From the outset, advanced driver assistance systems have made a ton of safety promises. From being marketed as guardian angels to claims of crash reduction, the initial benefits seemed numerous. However, all manner of electronic assists get lumped into this one category, and not all are as they seem. In fact, a recent study from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety suggests that some advanced driver assistance systems like Level 2 semi-autonomy and lane-departure avoidance systems might not actually work to reduce crashes. In the words of IIHS senior vice president for research Jessica Cicchino, “With no clear evidence that partial automation is preventing crashes, users and regulators alike should not confuse it for a safety feature.”
To be perfectly clear, we aren’t talking about all purely safety-focused advanced driver assistance systems here. Automatic emergency braking works, and although HLDI data of the makes and models studied show small decreases in overall collision claims, these decreases are still measurable. Plus, that’s not even accounting for the damage mitigation aspect of automatic emergency braking, as these systems can seriously slow a vehicle down before the point of impact is reached, reducing the severity of rear-end collisions.
However, Level 2 automation, a combination of active vehicle speed control and lane-maintaining assistance might not be nearly as effective at preventing collisions. Looking into collision data on Nissan Rogue crossovers equipped with Nissan’s ProPILOT Assist Level 2 advanced driver assistance system, IIHS research found that the upgraded LED headlights frequently bundled into models with this system might actually be responsible for a significant majority of reduced collision rates on these models, as crash reduction rates were the same below 37 mph when some substantial system capabilities are locked out, are identical to those at higher speeds, and the most significant rate changes compared to models without ProPILOT Assist happened in the dark.
Even lane-maintaining assistance features might not actually work as promised. When studying crash data from BMW cars, IIHS found that “neither lane departure prevention alone nor the same feature combined with partial automation had a significant effect on crash rates, either on limited-access highways or on roads with lower speed limits.” Oh, and it’s the same story on Nissan Rogues, with IIHS claiming “There was no significant effect on lane departure crash rates from lane departure prevention.”
So, what does this mean? Well, it means that education on advanced driver assistance systems is critical to road safety, as many of these systems aren’t safety nets, they’re security blankets. This IIHS report indicates that lane-maintaining features and Level 2 semi-automation might not actually reduce collisions by a significant margin, and that has ramifications for both the drivers of cars so-equipped and drivers of other cars. Operators of vehicles with these ADAS systems need to understand that they might not work as promised. Operators of other vehicles need to keep in mind that a mindset of complacency can set it when giving too much trust to fallible systems, so driving defensively around Level 2 semi-automated vehicles is always a good idea.
It’s wishful thinking, but perhaps in the future, some of these systems can be pared back as their efficacy rates disappoint. Removing ineffective features would reduce the cost and complexity of new vehicles, putting a small dent in manufacturing costs and a potentially bigger one in repair costs. At this point, though, one thing’s for certain — the question of whether or not autonomy is a widely beneficial idea is starting to look more and more like a no.
(Photo credits: Nissan, BMW)
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Why have lane departure when you have other vehicles to honk at you?
We didn’t need these stupid safety nannies when no one had cell phones and actually kind of paid attention and drove their damm cars……….Every time I pass a swerving car driving variable speeds and all over the place in their lane, I glance over, and sure enough the asshole is texting looking at their phone and not the road. That offence should be treated the same as a DWI!
People still put on makeup, shoved handfuls of food/drink into their mouths, spilled scalding hot coffee on themselves, shaved, read the newspaper, turned to yell at their passengers fiddled with their radio, freaked out at a bee and did a whole litany of distractions while behind the wheel long before cell phones ever existed.
I’ve been saying this since these systems came out.
My mom’s new(ish) Mercedes has a bunch of things like lane departure warning, and I think it was only a week before she asked me to figure out how to shut all that shit off. That car just beeps and vibrates at everything, and most of the time you don’t even know why. A friend of my parents got a new Subaru, and the automatic braking panicked so hard upon sensing a pothole that he nearly lost control of the car because it was braking so hard. These systems at best lull you into being a lazier driver, and at worst actively make driving more dangerous because they fight the driver to do even stupider things. Autonomous systems need to be a true Level 5, or nothing. These half-measures do not work.
