New Cars’ Pedestrian-Safety Features Fail in Deadliest Situations
wsj.com
wsj.com
It's VERY easy to lose a pedestrian in the A-pillar (windshield pillar) of modern cars, particularly due to how large these units have gotten to accommodate side curtain airbags.
Note that the fixtures on the body don't have to 100% optically obscure things for them to be 'invisible' to the driver.
https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s...
>It gets even worse. Not only can we not see though solid objects; research has shown that we tend not to look near to the edges of a framed scene. In plain language, we tend not to look at the edges of a windscreen. So, not only do the door pillars of a car represent a physical blind spot, but our eyes tend not to fixate near to it, leading to an even bigger jump, or saccade, past a door pillar. This is called windscreen zoning.
In 2001 Volvo released a concept car called the SCC (safety car concept) that had see through a pillars!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_SCC
image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Goteborg...
A couple of weeks ago I was driving along a steep valley with constant winding hairpin turns for over an hour, and I'd never been more aware of the fact that the pillars prevented me from seeing any oncoming traffic whatsoever when curving (extremely) left, even if I craned my neck as far as I could to the right. The pillar just blocks it all out.
It was really disturbing to drive knowing you just can't see if there's oncoming traffic or not, and if they're in their lane or drifting into yours. You just have to hope and pray everybody's staying in their (narrow) lane.
Absolutely sucks from a safety and awareness perspective. I consider myself a really responsible and careful driver, and I hated being put in such a literally blind situation.
Apparently instead of just making the pillars thicker to satisfy rollover ratings like many manufacturers, they used some engineering and higher strength materials to reinforce it. (https://www.subaru.ca/WebPage.aspx?WebSiteID=282&WebPageID=2...)
My wife (unfortunately) has a Jeep Renegade. Every time I get in it I'm surprised she doesn't get in more accidents. Never mind the A/B pillars, the C pillar is like a solid foot and a half wide: https://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/10/2016/05/2016-jeep...
If you try and back out of somewhere at an angle you're backing out 100% blind.
There is a lot of concern over a lot of these auto-assist features reducing the engagement of a driver. It is a trade-off of course. An automated system with good sensors can react faster than a human driver to prevent some types of wrecks, but they do have limits. Over reliance can lead to the situation where that Tesla drove full speed into an exit ramp barrier.
Until ever street has guide rails and ever vehicle can attach to a track, truly safe autonomous vehicles are a very difficult problem and a long way off. A standard street track system would probably be cheaper honestly (and it's a solved problem).
Generally SUVs are the worst mix of properties you want from cars - center of gravity is too high (bad handling), rolling in case of accident is much easier to achieve, too heavy so pretty bad acceleration, more expensive maintenance (ie tyres, more oil, heavier taxation in many places etc.), more consumption because of the weight and crappy aerodynamics etc.
/end of SUV rant
The Model 3 ended up being a breath of fresh air for me in terms of visibility overall, it has dramatically better visibility compared to the Leaf, Accord, and Corolla I had been accustomed to driving.
I should note the Leaf has absolutely atrocious visibility and stands out as the worst I've encountered in a car.
I've not driven a Leaf or current Accord or Corolla. I find the rear 3/4 visibility out of the 3 to be TERRIBLE (rear deck is too high), same for rearward visibility in the mirror (can't even see the headlights of the car behind you). However, the forward visibility is AWESOME. I love the low dash.
In the Leaf I have the seat all the way back and bottomed out as low as it goes. At that position I can see forward just fine though at some traffic lights I do have to lean forward and lookup. However at that position my shoulder is still forward of the B pillar so when look left I have an obstructed over the shoulder view. Looking right isn't much better as the rear passenger window tapers upward so I can only see up and out, not down.
If the A pillars were narrow and not triangular, the side mirrors smaller and lower, and the rear windows didn't taper up but were just horizontal then it wouldn't bother me so much. As it stands, I just find myself bobbing and weaving a lot like I'm trying to find something I dropped under the kitchen table trying to look around a dozen chair legs.
