Yesterday, we reported on a Cybertruck that held up quite well in a stupid wreck it seems to have caused itself. Well, not really itself: the inattention of the person who was supposed to be driving was the major factor. The real issue seemed to have been how humans interact with these sorts of advanced driver assist systems, known as ADAS systems. A new study published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives about ADAS systems gives some interesting perspectives, and reinforces some findings that we’ve been aware of for a while, but are worth remembering.
One thing this study introduced me to that I hadn’t really considered before was the classification of ADAS systems into safety-enhancing and comfort-enhancing, but that’s a good way to think about these systems and how they’re intended to interact with us. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that comfort-enhancing systems like cruise control and even adaptive cruise control do not seem to bring safety improvements.
The results were really quite interesting; here’s a summation from the abstract (The exclamation points after all the initialisms is how the copy appears in the study, which makes everything feel weird, just so you know):
The data analysis showed that LKA! (LKA!) (−19.1%) and DMS! (DMS!) (−14%) had the strongest crash rate reduction effects, followed by AEB! (AEB!) (−10.7%). However, systems like ACC! (ACC!) and CC! (CC!) were associated with increased crash rates (+8%, +12%). Categorizing systems by either functional class or interaction type revealed central tendencies favoring safety of longitudinal control and intervening systems, while comfort-enhancing systems showed detrimental effects.
LKA is lane keeping assist, DMS is driver monitoring systems – the thing that makes sure you’re paying attention – and AEB is automatic emergency braking. ACC and CC are adaptive cruise control and regular cruise, which actually were found to be associated with more crashes!
I think the explanation for why that seems to be the case has to do with the same issues we’ve seen with Level 2 semi-automated systems like Tesla’s FSD or GM’s SuperCruise: the vigilance problem. If a system does most of the work, it’s hard for people to remain focused and vigilant on what the system is doing. Couple that with, as the study states (emphasis mine):
“However, it is not a requirement that ACC! detects stationary or slow-moving objects (International Organization for Standardization, 2018), and users might place too much trust in the systems’ capabilities, tempting them to engage in distractions, which could both be detrimental to safety (Moeckli et al., 2015, De Winter et al., 2014, Hoedemaeker and Brookhuis, 1998).”
The problem, as always, is with us. We’re humans, we get distracted easily, and comfort-enhancing systems tend to just make us even more distracted, because of course they do. That’s sort of their point, perversely, even if we pretend like it’s not. We couch these systems as being advantageous for safety, when what they really do is allow our focus to wander away from the task of driving.
The study also is good for thinking about these systems taxonomically. The paper breaks down these systems into two main classes, Functional and User Interaction:
User interaction
refers to a categorization of the way that systems interact with the driver and/or vehicle. Informing systems passively provide information; warning systems are also passive, in the sense that they cannot exert control over the vehicle, but these systems convey their information by actively drawing attention when pertinent. Intervening systems are like warning systems in that they act in case of emergency, but these systems do exert control over the vehicle. Finally, comfort-enhancing systems also control the vehicle, albeit at the driver’s request, that is, when there is no immediate need to intervene to ensure safety.
Another interesting thing this study does is to introduce some new categorization ideas, based around the concepts of control and urgency:
Informing systems are just like passive nav systems and things like that: information without related actions. Warning systems like automatic collision detection have lots of urgency, but don’t necessarily take control. An intervening system is something like automatic emergency braking: lots of urgency, lots of control. And finally, cruise control and adaptive cruise do a lot of controlling, but minimal urgency.
This quadrant system allows them to have charts like these:
The paper isn’t all that long, and I suggest giving it at least a quick read; I think we’re at a point where the technology for automated and assisted driving systems is getting quite advanced, and is rapidly passing our own overall thought about what sort of systems actually make sense, and how these systems should be implemented.
Comfort-enhancing systems are, of course, good and desirable, but we need to really consider the safety losses that they can bring, at least in their current states. We also need to be realistic about who we, as humans are, and not turn away from our failings because they will come back to bite us in the ass. If we can feel like we’re getting away with doing something like driving while paying less attention, we will happily do that, and not think about safety at all. We’re kind of idiots that way.