The best lane departure system I experienced was in a ’22 Mustang. If I eased out of my lane it just sent a vibration through the steering wheel, like driving over a small rumble strip. Nice! Meanwhile my Hyundai grabs the wheel and steers me the hell over, even on the lower setting. It just makes the car feel like it’s out of alignment.
I had a Challenger with emergency braking. In a heavy rainstorm I was passing an 18 wheeler on the Interstate. I was going 70 but it was too fast for the conditions, shame on me. Halfway through the pass the car went into full panic mode and flashed warnings, sounded alarms. and applied the brakes fairly hard. If someone had been following too close, I might have ended up under a truck. Despite that, I would rather have emergency braking than not.
Had an M2 rental (Diesel no less) in Europe and it was the same way. Not sure how the Mustang was, but on the BMW it gave feedback from the side where it was sensing my departure. It felt very natural unlike some other systems that were really jarring.
Not departure related, but the engine start/stop was nice in that it detected when the car ahead of me started moving and the engine would be fired up just before I was ready to start moving.
I’m not a BMW fan, but I really liked that car. A lot. So much that I actually considered one of these when it was time for me to finally get a car a couple years ago. That was before I realized forking out that kind of cash didn’t make sense for a car I’d only drive a couple hundred miles a month at most.
The other part of the equation is how many drivers just get fed up with the nannies and turn them off/disable them? Years ago, we had a new Nissan with only a lane-departure warning system and it was turned off after a couple of weeks. Way too much “crying wolf” to be useful.
From the No Shit Files. I’ve been arguing these are more dangerous for precisely the reasons mentioned—they are there to be relied upon, but cannot be relied upon. Someone who has to maintain vigilance is going to be more effective at crash avoidance than someone whose attention is lapsed. But, you stupid dog, people already don’t pay enough attention! No, but the solution isn’t telling them they don’t have to because there are electronic systems programmed exclusively by morons to do that for them. Oh, except the programmed by morons thing and that driving has too many edge case and trolley problem scenarios for them to work properly even if they were programmed by intelligent people, so yeah, you still have to pay attention, but don’t worry, while we’ll discourage any participation in the driving process by removing feedback and defaulting to these systems being on, we’ll try to warn you suddenly at the last moment before a crash by rousing you from a slack-brained stupor with flashing lights and obnoxious noises that don’t immediately indicate the specific nature of the problem. Time, after all, is likely a quirk of quantum mechanics and doesn’t actually exist, so no worries.
I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!
Well… Not that shocked…
Humans are distractable, and it’s all too easy for drivers who don’t really understand how the driver assistance systems work to just put faith in the automation and decide that “the car will keep me safe because it’s designed to be safe!” And then they let attention wander to phones, figuring out confusing infotainment systems, reading newspapers, and so on. And are then shocked when
they“the car” crashes or “that other car” crashes into them.From anti-lock brakes and traction control all the way up to the most recent active ADAS features, it all still depends on an attentive driver behind the wheel. These are safety assists, meant to help an already-engaged driver’s reactions. The car doesn’t keep you safe — utilizing the car’s capabilities keeps you safe.
Operators of other vehicles need to keep in mind that a mindset of complacency can set it when giving too much trust to fallible systems, so driving defensively around Level 2 semi-automated vehicles is always a good idea.
No, how about hell no? Please read that sentence again and insert “drunk driver” or “escaped circus chimp” and tell me again it makes sense. You’re making the argument these cars are inherently dangerous and have no business being on the road. However I’m the one who needs to be more careful. No.