Contrast that with the Model 3 where I also have the seat mostly back and bottomed out. The low hood and high ceiling give great elevation view and the narrower A pillars and smaller lower side mirrors offer much less obstruction. That combined with the glass roof gives a very open air feel to the car.
In the Model 3 my shoulder sits behind the B pillar so when I look left the pillar is in the middle of my FOV so my left eye can look out the rear driver side window. This is how it was in the last 3 Accords I owned and my partner's Corolla. When I look right out the passenger side the low window line that's mostly horizontal affords excellent visibility out the rear passenger window over my shoulder.
In the Leaf I'm occasionally surprised by cars, something I've not experienced with any other car or even truck that I've driven.
Keep in mind some of your behavioral changes are associated with you becoming a more experienced driver and learning just what sort of evil can lurk in curious places. As much as my car's blind spot irks me, there's no way it's as bad the 1979 Crown Vic I learned in.
Though I guess it could always be better, for me I'd personally prefer if they shifted the the hard panel further forward, trading some sunroof for rear window.. and of course there's the drivetrain which I'm sure is not your first pick.
For now, given the current limits of structural engineering, the only hardtop cars without B pillars are coupes.
[0]: http://cdntdreditorials.azureedge.net/cache/7/b/c/3/e/3/7bc3...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blind-Spot-Mirrors/b?node=491998903...
As someone who learned to ride a motorbike before driving a car, I got used to needing to know where everything is around you at all times (because you pay the price, regardless of whose fault it is). I think this has helped with my driving generally, but also means I do 'lifesaver' looks before every lane change, which I sometimes get asked about.
I only wish that it also worked for the left-side mirror as well. My understanding is that Hondas new all electric cars will feature cameras instead of mirrors entirely.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27007185/honda-lanewatch-...
Thicker pillars means better structural integrity during crashes, particularly the roof during rollovers.
There are obvious market reasons for it to be this way, but it seems like a failure of regulations that it is. And given this reality, it's not surprising that pedestrian fatalities are way up per TFA.
You can also use different, stronger materials. But those are generally more expensive.
Subaru solves it with better engineering and using higher strength steels (and reinforcing the B-pillar with a boron reinforcement bar).
Making the pillars thick is just cost saving.
Only given a crash. Better visibility improves your own safety by reducing the likelihood of a crash.
Ideally, we would analyze the whole solution and only increase the pillar sizes to the point at which more increases caused net-greater morbidity and mortality rates, both for the driver and passengers, and for others outside the car.
Depth perception might come into play when you are timing your own move in front of a car that is already overtaking you. I would caution against that; you already have a double light path to deal with in the mirror and you are also looking in front of you. Just stick to your lane and wait until it is obvious that you can make a move; for instance when the lane is completely clear or when there is ample space, not a space that may or may not be narrow enough to slot your car in.
With a normal mirror watch a car pass you and watch it disappear for a bit before it is visible in your window. The blind spot mirrors show you a car is there all the way until it is past you.
Those are phenomenal... I honestly don't miss the blind spot detection / warning system at all, you can see so much.
That’s what I mean by 0 blind spot.
There is nothing stopping this terrific government thing everyone is raving about from passing some regulations that require people who operate motor vehicles on the roadways, actually be capable of operating motor vehicles on the roadways. Instead, we get short HS drivers education classes, that really only teach you what the 2 pedals in American cars does what, and perhaps a quick refresher on how "wheels" work.Then you get put on the highway, and taught to speed, but not too much, and generally ignore every other major rule there is.
I ride motorcycles, have taken several high performance driving classes, as well as drive in an amateur (wheel to wheel) auto racing series, and I still catch myself making mistakes on the roads. Its not an easy task, and the current system is woefully under performing when it comes to equipping people to handle it. This needs to be fixed by changing the culture around driving, if for no other reason than because sometimes machines fail, and the person behind the wheel needs to be responsible.
