
A friend of mine argues that if you want to encourage safe driving, we should replace the air bags with an iron spike pointed at the drivers chest. Of course, we're both cyclists, and there could be a bit of animosity lurking behind that idea.
Is the ONLY automated system I use. Heck, I won't even own automatic transmission, which is becoming harder to find. All these "creature comforts" are taking away your attention on the road. Add distracted driving from eating, messing with a radio/phone and it's a wonder we don't have as many accidents as we do. I'm still one of those ones that keeps BOTH hands on the wheel, when not shifting gears. Driving these days, takes MORE attention, not less, and, relying on "technology" can get you in trouble, ESPECIALLY if you do not know its limitations.
If you enjoy driving then you are less likely to get bored of it or misunderstand the saftey features.
If the commuters that would rather be texting or whatever had an alternative that was inexpensive and fast, they would take it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
We got a bus and are converting it to an RV so we are going to probably go with FMCA which covers both the RV and normal cars. AAA offers RV roadside, but it's garbage. People have horror stories with both Good Sam and FMCA, it's true, but everyone who has tried to use it with an RV has horror stories with AAA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can be a millenial at any age...
While it's urban myth that someone was killed doing this, it's not farfetched to have someone remove their hands from the wheel and then be surprised that the car started veering to the side. Ie, if they have technology to keep the accelerator pressed (and you can feel that it's depressed on those earlier cars) then it's not a leap to think that there's some mechanism that holds the steering wheel straight.
And why wouldn't they? It's the Automobile Association of America. Their purpose is to promote the use of the car in everyday life. So naturally that involves more roads and less public transit.
"I think it's insance to see people doing 80 mpg when it's snowing..."
Damn. Where can I buy one of those?
Because there are people signing up for road service who don't know they're also buying into a political agenda, and they should probably ask 'em before they claim they're representing them.
And like I was saying: if you just want road service and aren't interested in someone lobbying in your name, then you should look around for alternatives, they're definitely out there.
You see, I know this may be hard to grasp, but many car drivers are driving cars out of present necessity, rather than out of some sort of ideological commitment...
You can be a millenial at any age...
Obviously.
Text simply lacks the "tone" needed for 'proper comedic delivery" (in person, my humor comes across as a bit more playful and a bit less biting...). ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One of the dozens of commercials that the auto industry have put out.
They all share some similar features:
1) A woman is driving
2) She is putting on makeup, talking with a friend, or doing something else that makes her not even glance at the road occasionally.
3) The car then suddenly stops, and the woman realised that it just saved her life or someone else's.
4) The narrator then start talking about how if you drive this car you will never get in an accident, and can spend your time "driving" doing more important things than watching the road.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.