In terms of advanced safety features, my GTI has made me a better driver. I haven’t had an at fault accident in some 40 years. However, the collision warning symbol causes me to increase following distance, and the alarm has trained me (pavlovian) to slow down more when someone is turning ahead of me. Rather than making the calculus that they will be out of the way by the time I get to them. I think rather than say “the car has my back” and creating new bad habits, I’m actually using the system to get rid of old bad habits.
This should be the title of the article:
It Turns Out That Some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
Might Not Actually Reduce CrashesMake Bad Drivers Into Worse DriversAs much as you are logically and ethically correct, at the present time there are a lot of people pouring a lot of money into a lot of pockets to keep said escaped circus chimps on the road, so I doubt we have the power to stop it.
So, seeing as calling your local representative won’t stop the chimpanzee from side-swiping you, I’d recommend driving defensively around the rogue simian in the absence of better options.
So “drive defensively” full stop. That I’m fine with, or “be careful out there”. Both address the general threat of bad drivers. It’s the specificity of “autonomy” that I need to watch out for I think is BS. “The Department of Transportation has placed explosives in the roads that might go off at any time. So they are telling drivers to use caution on the road. There’s nothing we can do about it, we’re completely helpless. So, good luck!”
Yeah, road safety is in a pathetic state right now. Most safety “features” in development are problematic, half-functional placebos based on buzz-words like “AI” to drum up investor interest, not to actually improve safety.
If companies actually cared about safety, all cars would have high-mounted amber turn signals, a dirt-cheap feature that makes a significant statistical difference in crash avoidance. And yet, we see shameful red signals hidden way down in the bumpers of brand new vehicles to save 20 cents per car. Innovation does not improve safety, regulation does.
We started making airbags 51 years ago, ABS 46 years ago and stability control 29 year ago. Since then, the most significant safety advancement we’ve seen was introduced as a result of the small overlap test in 2012: some more chassis bracing. That’s it, just some steel.
Invented as recently as 1300 BC, this groundbreaking technology was introduced to the outer corners of cars 3 years AFTER automatic braking, and its implementation was the last time that road fatalities actually decreased year-over-year. Ever since, fatalities have either leveled out or gone up.
We won’t even get into pedestrian fatalities, because that graph is even uglier. To rub salt in the wound, it actually starts trending up in 2009, the same year that automatic braking was introduced.
All that to say, you’re right.
I remember someone telling me a story that when cars with ABS started coming out, some old lady in their town bought a brand new car with it and crashed immediately upon leaving the dealership because she thought the ABS brakes the salesman told her about were an “Automatic Braking System,” so she didn’t have to pay attention.
Now we’re selling cars with something much easier to mistake for that, which while they do have some benefit to attentive drivers, convince inattentive drivers that they can pay even less attention, giving the useful but flawed technology more chances to screw up.
That sounds suspiciously like the legend of the new RV owner who put his vehicle on “cruse control” and went back to make a sandwich…
Hey, that happened, it was my sister’s uncle’s brother.
“We started making airbags 51 years ago, ABS 46 years ago and stability control 29 year ago. Since then, the most significant safety advancement we’ve seen was introduced as a result of the small overlap test in 2012: some more chassis bracing. That’s it, just some steel.”
Not “just some steel”, better high strength steel and chassis bracing for a lot more than the small overlap test and more. After all it wasn’t airbags, ABS, tires, stability control or small overlap bracing that saved this Altima driver from being crushed by a semi:
https://www.carscoops.com/2021/11/nissan-altima-driver-somehow-survives-being-crushed-by-semi-truck/
Also better tires, better lighting, longer lasting suspension bushings, safer gas tanks, better trucoat (corrosion resistance), and more.
You’re absolutely right, I have a bad habit of over-using hyperbole. Materials engineering has come a long way.
If you over-use hyperbole is that hyper-hyperbole? Or Ultrabole?
I get your frustration that they release these half-baked, unreliable, “assistance” features that might constitute a level 2 system and then expect us to be the careful ones.