Governments are ramping up signs and laws against texting and driving and it doesn’t appear to be doing anything to stop the problem. People know it’s bad but they don’t care because they haven’t personally killed someone yet. Just like they’ve treated speeding laws for decades.
Surveillance apparatus that directly hits people in the pocketbook on a frequent basis with fines is the only way to solve this problem that keeps humans behind the wheel IMO (we had a thread recently about such cameras that are being tried in Australia). Or autonomous cars or a massive and incredibly expensive redesign of our cities and transportation network to get people out of cars.
I just signed my youngest daughter up to a pretty extensive defensive driving course at a regional racing facility. When she's done, her skills will have improved but her judgement will be largely unchanged. If she was going to speed before and value her time over the safety of others around her, the same will likely be true afterwards. Fortunately (unlike her sister) she has taken after her mother and proven to be an extremely cautious driver. Her sister drives a smidge too fast for my liking, but we're working on it.
I just don't see much difference. I consider good judgment to be inherently baked into driving.
Someone exercising poor judgment is not a skilled driver.
People tend to drive approx 10 over posted limit on highways/freeways/interstates when traffic allows unless there is speedtrap.
Then be careful what you wish for lest you incite the DMV to morph into the FAA, FCC, or ATF.
I'm serious. You have not even begun to contemplate how miserable, soul killing, and inaccessible regulations can make something until you have really dug into something like that.
If you do love it, teach! Don't seek to lock a student out! Help them become better, faster, that they can do the same for someone they know!
I guess even CA allows "home-made, specially constructed, or kit" vehicles. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/spcnsreg
Given the amount of people being killed in car accidents daily, I'd say that's exactly what should happen to driving.
My current belief is that the single most effective pedestrian safety feature that car manufacturers could possibly implement is some mechanism for preventing Waze from working.
Same where I live in Europe. When I commute by car, over 50% of drivers I look at are on their phones and another 25% are doing another semi-distracting activity(eating, smoking, fiddling with stuff). Maybe on the highway it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm talking about city streets that are full of cyclists and people running to catch their bus.
It's one of the reason I'm super afraid of biking on some streets, thinking that one day someone's gonna run me down since he was texting his wife and didn't see me(had some near misses already).
Anecdotally, a friend of mine was hit on a zebra crossing by a texting driver while he was with me. Broke his collar bone and definitely left both of us with some mental scars that will not heal too soon.
It got me to feel like smartphones are a huge issue for traffic safety as some drivers simply can't leave it alone during their commute.
Wait, was your friend crossing the street riding on a zebra with you, or walking across a street at a marked zebra crossing? Or was your friend a zebra, which you were crossing the street with, so you figured the zebra crossing was the most appropriate place to do it?
I need details. This is very important. I need to make sure to file this in the proper "things I never thought I'd hear, but happened anyway" drawer.
I hope everything turned out okay for all involved though, regardless!
Little bit of international enlightenment never hurts.
And jeez people, lighten up. Not everybody is guaranteed to be aware of your vernacular. To me it quite literally had a touch of incedulity to it.
You try to accept that another human being could miss someone with a bloody zebra walking by with them anywhere because they were staring at a smartphone!
I wasn't trying to be snide or clever. I just honestly thought he was describing the most unlikely scenario I could ever imagine running into happening to him because someone was that damned intent on checking their feed!
>You try to accept that another human being could miss someone with a bloody zebra walking by with them _anywhere_ because they were staring at a smartphone!
I would believe it easily:
(Classic attention test.)
My block ended up being selected as a detour around an intersection that gets gummed up by a poorly programmed traffic light. After a few near misses, a couple of the neighbors got together to basically double park with blinkers on in such a way that the traffic slows down.
Roads are increasingly awful and ineffective as more people use them.
Have the various GPS navigation services generate flow-through rate reports for every intersection at different times of the day and use those as a sample to actually program light cycles for traffic volume.