The more of these studies we can see, the better as far as I’m concerned. This is a drum we need to keep hammering upon, because carmakers will always just give us what sells unless forced to change by outside forces. It would be nice if, for once, we could actually try to do the smart thing from the get-go.
Any system encouraging a driver to pay less attention has a high potential of doing more harm than good. The time it takes for a driver to orient to a situation once an assist feature leaves its operational envelope, and the type of action taken once they do, is truly a disaster in the making. The systems tend to replace many low-risk incidents with less frequent but much higher-risk ones. There is a fundamental difference between systems like antilock brakes, which make the brakes work better, and those promising to allow the person in control of the vehicle to pay less attention.
From a consumer standpoint keep in mind that if the car maker selling you the system won’t assume liability for what happens when it is used, it isn’t something you want to use.
Been driving a 2024 Ford F150 with hands free Blue Cruise the last 2 weeks and I’ve found it pretty amazing on the highway. On 94 between Detroit and Chicago I probably used it 90 percent of the time on a long drive. I really enjoyed it. Once traffic was heavier in the city I was happy to take control but for the long boring stretch between it was very nice and relaxing.
On my 2023 Bolt I really enjoy the ACC. The LKA is kind of trashy tho.
I’m surprised regular cruise control is a negative.
A rental 2023 Corolla had the ACC and lane keeping, but beeped at you if you took your hands off the wheel. That, I get how it encourages complacency.
But regular cruise control? You’re setting speed but direction is entirely up to you…right?
I dunno. But clearly my anecdote does not quash the data.
I’m surprised by regular cruise control being dangerous as well. I guess the issue is still a lack of attention from the driver but I’ve always been of the opinion that everyone on the interstate should use it when not in traffic. Passing and getting passed by the same car over and over while my speed has not changed drives me nuts.
I also use it to deter myself from speeding. I just sit in the right lane going five over and interact with less cars and it’s nice.
Absolutely. It’s one thing when I pass and am passed by a semi because they’re pushing the limits of their engine/governor with changing inclines, but passing and getting passed repeatedly by small passenger vehicles is really annoying.
I go 67 in PA (on either 65 or 70 limit roads) and in either case end up finding myself usually in the right lane but still passing people a surprising amount of the time. But yes, it’s also a great deterrent for speeding when the Free Bird solo comes on.
Drives me nuts too. CC also saves gas
While that’s a legit gripe, I have more frequently seen two cars on cruise control back up both lanes of an interstate by not quite passing each other… as they gain and loose small amounts of speed because their systems react to terrain slightly differently.
You’ve got to speed up while passing people, if it takes more than a few seconds you are doing it wrong.
I hate people just hanging out beside me instead of passing, it’s stuff like that that encourages my speeding with the excuse of getting away from idiots.
I reckon there’s still a large subset of drivers who dont know that you shouldnt use Cruise Control in poor weather conditions. People are just happily chugging along with the cruise on, hit a large puddle or patch of ice, the wheels lose grip, and things go south in a hurry.
Im guessing. I dont know that for sure
Probably due to people using cruise control in winter conditions.
I’m surprised too. For me, sample of one, the cruise control allows me to pay more attention to the situation, the driving, while the Car takes care of power management on hills. Regular cruise control is safer, for me, I think, than not having it. I’ve never had ACC
I’d be interested in ACC without it doing the steering for me, but I don’t know what vehicles might have had that particular combination.
ACC as I’ve experienced it doesn’t do any steering. It works like regular CC except it detects vehicles in front of you and adjusts the set speed to match them at a distance you also set (assuming they don’t speed up beyond your set speed). Lane Keeping Asist is what helps with steering, but it can be turned on or off separate from ACC.
I should note the only vehicles I’ve driven with ACC or LKA or both were two Toyotas and a Subaru, so other manufacturers may vary.
Plain ACC can be quite nice, if implemented properly. The Toyotas I’ve driven with ACC were great; you could increase or decrease your following distance (I kept it at the maximum allowable), and whatever system the vehicles used to detect vehicles worked great. ACC is particularly nice if you’re on a stretch of interstate where the speed limit changes frequently; you don’t have to worry about constantly tweaking the speed setpoint, since it adjusts automatically based on the car in front of you. Of course, this assumes you’re driving in a place where people aren’t constantly cutting in front of you.