However, I think that if you insert escaped chimps or drunk drivers in there instead, it’s still a great idea to drive defensively around them. The moral high ground counts for nothing when they take you out.
Legislation is written in blood. It will count for that.
I’m not climbing to moral high ground, I’m just trying to resist getting dragged down to an idiot’s level. My second comment was that we should “drive defensively full stop”. The author’s statement to be more careful around potentially autonomous vehicles is still silly. We didn’t run PSAs advising people to use extra caution around drunk drivers, we passed laws against drunk driving. So if there is data that these autonomous feature are either half baked or overly depended on and that leads to an increase in accidents, there should be a law against them.
Agreed. I saw your second comment after I posted.
Drunk drivers had been around since the beginning (maybe a few less during prohibition) so I’m pretty sure the standard advice before MADD’s crackdown was to use extra caution around drunk drivers.
If these systems aren’t working then they need to go. At the end of my dad’s driving career, he was going fairly long distances on freeways, completely relying on his Prius to keep him within the lanes, and I assume, do any panic braking for him. He thought it was the best thing ever. (Once we figured this out, we made sure he quit driving.) His was something of an extreme situation and never should have happened, but one that has to be playing out on roads everywhere.
The main thing ADAS do is make drivers INCREDIBLY lazy. Drive a car with them for a few days, then switch to one without and you’ll scare yourself. Stuff like high beam assist and AEB and even blind spot monitors is very useful and can save your ass if youre not paying perfect attention, but lane keep assist and whatnot only serves to make you do less and care less behind the wheel. And it’s become very obvious on our roads.
I’m pretty sure my Volvo’s automatic braking saved my life once when a truck I was following veered off to the left lane without warning to a stopped truck in my lane while I was going120km/h. I was lifting my foot to brake and the car aggressively braked. Would I have made it? I don’t think I would have stopped in time. But it has also braked less aggressively for random nothings. Still, I’m alive, and I will take that outcome.
So well in fact that it’ll prioritize the life off a passing pigeon over the lives of the people in the first car, and all the cars behind them that crash into them due to a sudden slamming of the brakes, and let’s not forget about the wellbeing of the Shadow People. You know, the ones who live in the shadows that set off the AEB systems when literally no visible living being is in front of said sensors.
Dang! I didn’t know about the shadow people. That explains so much…
*insert shocked Pikachu*
Another thing this study didn’t really address is that a lot of these systems depend on good road infrastructure to work properly, and become an active hazard when that’s not the case.
I had a rental Honda Accord in a particularly run-down part of California, and the lane keeping assist was totally unable to deal with all of the faded markers and asphalt patch jobs, and would do it’s level best to hurl you into oncoming traffic in a moment of electronic panic. Same with the emergency braking- every time you had to shift into contraflow thanks to constructions for the aforementioned road conditions, it would think you are about to go head-on into the traffic cones/construction marker trucks/temporary barriers and slam you to a halt. The only safe way to drive the thing was to turn off all of that shit.
Honda is pretty terrible. My 2022 Accord false panic brakes about once a month and collision warns twice per week with literally nothing ahead. Lane Keep is actually Lane Swerve, which isn’t nearly the same. Oh, it also makes errors in reading 25% of speed limit signs, so that “feature” cannot be trusted.
It did seem to be unnecessarily aggressive, odd that Honda would screw it up that badly. One more thing to have to consider when shopping for a new car I guess.
It’s interesting and I wonder what is different between models and years. We have a 21 Pilot Touring and I’m not aware of it ever braking even though it has the feature. It will flash warnings sometimes, like on a curve. I do use the lane keeping sometimes. It isn’t perfect but it is easy to override with just minor effort and if it can’t see clear lane lines, it just goes off until it sees them again. Also, I just push one button on the steering wheel to turn it on and off as needed. Perhaps, one difference is lane departure warning, which I did disable because it was too intrusive. I also turned off adaptive cruise and just use regular cruise. Adaptive cruise would suddenly brake sometimes while approaching a slower truck on the interstate. It made me look like a crazy person because it would brake pretty hard while I was still pretty far back, even on the shortest setting. Or worse, it would do that just as I was signaling and moving into the left lane.