Also while we're at it, make it so that the lights actually sync up and so that out of flow merges (lefts/rights/etc) only need to speed up a little to hit the next light wave.
Don't the traffic lights already know the flow rate through their intersections?
"There is very little accountability for drivers. In this case, Reardon only had to show she was not texting, not drunk, and not speeding. Meanwhile, pedestrians are faulted for not doing things that go above and beyond their legal requirements: like wearing bright clothing, or walking after dark."
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/we-need-to-change-the...
It's fine to counsel people to dress brightly when crossing the road at night, but it's really important that that not be the focal point of a discussion about road safety— dressing brightly is a common sense coping strategy to handle the fact that there has been a cascade of failures elsewhere in the system that has led to an environment of unsafe roads, unsafe vehicles, and unsafe drivers.
Blaming pedestrian choices instead of examining root causes just excuses and justifies the unacceptable status quo.
>Blaming pedestrian choices instead of examining root causes just excuses and justifies the unacceptable status quo.
It of course varies wildly by case if the pedestrian can be faulted at all. In my examples, I would argue yes. If crossing at a crosswalk, with the light, and someone making a right turn hits them? It'd be different.
But regardless of the legal story, the real judgment begins when media coverage uses the passive voice and insists that everything is an accident, rather than a collision, see: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/03/28/how-coverage-of-pedes...
The driver may be inconvenienced, financially impacted by repair bills or a lawsuit, or suffer minor injuries like whiplash. The pedestrian will be seriously injured or killed. This inequality is why cars basically just do what they want and it's the implicit responsibility of people walking to jump out of the way.
I wonder how much of this is due to distracted driving because of smart phones. I would bet it's more than we care to admit.
This is where the material from the college engineering ethics course I was required to take kicks in. It's stuff like this we should pay attention to.
> At 20 miles an hour, the cars struggled with each test, AAA found. The child was struck 89% of the time, and all of the cars hit the pedestrian dummy after making a right turn. The systems were generally ineffective if the car was going 30 mph. The systems were also completely ineffective at night
When companies advertise these systems, I wonder how many people feel they can pay less attention while driving.
I also wonder what's up with their QA testing. This stuff could use some chaos engineering thrown at it.
The fact that the scenario I just described seems ludicrous to us is a pretty solid example of the abandonment of long-term thinking in our current marketplace, I think. I'm hoping to live to see the day when the right company figures out how to flip this around and win a huge pile of lifelong customer-fans in the process.
And more Americans than ever are zipping around in SUVs and pickup trucks, which, thanks to their height, weight and shape are between two and three times more likely to kill people they hit. SUVs are also the most profitable cars on the market, for the simple reason buyers are willing to pay more for them. As with speeding, there appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle at work: the increased presence of large cars on the road makes them feel more dangerous, which makes owning a large car yourself feel more comforting.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/03/collision...
This is probably also why "sport futility vehicles" like the BMW X6 or the Mercedes GLW Coupe have appeared: they are cramped inside and their off road performance is utter crap (too heavy, built for the road).
> I also wonder what's up with their QA testing. This stuff could use some chaos engineering thrown at it.
When you're improving on nothing, everything is an improvement. That is, until marketing hears about it and starts hyping the hell out of it, and then then it's worse than nothing. This is true for all features, not just safety features.
I doubt QA was asked to evaluate how the technology compared to the marketing.
Probably the lack of proper incentives; we need pedestrian safety ratings and fatality statistics to be front and center like crash-test ratings
What we need is to change the incentives further down the pipe; for instance, if we eliminate vehicular manslaughter as a criminal category.
I couldn't see lots of people buying a car with a built in governor, especially since speed limits are a joke in many places in the US. Also, such a device would be a hazard in a life threatening situation (such as escaping a disaster or driving a family member to the hospital).
If all cars went the speed limit then cities, towns, and counties would lose speeding ticket revenue. I suspect the money would cause attempts to force safe speeds to fail. On the flip side there's a certain amount of freedom inherent in being allowed to speed. So, it seems like there might not be enough support, on any side, to make this feasible.