Lane keep assist, on the other hand, has scared the heck out of me on many occasions, mainly because I felt feedback in the steering before I saw the indicator briefly flash on the cluster. On the most recent occasion, I briefly thought the vehicle was sliding. I could definitely see an inexperienced or even mildly distracted driver having a moment of panic in a situation like that.
Regular cruise control annoys me, and I never use it even when making my bi-annual family run from Texas to Washington state. I feel like it makes you less sensitive to road conditions and the traffic around you. I want to feel fully in control of my car, not just aiming it down the road.
On CC you are fully in control. Your brake pedal is still useful.
I’m really liking Jason’s common sense articles on tech in cars. We do not have to accept what the manufacturers are selling. Carry on!
My eye-opening experience with LKA happened while riding shotgun with my then-80 year old Dad. He had been raving about how great his new Prius was because, “It practically drives itself!”. We did the 40 minute drive from his place to my sister’s, pinballing from one side of the lane to the other the entire way there and back. He thought it was all great because the car was handling everything, but if something unexpected had happened – say, a hay bale dropping off of a truck in front of him – we’d have been toast. Needless to say, we got him out of that car shortly thereafter. But it was scary how the LKA basically allowed someone who shouldn’t have been on the road at all to pretty much appear as though they could drive. Terrible stuff.
And! that! is! a! really! interesting! study! Well! worth! the! read!
+1 for the exclamation marks
Just wondering when sitting behind the wheel with LKA on just what do people do rather than driving themselves?
Maybe they “drive” themselves (wink)
I’m not some big fancy writer on a famous car emag. However, if it was up to me I’d put the definitions of the abbreviations before or next to the first use of them rather than at to he end. A whole lot less scrolling that way.
I seem to remember these level 2s having a requirement to make sure the driver was looking ahead or paying attention or had their hands on the wheel or something. Is that no longer a thing? Otherwise how did Cyberdud wreck the truck?
It makes sense as one encourages checking out and the other assists someone who is only half checked out, but still (sort of) operating the vehicle. Personally, I hate all these systems and I treat every drive like a sortie (as someone with ADD, driving is one of the few things I’m actually able to maintain long term focu—shit, what kind of bird just flew by my window?), so I only notice these systems when they (not infrequently) malfunction and their unexpected alerts/intervention raise my stress level for no damn reason and require me to shout a long string of curses and creatively gruesome threats to the entire lineages of every asshole who works on the things.
While on a boring highway drive, I turned on LCA in my wife’s 2024 Subaru Impreza just to see what it would do. It took about 60 seconds for her to look over and say “why the hell are you suddenly driving like an idiot – do you want me to barf?” All it did was drift from one side of the lane to the other, never holding a straight line. I suppose that’s better than my Camry, though, which consistently picks trying to drag itself along a Jersey barrier over kissing the yellow line, especially in the fast lane. It’s like it has a death wish. Both systems are permanently turned off…
I once got pulled over in Eureka CA for weaving within my lane. When the cop said that I replied so you are pulling me over for driving legally? He laughed and said I guess so. It is a great story involving hard of hearing cops, a 1 on 8 cop fight, and 6 hours of Barney Miller followed up by calling up my boss to explain why I would not make it into work after he had already been contacted by the newsroom of the newspaper we both worked informing him of the arrest and asking if they should publish it per normal operating procedures. The answer was yes.
Wait what?
Can we get the full story? Maybe as an article on some car related website.
I only experience with lane keeping assist is in my wife’s Subaru cross tek when I visit her in Brooklyn. With 100 years of infrastructure like old trolley tracks, seams in the pavement after excavations and the cryptic messages that ConEd workers leave in the street randomly popping up, it’s like the car has a severe case of ADD and drives like a dog chasing squirrels. God only knows what it would do in Manhattan, where the avenues randomly go from four lanes to five lanes wide and back again.
As a human driver, I just adhere to the general rule that it’s probably a good idea to have an equal amount of space on each side of the car and maybe if it’s less than say 8 inches and closing, maybe it’s time to hit the brakes.