After writing this and re-reading yours I have to wonder if, since it was a rental, you might not have realized that there are two different features at work. Lane keeping and lane departure. I think lane departure did perhaps panic swerve and that is why I turned it off. Lane keeping is much less dramatic and won’t even follow a curve hardly. I could certainly be wrong about your experience. It’s a different car and year so I’m just throwing it out there.
Also, I’m not here as a defender of these features. I don’t even like automatic headlights because I think, just like the rest, they enable laziness. I’m blinded everywhere I go because nobody wants to turn off headlights for parking and various other scenarios. I do think that there’s a lot of confusion between the names of features and capabilities between brands and years. Perhaps The Autopian should do an explainer on all of these which would also be enlightening to anyone that hasn’t driven a new car in a while. I know it was all new to me just a few years ago.
It was 2022, and it seemed like a pretty new Accord, so I would guess either a ’21 or ’22 year model (maybe ’23 model?). Not sure, but it was frigging terrible. When I finally found the menu to turn it off, it was called “lane keeping assist”, but it definitely took a few clicks through the menus on the instrument cluster to do it, no handy single button. Also no memory, so I had to do that each time I started it up.
But I also have to point out that the roads I was driving on were probably the worst I’ve ever seen in America, and that includes quite a lot of rural, back of beyond driving so the conditions were primed for the assists to freak the hell out. I didn’t have any memorable incidences driving to and from the airport on decent roads.
Good news! If you live in Europe all new cars from here on out will rely upon that ultra-accurate speed limit reading system to apply an un-defeatable speed limiter to your car. Don’t you feel safer?
That is not what’s going on at all:
There will be four ways in which ISA systems will work to slow the vehicle down, and it will be up to the manufacturers to pick which one they want to use. The EU regulations permit a system that can use a cascaded acoustic warning, a cascaded vibrating warning, an accelerator pedal with haptic feedback, or a speed control function in which the speed of the vehicle will be gradually reduced.
As you’ve noticed, the first two options may not quite compel any actual changes in speed on the part of the vehicle, and that’s by design. They will also have to be short in duration not to annoy the driver. The latter two options will also have ways for drivers to easily override the warnings, with extra pressure on the pedal by the driver in the case of haptic feedback neutralizing the pushback from the pedal.
“Even in the case of speed control function, where the car speed will be automatically gently reduced, the system can be smoothly overridden by the driver by pressing the accelerator pedal a little bit deeper,” the European Commission adds.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/speed-limiters-now-mandatory-in-all-new-eu-cars/ar-BB1pCj9f
So totally defeatable simply by pushing the gas pedal. Or better yet:
Don’t speed!
Technology that caters to the clueless increases their capacity for stupidity.
Is the Peltzman Effect at play here?
wait? what? is this saying better headlights mean less crashes? and propilot had no effect on the number of crashes?
They’re making kind of a stretch. Basically saying “The propilot + LED equipped models had more of a crash avoidance advantage in the dark than in the day, so maybe it’s just the better headlights”
But they could have just as easily drawn the conclusion that the propilot is more of a benefit at night when human eyes struggle more.
No, because they found similar improvements below 37 mph when ProPilot is locked out. That’s why they can state that headlights were the more likely reason than the assistance systems.
It feels like there’s some potential for the systems to distract drivers by beeping/buzzing in intense situations.
Volvo safety packages are very good, their saved my ass several times. One time the car braked by itself when the car in front of me wasnt able to stop on time and hit the car ahead of it, at the same time my seat belt pushed me against the seat, the alarms went off and the car braked so hard that there was a big gap between me and the car in front of me. Everything happened so fast that the car reacted before I even moved my foot out of the gas pedal to the brake.