Around here, going the speed limit typically means going slower than the rest of traffic. If all of our cars forced us not to speed, I wonder if speed limits would naturally increase to safer limits. I also wonder how much of what I just said is a result of Prima Facia speed limits here.
Limited-access highway speed limits are a different story of course and a lot of highways still have old 55 or 65 mph speed limits that are set for fuel efficiency due to the 1970s oil crisis, not necessarily the maximum safe speed.
You'll probably see a spike in aftermarket ECU sales. Here's what I'm rocking in my Supra, for example:
https://www.ecumaster.com/products/emu-black/
But I'm sure most normie commuter types aren't willing to drop $1000 + labor just so they can speed.
Not sure about demand at that price, but I'd guess most people would pay not to have a "nanny car". I could also see significant economies of scale for what is currently a very niche product.
Not just drivers. Plenty of pedestrians which just walk straight across the road with their eyes firmly fixed on their screens and earbuds protecting their ears from the sounds of the world around them.
Of course drivers who can't pay attention to the things they should pay attention to don't really deserve to drive. But physics is physics, and there's a limit to how fast a driver can react and a car in motion can stop. And a lot of pedestrians at least here seem to not keep that in mind when roaming about.
When drivers kill people in my town, it seems like it's mostly hit and runs which should give you a hint on who was at fault.
Out of curiosity, where is that? This seems like a much better policy than I've seen...
The other more boring use of automatic braking is applying extra force in emergencies because people might not apply enough.
2. These systems are primarily for avoiding car-on-car collisions. They're very good at that. Which is maybe why it's not mentioned in the article...
But I think it's reasonable to expect pedestrians to take at least some responsibility for keeping safe. I'm primarily a pedestrian. I'll sometimes be doing something on my phone while walking on a sidewalk (though I try to keep even that to a minimum), but as soon as I'm about to step off a curb into the street, the phone goes away. I watch where I'm going, and where the cars around me are going, for however long I'm in the street.
I see plenty of people who are still buried in their phones while crossing the street, and it's just stupid. If they get hit and die while crossing the street, it's (probably) not their fault, but that's little consolation: they're still dead. If they could have prevented that by taking the entirely reasonable step of making sure they're aware of their surroundings, isn't it worth it? I'm talking about outcomes here, not responsibility. If you can do something to keep yourself safer, and that thing is an entirely reasonable, non-burdensome thing to do, then you should probably do it, no?
And that's what the parent's post was about, anyway: no one is talking about responsibility. It seems pretty likely to me that at least some of the increased rate of pedestrian-involved accidents can be attributed to increased pedestrian inattention.
Given the volume of people walking around in NYC at most hours of the day, I'd expect a sort of "herd immunity" to come into play: sure, you might be on your phone, but you're surrounded by 15 other people while crossing the street, and a car is going to be hard pressed to not see all of you. At least one of those people is likely paying attention, at any rate.
Also I was a little confused by their conclusion, given this statistic in the linked report, under "Pedestrian Self-Reports of Distraction":
"Using emergency room data from 1,075 pedestrian injuries (2008–2011), researchers at Bellevue Hospital found that 7.7% of admitted pedestrians were using an electronic device at the time of the crash."
How is 7.7% not "significant"? I'm sure those 83 people would rather not have been in the emergency room, and maybe have changed their behavior for the better. And that's just injuries; obviously dead pedestrians can't self-report what they were up to in the moments leading up to their death. Also consider that 7.7% is a lower bound. While it's unlikely that someone would lie to say they were using a device when they weren't, it's likely that there are quite a few people who were actually using a device during the incident but didn't want to admit it out of embarrassment or fear of fault or blame being assigned to them (legally, even).
I just don't find this study all that compelling.
Your experience is anecdata. Just look at hard numbers.
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you're not a huge dumbass if you do it with no regard to common sense.
It's a thinkable scenario. Has this ever happened though?