Of course, if I drove like that in my part of California, I’d probably get shot.
My wife has a 2021 Honda Pilot.
ACC works just fine. I really like it on long trips.
AEB is turned off after the stupid car would slam on the brakes for no reason. This happened multiple times and almost caused a few accidents. It still alerts to brake when it detects oncoming traffic while going around a curve or for any other reason it can find. We fucking hate this ‘feature’ and it scares the crap out of my wife every time it ‘alerts’.
LKS is hilarious. On very well marked roads, LKS will snake between the white lines. Seriously, it just snakes the entire time.
If the road is anything other than perfect, LKS goes insane. It can’t figure out where to go. This POS is also turned off and never used.
I drove a 2022 Honda Accord and AEB and LKS were just as bad.
I realized recently that LKA induces within myself a sense that I might be able to devote not quite as much energy to the task than as without such a feature. This is of course a ridiculous and stupid thought, but probably the exact thing Jason has been highlighting for years. The LKA system in my car isn’t very good either, so I have no real trust in it, yet here I am having such thoughts. I know it’s borne of fatigue because I like doing a good job driving, but I still caught myself thinking it. If it can happen to me, it can happen to others.
I’m beginning to think the only safe way to use these systems is in a totally adversarial manner wherein you take it as a challenge to find them failing and derive enjoyment from catching those failures. Anything else is essentially Russian Roulette.
So ask yourself, how long can I play something that requires complete attention without a break? That’s essentially the situation with these assist systems. Would you willingly take a basketball or hockey pick to the face? Would you play football blindfolded? Of course not, but you might trust a driver assist system?
Back in college I got to test out some pre-production ACC vehicles. The “adversarial manner” driving was quite amusing, testing out what would happen with situations such as two ACC enabled cars following a 3rd car half in each lane, or switching lanes half a car length behind another car (we confirmed that the radar wouldn’t pick up a car less than 6 feet ahead). One thing I decided wasn’t worth the risk testing was a situation where I was in the right lane of the interstate on a curve, the car in front of me that ACC was following was exiting straight, and everyone was quickly coming to a stop just ahead, so I hit the brakes instead of waiting to see if the car would figure it out. It was a fun day of experiments, but not something I’d actually want as a consumer.
Ditto. I left LKA on for a couple of weeks after I first bought a vehicle with it. I shut it off because had an annoying habit of fighting me on perfectly straight stretches of road (I have a sneaking suspicion it did this to force small corrections so it could tell if you had your hands on the wheel, but it was infuriating).
However, the other really bad thing I noticed was that I would think, “Oh, I can look away from the road because the LKA will keep going the right direction,” which is terrible. I’m 99% sure everyone who uses these ADAS systems has similar thoughts, but I’d bet most are not self-aware enough to realize how bad it is.
It’s a spooky feeling when you realize it’s happening and just how stupid it is, isn’t it? But is just sneaks up on you with a subtle temptation to just be an idiot for a quick second. It’s kind of astonishing, but there it is anyway.
And now that you mention it, I totally agree with forcing the small corrections as an attention test/reminder. It’s quite frustrating when you’re going arrow straight down the dead center of a well marked lane and suddenly you feel a tug you have to resist. Grrrr.
Yep. If I, a person who absolutely does not trust these systems, can fall prey to it, what chance does the average car buyer who was told “the car practically drives itself!” have?
‘Practically’ reminds me so much of Newt saying: “They mostly come at night, mostly”.
It’s that level of scary.
Yes, the more that we can objectively show the stupidity and safety tradeoff for these conveniences, the better.
I can’t remember where I read it, or whether it’s all anecdotal, but I saw where ACC and LKA reduced fatigue by about 10% over very specific, long drives, allowing people to drive a little more before getting the perception that their fatigue is making them dangerous…but this ironically shows that they’re probably becoming more dangerous along the way.
I’m still a little amazed when I see people get on the interstate for just a couple miles and go straight to cruise control, like it’s required. I suspect the future for these aids will be sections of highway where they’re allowed, but most public roads where they’re not. And enforcement will be a huge PITA.
The exclamation points and second mention in the brackets make me think this study was written by Chappel Roan.
