I've seen enough complaints about features like automatic emergency braking to be quite scared—not of the tech features, but of the drivers who are so overconfident that they are unwilling to accept any false positives from a safety feature and would rather endanger others by eschewing those features entirely.

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cjs_ac 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I live in rural England where the road network is medieval, lane markings represent the opinion of someone who’s never driven a car and getting personal with a hedge is just part of letting an oncoming combine harvester pass. These anti-collision systems cause accidents under these conditions, but the manufacturers don’t accept liability, so they can go and fuck themselves.

I’m sure they work fine in laboratory conditions, but that’s not my use case.

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pavel_lishin 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Some of those safety features, I believe, are a hindrance to safe driving.

Example one: I drove a rental car that had a feature where the side mirrors would blink yellow when a car was in my "blind spot"; but that's very distracting, and I arrange my mirrors to minimize my blind spot to zero. I do not want this feature.

Example two: lane assist. The car's steering wheel would gently nudge me back into the lane when it thinks I'm leaving the lane. Except where I drive, there's a lot of road construction, so sometimes the lane markers don't actually indicate the actual lanes - sometimes there's new lanes painted over the old, without removing the old ones, and sometimes not. So I'm happily driving along through a construction zone, and suddenly my steering wheel decides that I need to GO RIGHT.

Things like emergency brakes when I'm backing up and the car thinks a bush branch is a child are annoying, but ultimately probably a net good, along with the "vehicle ahead has moved" beep. The "BEEP BEEP BEEP OBJECT AHEAD" is objectively good.

	▲	wnissen 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This may not be the type of hot take that generates clicks, but I agree with you think we'll eventually settle on a collection that actually work. The 2017 Subaru I drive from time to time initiates emergency braking about half the time I back out of the driveway; not due to to cross traffic, but the driveway is pretty slanted and it thinks I'm in imminent danger of colliding with... the road. But the concept of emergency braking is a good one, overall. Lane assist, as you mention, is one of those that I'm sure works perfectly on the manufacturer's track in testing. No construction, no exits, no problem! The first Hyundai I drove with lane keeping would "keep" me in my lane... right off the next exit on the freeway. I still think in places like Puerto Rico, with twisty, inconsistently maintained roads, that lane keeping is a hazard (there's a reason everyone drives straight down the middle until reaching an oncoming car). But the vehicles I've driven lately do a pretty good job even though they complain more than I'd like when entering or exiting a merge. Just like physical buttons are making a comeback (not everywhere, have you seen the new all-screen Mercedes EV?) the safety features will settle down into a happy medium eventually.