Normally it eats up some percentage of the naively expected security gain, but my question is if it's ever > 100%?
Some notes: Pedestrian fatalities are up in the last decade and there isn't a great smoking gun on why. The "every driver is starring at a smartphone" explanation doesn't have much evidence. The vast majority of pedestrian deaths happen at night, and not at an intersection. Almost all the additional pedestrian deaths are at night; daytime fatalities have been flat since 2008.
The general common-sense level of the population seems to have dipped, causing pedestrians to make stupid decisions, like running across a road at night(I see this a lot).
Pedestrians are also capable of being distracted by their phones.
A drunk pedestrian is likely to indictate 1) nighttime, 2) walking in a target rich environment (most bars exist near other bars) and 3) lots of distracted Uber/Lyft drivers.
What is interesting is that Texas/Arizona/Florida/Georgia have increases in deaths that completely cancel out California's decrease.
I'm not saying that driving drunk is ever morally acceptable, of course. There are just some interesting unintended consequences of public policy at play.
I assume driveways/parking lot entrances count as non-intersections. I pay attention when I cross an intersection while reading. I pay somewhat less attention (though not none) when passing the entrance to a parking garage or a driveway.
(But this is all conjecture. No data to back this up.)
> The child was struck 89% of the time, and all of the cars hit the pedestrian dummy after making a right turn.
That means that in that simple no-turn circumstance, the car DOESN’T hit the child 11% of the time.
It’s better than nothing, and it’s a start. You still have to drive your car. You still need to stay off your phone. But these systems only have to work sometimes for them to be worth installing.
Make jaywalking a huge fuck you ticket and put sensors and cameras over every crosswalk to detect everyone from the 7 foot basketball player to their chihuahua the minute they set foot on asphalt, and send that data to the car to make it physically impossible to go forward while the crosswalk is in use. Put up a gate on the sidewalk like a train crossing if you need to really manage people, maybe a short little fence along non crossable parts of the curb too to make it even more difficult to jaywalk (ideally doubling as bike lane protection).
... people just don't give a shit. They are so self absorbed that they only care about getting where they need to go and everyone and everything else can piss off.
Obviously a driver should be paying attention in that situation, and if they still hit the person, unless it was impossible to stop in time, they should be held responsible. But that's not really the point. Someone just got hurt or died, and it was completely avoidable if the pedestrian had taken some very basic steps to be aware of their surroundings.
How am setting up any kind of strawman in this instance?
Reducing the chance of having to live with the fact that I ran somebody over and seriously harmed or even killed them, that's indeed worth an extra y dollars to me.
Furthermore, it is in the interest of my insurance company too, they might factor that into the premium.
It's hard to separate driver inattention from the effect of having vehicles that are much more deadly these days, too. If you get hit by a sedan, it'll take out your legs and you'll get flung up on the sloping hood/windshield. If you're hit by a truck/SUV, on the other hand, the majority of your body will take the direct hit.
If you actually cared, you wouldn't drive at all.
If you really cared about not getting food poisoning, you would only eat sterilized food instead of following basic food preparation guidelines.
If you really cared about not getting an STD, you wouldn't have sex at all instead of using a condom.
If you really cared about the environment, you would be living as a forager in the woods instead of reducing your garbage footprint.
And so on and so forth...
partial self-driving tech like lane-assist and collision avoidance only serve to dull our driving skill and makes us unattentive while driving.
Everyone is such a lazy asshole now that you probably couldn't hope to start moving the needle back in the other direction though. The consequences of ripping out all of these driver 'assist' technologies at this point would probably cause a Mad Max episode to unfold on our roadways every morning.
It's also really sad the impact this has all had on the car market as a whole. The diversity of options has radically diminished in my opinion. Look at 2007 lineups and compare to 2019 lineups. Every car today is just the same goddamn turbocharged V6/I4 with whatever arbitrary body tacked on top. Everything. Ford has what? Like 4 unique chassis now for the consumer market? I think BMW finally got down to monochassis. I bet that higher degree of coupling makes their lives a lot easier, but it makes my experience as a driving enthusiast dull.