I’m Rick James, B*TCH! (B*TCH!)
If you read the report, however, it’ll note that ACC (+8%) is ‘safer’ than basic CC (+12%). Implying that the increased automation of the ACC is arguably safer.
My car’s primitive LKA, and AEB seem to work well enough for me to consider them a reasonable safety backup. And the data supports that theory showing LKA , and AEB provides a 19.1%, and 10.7% reduction, respectively, in crash rate.
Not “safer” – less unsafe. And, with the context of this paper, I’m not sure those two data points tell us there is a linear relationship here.
No.
No.
Nope!
Golden Age Of Enthusiast Cars? the Dump asks. People can be enthusiastic about all manner of absurd things. I’d argue that Engagement is The critical aspect of an enthusiast car. Also that peak average Driver competence is long past, definitely pre connected car, possibly pre internet, since we had to amuse ourselves by building and having fun with gocarts and minibikes which was the style at the time.
They didn’t have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
For wearing on your belt!
Which was the style at the time…so where was I? Oh, yeah…
Wait, does somebody make a bugeye front clip for NA Miata‘s?
Requires passenger compartment filling robot purchase.
I mean, someone clearly should
Very unimpressed with the LKA system in my Escape. It’s doesn’t seem to work but about 50% of the time. It seems to engage mostly when I’m clearly changing lanes. When I drift over a bit, sometime it will gently nudge me so I stay in the lane, but sometimes it doesn’t, yet it doesn’t shake the steering wheel like when I’m actually changing lanes. Yes, putting on the turn signal does let you change lanes without the shaking, but if I’m the only person on the road I don’t see the need to do that.
You’re the only person you SEE on the road. If you knew you were going to block another driver you wouldn’t change lanes in the first place – it’s exactly when you DON’T know that another vehicle is a factor that signalling becomes important. And, given what you’ve explained about your driving habits, I’m less than confident that are maintaining an active and high-frequency scan of the lanes around you.
Don’t make this a decision, because you will inevitably be wrong. Just signal every time you change lanes, exactly the same way.
100% agree
The me drifting over a bit is actually me doing it on purpose to test the system – when no traffic is about. I drive 40-50k miles a year, have done so for 30+ years and haven’t side swiped or changed lanes into anyone. In fact I do maintain a very active scan and memory of every car around me. I’m just thinking about someone who relies on the system for safety rather than actually paying attention.
Turn signals for all lane changes. Should be an automatic muscle memory from doing it all the time
Bingo.
I hate the ACC system in my wife’s RAV4. I’m cruising down the interstate, monitoring the road for debris and pot holes, scanning the ditches and roadside for deer, waiting for the car in front of me to get just a bit closer so I can go around… and after a bit I finally realize it never got closer and I’m doing 65 in an 80 zone. Lots of cars are now flying past me and I can’t get in the other lane safely to pass the slow vehicle.
Not all new car features are improvements.
Yep – ACC is clearly programmed by lawyers and the ghost of my wife’s dead grandmother, both of whom demand at least 10 (very large) car lengths between you and the next vehicle.
I’ve driven two vehicles with ACC, one a Ford Fusion platinum, probably back in 2018 as a rental. The system worked flawlessly, and was a joy to use. The other was last year, I rented a new RAV4 to do the loop around the Grand Canyon. The ACC system did exactly what you described, it was a terrible experience and all I wished for was an old fashioned set it to a speed cruise control system. I don’t know who tuned the Toyota ACC system but they need to spend 10,000 miles driving it as reprimandation of how terrible it is.
Isn’t that what its meant to do? Can’t you adjust the distance to the car you are behind in the RAV4 like you can any other car?
You can adjust the distance, but it doesn’t seem to be sticky, so it requires adjustment every time the car starts. That and the wife likes the longer distance, so I’m only supposed to use it when she’s not in the car. (The old Sorento had automatic wipers when I drove and she was in the passenger seat, as the wiper stalk was on her side of the steering wheel. The F-150 doesn’t have this feature, as the stalk is on the other side.)