On the opposite side, my Pacifica only yells at you but don’t do a thing, also the lane assistance is more of a suggestion than actual taking control.
My experience tracks with yours; I had a 2018 Volvo S90 and the system in that car worked great. The emergency braking only activated once in the 3 years I had it, and it was because someone pulled out right in front of me from a side street and then immediately slammed on their brakes to turn again. The system and my foot hit the brakes at virtually the same time.
Contrast that with my ’22 Outback XT Touring. The system is *awful*. It goes off for no good reason all the freaking time. Person a tenth of a mile in front of me is turning left and is midway through their turn, so I don’t slow down? Car freaks out! Shadow in the road? Car freaks out! Sharp corner coming up and I’m driving faster than a 90yo granny would? Car freaks out! I also won’t use the auto-steer on the cruise control because it loves to place me virtually ON the dashed line instead of in the middle of the lane.
Recently had an XC60 recharge rental in Ireland. I hated everything about it. Thankfully, I didn’t put myself in a situation where I needed the ADAS (though my brother sure did, so I guess I’m glad we had it.. i just pay a lot more attention behind the wheel) but I mostly found it to be incredibly annoying. Maybe because the b roads are super narrow, so the wheel was buzzing all the damn time, but it would panic brake in Dublin for literally no reason (but when my brother would almost rear end a taxi every 30 feet, it didnt do shit).. and the automatic “take your nav away” cameras that popped up every time you didn’t need them, and every time you did it would just say “camera unavailable”. It just seemed like it had all the right ingredients but the software was half baked as hell.
But the worst part of that car was absolutely the hybrid programming for when the electric motor decided you did, in fact, need to be inside of the VW Caddy in front of you if you gave some gas to go up a hill, but you don’t need hybrid assist when you floor it to get on the motorway. Or you do, then you don’t, then you do again, and actually nevermind and gives up. Also the suspension… I guess for the added weight of the hybrid battery.. The dampers must’ve been solid blocks, but the springs were super floaty.
With my brother’s driving, I’m glad we were in a Volvo, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling the software dev team just gave up halfway thru their work.
Idk man, something (everything) about that car just pissed me off.
Insurance companies are all intensely data driven.
I’m surprised there’s not more data out there for/against other features/functions of vehicles that we don’t know about. When insurance companies promote things like winter tires – you know there’s a statistically significant difference in using them vs. not using them.
I wonder if they’ve got data on brands of tires.
I’m surprised that the insurance companies haven‘t organized a campaign against time change twice a year. The data is overwhelming about how bad it is and the politicians obviously need some kind of push.
Well lots of states have passed laws to eliminate the time change, but in the case of mine and the other western states is that the federal law as currently written only allows states to opt out and stay on standard time and we want to stay on daylight savings time. There have been a couple of bills to change the federal law but so far none of them have gone anywhere. I guess CA is considering just going with the law and sticking on standard time, but the three states had initially agreed to make the change together and those of us farther north aren’t as interested in staying on standard time.
No matter which time is maintained the studies do show that the time change does have a lot of negative effects. So yeah it is surprising that the insurance companies weren’t actively lobbying for those bills that have been introduced.
The most famous being Tesla’s Autopilot and (Supervised) Full Self Driving Beta. Having played around with FSD, it’s impressive what it can do. But it fails over at exactly the moment it’s needed like in the middle of a turn or when it gets confused with lane markings.
I do not think this conclusion follows from the article, given that there are more benefits to autonomy than safety.
If the systems in discussion here are necessary prerequisites for true autonomous driving, then they may have value beyond direct safety for the cars where they are equipped.
That’s an excellent point. Even if we had expansive data that showed autonomous cars are exactly equal to unassisted cars, it’s still a pretty cool/nice benefit that drivers can essentially outsource some of the physical and mental duty of driving.
Yeah, a truly self-driving car that I could set and forget, at least on the highway, would be one of the most significant and awesome inventions of my lifetime.