This is not pie in the sky science fiction to drool about. We could do it now. We could do it 5 years ago.
Of course, whether this would be popular with voters or car companies is another matter...
Machine vision, triple meh. Even with strictly standardized set of easily recognizable shapes, this is useful for post facto mapping ( https://blog.mapillary.com/tutorials/2017/08/21/mapping-traf... ), but nowhere near realtime without false negatives.
As for built in sat nav - I have three (3). Their notion of current max speed matches about 80% of the time...and that doesn't always match the actual max speed in meatspace.
This problem is a right-of-way issue, not a speed issue.
Slower speeds also give both pedestrians and drivers increased time to notice and avoid a collision.
Nobody ever thinks these kinds of statements through. It's just, oh we'll sign the regulation, and poof, everything instantly falls in compliance. No. No, the world just does not work that way.
however - we could force the issue of speed limits within city spaces for cars that are newer, like you said we certainly have the tech and any car with traffic aware cruise control should be able to have a limit forced upon it within city limits
We also have the technology to capture your license plate as you zoom down the road. Do we want to have tickets just mailed out for violating the limit? Perhaps make it random which roads are enforced so to make it feel as if all are enforced?
as for scooters
scooters stand a good chance of being out right banned in many cities. right now Atlanta has a curfew hours on them and considering that four deaths this year occurred on them as well as over two hundred responded to calls for injury I would not be unhappy if they were.
The more automation allows people to avoid paying full attention to driving, the more crashes we will have when the automation fails and the human driver is unable to take control or react appropriately fast enough to avoid a collision.
This problem all goes away when we have perfect automation (or at least automation that performs better than humans do without the automation), but we're certainly not there yet, and it's not clear that we're even close.
And even if you have automation that's better than a human driver, when the automation does fail, and people die, there's an emotional backlash because, even if they're entirely wrong, people feel like they could have done better, if they just had control of the situation themselves. And even without that, you still need to assign blame. Does it go to the human in the car, even though they weren't driving? Does it go to the manufacturer of the automation? Or do we have to go through a huge cultural shift and dispense with the notion of blame in these sorts of situations?
We also hang on to cars for a long time, but my spouse recently got a new car and it has, among other things, a lane-keeping feature. It annoys the crap out of me. I use it on highway driving, but not in urban driving. On the other hand, it has a context-sensitive cruise control I really like.
And I honestly don't even really think about shifting that much when I'm driving; after doing it for so long, it just comes automatically (despite the fact that I drive very little, on the order of 1500 miles per year at most).
It's extremely annoying if I'm ever in stop-and-go traffic, to the point that I'll probably get an automatic transmission car whenever I need a new one. I can also count on one hand the number of friends who can drive stick, so if I'm ever driving people on a long road trip, there's no one to share the driving.
”Our founders said: “Cars are driven by people – the guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is and must remain safety.” Those values have never changed, and in 2008 we set out our vision – that by 2020 nobody should be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo car.”
They probably won’t reach this, but they worked hard towards it. For example:
- the V40 has a pedestrian airbag (https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...)
- they will cap car speed at 112mph (https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/287046-why-volvos-cappin...)
Also, Britain’s safest car is a Volvo that has sold over 50,000 units, but has seen no drivers or passengers killed inside it in the 16 years it has been on sale (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/15/britains-safest-...)
the full research report on this technology is here though. https://www.aaa.com/AAA/common/aar/files/Research-Report-Ped...
SUVs and trucks have a huge front end that can rip people in half or slam them under the car rather than have them roll up and off. I saw an SUV hit a deer and the poor thing exploded like a grenade.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Street_i...
Yeah. It's been tried, and kinda didn't work.
I've been told that there is similar degradation in the performance of autonomous emergency braking and forward-collision warning not only when dealing with pedestrians, but with cars that have their lights on and are perfectly visible to human drivers.
Oh good.