The CC is actually one thing I miss about my old CR-V – the cruise was toggled by a switch on the dash that stayed where you last set it, so every time you got in you only had to hit Set to reengage. We never turned it off, so one press and you were good to go. Now it’s a press to turn it on and another (different button) to set it, and then a click or two (or five if I got too click happy) on yet another button if I get to adjust the distance.
This is exactly the reason ACC is worse than CC. It defeats the purpose of CC, which is to maintain consistent speed. Like you, I time my lane changes based on distance to the car in front of me as well as other vehicles along, accounting for relative motion. Get over too early and you’re potentially blocking the lane from someone behind you. Wait until it’s too late and the car has slowed you down to match the car in front, which is exactly not the point of CC. My personal belief is that the people who love to use ACC don’t understand how to or simply just don’t use CC.
Pretty sure I know how CC works and to me CC and ACC work together. For instance in a very common scenario I’ve got my CC say on 100km/h and I am coming up to a car thats doing 98km/h in my lane but there is someone in the overtaking lane doing 105km/h coming up to the side of me with CC I either have to brake to turn off the CC (possibly causing the car behind me to panic) or manually step down on the steering wheel control to try match the speed the car in front is going (guessing) while I wait for the speeding car to get around then I move to the overtaking lane. set my CC again once I have got back upto speed.
Or, let ACC take care of the slowing down and speeding up bit. Its not like I’m unaware about what speed I’m doing I just don’t have to go through the process of adjusting speed every few minutes. Much more relaxing. What am I doing wrong MGA?
In the situation you describe, the correct action is to slow down behind the car in front of you as you described or accelerate around the car in front so as not to interfere with the consistent speed of the approaching car and not slowing yourself down. You seem to be using the system correctly. My issues are when people do NOT continue around the car in front and instead just sit there at the reduced speed, which results in leap frogging up and down the highway.
In my experience using ACC, there’s also a matter of how other drivers react on the road. Here in Atlanta, if I’m coming up in a right lane and will soon need to merge left to pass, if I do it too soon, one of the natives ahead of me will see this, panic, then get over in to the passing lane while they still can before my passing them prevents them from it. Strategically, you need to get up behind them closer than an ACC will allow, then quickly get left to pass then back right without changing speed. The odds of the car in front getting in the way in this scenario are much, much lower. This isn’t possible with ACC short of overriding it.
I tried. I really tried to make it through this post, but my mind kept wandering and I dropped my phone. What were you saying?
First, there’s plenty of space on that chart for the acronym’s expansions. I don’t care about elks and printed circuit boards.
Next, it’s interesting what this study means for the bar for acceptable un-safety for convenience. You’re not getting cruise control out of people’s hands. If any new system comes in and credibly says “as safe as cruise control” you can sell quite a bit of risk to people. Which is roughly where we’re going.
Finally, I still think we’re progressing towards more safety. I think driving is getting harder. I think commutes in congested traffic are worse – partly because of housing issues, partly because we’re not all doing it 5x a week so we’re less practiced – and I think we’re expected to be responsive to our phones even when driving.
It’s difficult for many – especially under 25 – to ignore their phones. Having to ignore them while driving comes at a real cognitive load cost.
We’re also kinda expected to be perfect navigators because of our phones. I used to often do plenty of u-turns when I was navigating pre-gps. It was normal, nobody said anything, I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t mind skipping an exit because the merge was too unpleasant. I could figure out a u-turn via the next stop or something else. That kind of flexibility isn’t really as implicit, I think, now when you’re accustomed to perfect routing every time.
I’m looking forward to self-driving cars, I really am. When I’m in my truck, I just want to get places. I’m happy to let it drive itself. I have motorcycles for enjoyment.
The flip side to “expected to be perfect navigators because of our phones” is I swear I see more people swerving across multiple lanes of traffic to get off the freeway at the last minute than i used to-which I would theorize is caused by people planning ahead less bc they’re just waiting for directions from their phone. Of course the irony is thanks to having GPS missing your exit is less of a big deal than ever and certainly not worth getting in a wreck over.
Cruising in the left lane with a line of cars behind them and people trying to pass on the right then suddenly braking and making a quadruple lane change should be worthy of the death penalty.