I love driving, I’ll never give up the fun cars I have, but long road trips over familiar ground are not where I get my enjoyment, at least not from the physical and mental aspects of controlling the car.
I think a lot of enthusiasts are hung up on never surrendering control, and I agree with them inasmuch as I don’t believe human driving should ever be banned, but there are certainly times when I *want* to give up control.
I don’t know that adaptive cruise has every been widely promoted as a safety thing, but it certainly is convenient and after driving our cars with it I get very annoyed with driving my vehicles with the old fashioned cruise.
I recently had a rental Silverdo with “lane maintenace assist” and it was suprisingly aggressive. Several times I tried to move into the other lane (with no cars coming) to give a parked car or bike rider some more space as I passed and it would really fight me. Maybe you get use to it?
Such a vast difference in how those systems behave.
Subaru will force you into the absolute middle of the lane and fight you to the death to change it. Whereas Honda will just give you a nudge here/there to keep you somewhere between the lines – and just give you a little wiggle if you were to move out of your lane on purpose.
I had a rental Nissan where the calibration was off on the cameras and it would get mad if I came within an arm’s reach of the right side of the lane, but I could fit half the car into the lane to my left before it noticed.
I’m shocked, shocked! …No, not really. Maybe now we can stop pretending that operating a motor vehicle (i.e. ‘driving’) competently and responsibly isn’t a huge responsibility that carries with it potentially deadly consequences, and that maybe abdicating those responsibilities to automated systems of dubious reliability might be a bad idea?
Keep in mind, folks, as the driver you are still responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle, whether the automated system was actually in control at the time of the accident or not. Given that frame of reference, who in their right mind would cede control while they retain the liability?
These sorts of assistance could not only be ineffective, but make drivers worse if they put too much trust in them. The only slight surprise here is that we don’t see an uptick in accidents with those systems.
Agreed. Having been hit my a moron who was surprised to hit me because she didn’t bother looking and instead just trusted her blind spot monitors, the issue here is not the tech, it’s drivers getting lazy and relying on it. Oh and by the way, I was in front of her… Her front wheel hit my rear door. And she blamed the blind spot monitor…
That’s really funny (not that you got hit – that sucks). What kind of moron doesn’t look in front of them? It sounds like they wouldn’t even have needed to turn their head to see you. The blind spot monitor didn’t work because you weren’t in the blind spot.
Yeah it was incredibly dumb and I really wanted to slap her. Yeah she shouldn’t have needed to turn her head even, I don’t get how she didn’t see me unless she was texting while making a lane change.
It sounds like you know exactly how she didn’t see you then. 😉
But you were in the blind spot that is anywhere she didn’t feel like looking! (/s)
It’s rough out there these days. I wish we had robust transit options and could convince the people who clearly don’t want to drive to use them.
Yeah when you’re looking at your phone your blind spots get bigger, doesn’t the car know it’s supposed to adapt to that?
I have found that the car manufacturers have used some of these systems to their benefit by making the driver reliant on them. I have found that a lot of the CUV’s have awful sightlines out the rear hatch window since they use the camera to allow them to have a smaller window and more metal. I have noticed that some vehicles C pillars are to the point where they will block a vehicle for a second or two. I have found myself trying to use the mirrors and the blind spot monitor in conjunction to only also have to turn my head to double check that area.
I wish that the side mirrors were a little larger on some cars to compensate (and yes, I do the lean over maneuver to catch for the areas that are not in the rear view mirror).
Yeah for sure. Cars are getting harder and harder to see out of. I hate it. I drove a 97 Miata a couple days ago, and even with the hardtop on visibility is so amazing. I love it!
So it was a convenient scapegoat. Like unintended acceleration.
The only thing lane departure warning/assist does for me is get me angry. Super happy my car has memory for those systems, so I turned them off a long time ago and haven’t had to turn them back off since.
Same. I do not need help to keep my car in the goddamn lane. People need to put effort and concentration into driving.