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Comment by Kevin_S | Hacker News Reader

I've been in 3 minor car accidents, ALL 3 have come where someone read-ended me in this way. I am constantly conscious of this and am always keeping an eye on the car behind me when I'm in this situation.

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This is why Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) is the most important safety feature since the advent of the seatbelt. It's going to save many lives.

Yes, it's relatively simple things like this that can actually improve car safety right now, no self-driving capabilities necessary. Automatic braking, lane departure warning, dead-spot detection, driver attention detection, missed signal warnings, etc.

I don't understand why we are not investing all of the efforts and resources that are now spent to develop full self-driving capibilities, into making existing viable safety technology cheaper, and eventually mandatory. I'm 100% convinced it would have a much bigger impact on traffic safety, in a much shorter timeframe, to the point we don't even need self-driving cars anymore. At least not for safety purposes.

Come to think of it, maybe the whole self-driving car hype is not actually because companies want to improve car safety, but because they see new business models based around them, and we, the public, need to be convinced self-driving cars will be safer than alternative technologies or modes of transportation.

It's certainly because of the potential market. Nobody is even claiming to be researching self-driving cars for the safety, it's always because of the potential.

Yes, AEB and Adaptive Cruise are the two most important features I looked for in a car. I ended up leasing an EV without them (waiting for my Model3), but my next vehicle will require these (for example, almost all Toyota models have similar features - TSS-P warns for frontal crash but doesn't brake immediately).

Since beginning of this year I almost exclusively drive cars with some kind of front facing radar for AEB/ACC. On one hand there were situations where imminent collision warnings or even AEB were useful, on the other the amount of false positives for collision warning is annoying and in some cases actually dangerously distracting.

And for some reason the minimal front distance for WV's ACC is almost an order of magnitude larger than safe braking distance, so other drivers see no issue with changing lanes into that large free space in front of you.

So in all, this technology obviously requires some work both in terms of reliability and in terms of UX.

Two thoughts:

1. Why don't people pay attention to break lights? It's hard for me to relate to people who are always stopping last minute.

2. When someone is driving aggressively or erratically behind me, I break-check them as often as a I feel I need. Won't solve all rear-end issues, but it improves your chances of avoiding accidents.

Pretty sure it'll increase your chances of being IN an accident.

One of the most common accident modes is right-turn-on-red. The first car will stop (or not), creep forward, etc. If they see an opening -- or think they seen an opening -- they'll let off the brakes and begin to roll under idle power or even accelerate slightly. Of course, this is the cue that they're making a right on red, so the 2nd car in line will also accelerate and at the same time look to the left for oncoming traffic. And BAM, you rearend the car in front of you because you only thought it was pulling out. It's the perfect storm of misreading the situation, and the situation demanding that you look somewhere other than where you're going.

Come to think of it, I've been hit from behind this way twice, and done it to someone else once.

I'm sure self-driving behavior is a factor here, but I also suspect that breaking and passing at intersections is just a common cause of zero-damage accidents. After all, one of the collisions in the story was a bike rear-ending a car - how many drivers would report that if there was no damage?

if someone is going to rear-end you, there's not much you can do (even if you can see it coming), other than brace yourself

Hrmmm. I've avoided two by knowing the stop was coming and watching the rear view -> move to shoulder.

I've heard (citation needed) that if you are going to be in an accident the best step to take is to relax.

Anecdotally, it depends on how far away you see it coming. I'm constantly scanning front, rear mirrors, and side mirrors and if someone is driving erratically I take steps to get out of their way (in a safe and predictable manner of course!) I have no evidence this keeps me safer, but this and other "traffic calming" behavior I engage in makes my commute less stressful. It has the nice side-effect of continuous practice that reinforces good driving techniques.

"if someone is going to rear-end you, there's not much you can do (even if you can see it coming), other than brace yourself"

.. and by "brace yourself", you would touch your head to your headrest so that your neck has nowhere to move/flex with the impact. You want all of your body to be completely rearward in your seat.

Also, while this may be morally negative, if there is another car in front of you, you could creep forward and lightly touch their car with your own, making yourself the middle ball in the Newtons Cradle[1] that your three cars now describe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cradle

Unless you can guarantee contact, is moving towards another car a good idea? Intuitively (which of course could be _completely_ wrong), it doesn't seem like being forced to decelerate sooner would be useful.

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