This. People no longer seem to realize, it’s OK to make a U-turn or have to go to the next intersection because you maybe missed a turn. You don’t have to pull some Atlantan maneuver and fuck up everyone else around you.
There’s parts of human behaviour called cognitive load an minimum engagement. Cognitive load is the required mental effort to perform a task, be that solving a problem, focusing on something, or even simply staying awake. Minimum engagement is the required level of cognitive load for the brain to properly dedicate resources to a given task.
Driver assist systems reduce cognitive load to almost nothing. As a result the task of driving often does not reach the threshold for minimum engagement. Thus the brain tries to occupy itself by generating another task that does reach the threshold for minimum engagement.
Often the fastest and most accessible way to do this is with interactive media. Watching video feeds on your phone, playing your Nintendo Switch, so on and so forth. When you don’t have access to these there’s a yearning for them because it’s stimulation you don’t currently have. Your brain is doing something else rather than the task at hand.
In recent years as multiple things have failed the meet the threshold for minimum engagement because the cognitive load has been offset to somewhere else, there have been calls to reintroduce tedium and complexity. Psychologists are doing studies that indicate (but do not have definite results yet) doing so increases attention span and prevents neuron atrophy.
In short automation beyond a certain level drives you more and more towards being Frito Pendejo levels of stupid.
I had to look up Frito Pendejo… I forgot he was the guy from the documentary Idiocracy.
Wasn’t he one of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho’s cabinet members?
He was the lawyer of the main character who screwed up so spectacularly that he got his client imprisoned. He later became vice president when Camacho ended his term because the main character wanted someone so stupid as to be ineffective in meddling.
Ah yes, Dax Shepherd’s character… I actually totally forgot his name.
100% agree on all points! I used to work as a quality assurance evaluator and a major part of the job was performing over-the-shoulder evaluations on people performing a tedious, repetitive job. As taxing as you might think performing a tedious, repetitive task is, you should try watching someone do a tedious, repetitive task. It was so much more mentally taxing being the evaluator than it ever was for me being the person being evaluate. When you’re the person performing the task you know what you’re about to do and can take little mental breaks because you’re the one in control; when you’re the one monitoring things, you never know what the other person is about to do or where they might do something wrong and you may need to intervene (in case of imminent safety concerns) or take detailed mental notes (as to not tip the other party off with a lot of furious scribbling).
I look at driving in much the same way. Until the manufacturers are willing to take liability for accidents for FSD crashes, they pose an increased risk. Everything short of that which removes engagement (and associated focus) from the driver is a negative since the human brain will just find something else to occupy itself…
Yes! Driving should be tedious! It should be hard work that requires ATTENTION (ATTENTION!) I’m sure that when I’m driving my 1973 Skoda 100 I am a better driver than when barelling down the roads in my wife’s SUV (SUV!!). Good bad cars need your engagement to offer this few seconds of driving bliss, just before the imminent threat of clutch cylinder failing again. Cognitive overload FTW!
This is the problem. This is a choice the driver can make can make. They can choose to supplement that required stimulation with a multimedia device, or they can supplement that required stimulation with an activity that keeps their attention on the task at hand. Watch how the Lane Centering system is controlling the car. Watch traffic around and predict how they’ll act. Actually check on-ramps for merging cars. The problem is that the average person is lazy and chooses the path of least resistance (the phone) vs dedicating the freed up brain power on higher levels of the current task. These features are wonderful things when not used by the people with the Frito Pendejo levels of stupidity. I don’t want to be punished by these people’s inattentiveness.
The other day my funtodrive2020hondacrv slammed on the brakes seemingly out of nowhere and scared the shit out of everybody involved. I guess it doesn’t make sense to turn off safety features, but if they’re classified as driver aids, I say the less drivers, the better, and I’d disable it if I could. I don’t let my passenger co-drive, so why would I want the computer to take control?
This is an interesting juxtaposition with Mercedes’ piece on seat belts from yesterday.
It’s great that there are now studies that quantify it, but it’s really common sense to think that systems that require less attention will be given less attention, potentially resulting in worse results. Combine this with the very rudimentary warning systems that sound the alarm because of a particularly dark shadow, or a tight turn with walls on the outside. It really makes me skeptical of mandates for these technologies.