Comment by necovek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by necovek | Hacker News Reader

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I drive a 2019 Volvo as well (bought in 2020), and the "safety" features have activated for me maybe a hundred times! Out of those, safety system was helpful once (arguably) in that it reacted and activated the brakes the same time I pressed them (so it still wasn't really needed, but I can see how it would have helped when I was less attentive due to eg planning to switch lanes and looking at side mirrors).

All the other times, it's causing me frustration and pain. It signals a collision as I am avoiding potholes in a tight one-way street and cars parked on both sides of the road (yep, I am going to slam into that parked car for sure — at least it did not forcibly brake which would definitely cause cars behind me to slam into me).

It brakes when I am backing out of a parking spot into a street and vehicles appear from the other direction (a lane I was not getting into) — this happens so frequently that I am tempted to turn it off.

Pilot Assist on the highway seems to wait too long to slow down as I approach a car in front of me and then it abruptly slows down, yet it requires me to use the turn signal way too early if I want to overtake someone I caught up with: my drive was much more fluid with a simple stay-at-this-speed cruise control of my previous car.

I keep all of the "helpers" on (those that can be turned off) just in case I lose focus and because crashing once might be once too many, but I worry how much unpredictable behaviour is going to mess with other drivers causing them to make mistakes instead and crash into me.

Perhaps it works well for US roads, but European old-town driving is way too complex for safety features to keep up (esp as Volvo is considered to be among the best manufacturers for safety features, including these new-fangled ones).

Edit: and blind spot monitoring — the sales guy was so high on it, yet I don't see the purpose: it's right there flashing on your side mirrors so you have to look at them, yet side mirrors are large enough and concave (like on all modern cars) that if you set them up properly, there's really no blind spot a car or bike can fit in. And I still prefer to look over my shoulder to top it off.

> yet side mirrors are large enough and concave (like on all modern cars) that if you set them up properly, there's really no blind spot a car or bike can fit in.

Not in the US unfortunately. All my European cars had almost no blind spot. Then I moved to the US and was really surprised.

My vehicles have minimal blind spots, if any, but I always have had larger vehicles.

> All the other times, it's causing me frustration and pain. It signals a collision as I am avoiding potholes in a tight one-way street and cars parked on both sides of the road (yep, I am going to slam into that parked car for sure — at least it did not forcibly brake which would definitely cause cars behind me to slam into me).

The only time I've gotten false positives on the collision avoidance was when I was going too fast for the situation. Now it's gotten me to drive slower on these narrow lane situations, which is a good thing!

> It brakes when I am backing out of a parking spot into a street and vehicles appear from the other direction (a lane I was not getting into) — this happens so frequently that I am tempted to turn it off.

I haven't experienced this personally, but a false positive here doesn't really have any downsides. Ideally every driver would be skilled enough to not back up so far and go into the other lane, but I do see drivers that back out further than necessary and get a corner of the car across the divide of the road. The cross traffic avoidance when backing up is one of my favorites, it's saved me plenty of times when somebody is going way too fast in a parking lot and I'm backing up slowly.

> Pilot Assist on the highway seems to wait too long to slow down as I approach a car in front of me and then it abruptly slows down, yet it requires me to use the turn signal way too early if I want to overtake someone I caught up with: my drive was much more fluid with a simple stay-at-this-speed cruise control of my previous car.

This situation sounds like you may be driving faster than the flow of traffic, or the follow distance is not set far enough. You can also do the simple stay-at-this-speed cruise control, or adaptive cruise control without the automatic steering capabilities.

I am on the west coast of the US so the roads here are well planned and well marked, so maybe that helps.

> Edit: and blind spot monitoring — the sales guy was so high on it, yet I don't see the purpose: it's right there flashing on your side mirrors so you have to look at them, yet side mirrors are large enough and concave (like on all modern cars) that if you set them up properly, there's really no blind spot a car or bike can fit in. And I still prefer to look over my shoulder to top it off.

Depending on the car, the driver, and how seating position and mirrors are setup, there can still be blind spots despite your best efforts, or have a driver in the next lane in a dark car at night with their lights off accidentally. Nothing wrong with looking at your mirror and still checking over your shoulder, but the blind spot monitoring is still very helpful. That's why the indicator is on the mirror anyways, because they know we are already going to look there before changing lanes.

From my experience the safety features are all supplemental to also having good driving habits, they don't replace the need for good habits entirely.

I've been very underwhelmed by the adaptive cruise control in my car as well. It was one of the features I was looking forward to the most, but in practice now I rarely use it. I'm also located in the pacific northwest, so I don't think highway design has anything to do with my complaints.

I find the braking is far too abrupt. I can see the car in front of me slowing down, but the system will continue accelerating until some magical distance threshold before it begins to brake.

In addition the follow distance doesn't seem to be dynamic relative to my speed. When I increase the follow distance, the car leaves too much distance at lower speeds, but increasing the follow distance causes tail-gating at higher speeds.

> The only time I've gotten false positives on the collision avoidance was when I was going too fast for the situation.

I may have been going too fast for the collision avoidance system, but not for the situation: cars are parked on both sides, and frequently one or two cars will stick out a bit more than the others (by eg. 70cm) — I wasn't going faster than 30km/h (20mph) in dry, daylight conditions. If you avoid a pothole that turns your car into that parked car sticking out which is a bit ahead (at least 50m), it could signal a collision. At least that was my guess what was happening, I never felt at any risk whatsoever.

> I haven't experienced this personally, but a false positive here doesn't really have any downsides.

Oh, it does. When it happens, I worry if there's something I missed, so I spend another few seconds re-evaluating the situation around the car. As I didn't miss anything, cars do show up behind me in the lane I was entering into, and since my car is stopped only third of the way into the lane, most drivers coming up behind me start "overtaking" my protruding car, and I am in a much worse position. In city driving in traffic-heavy streets, one's got to use any time they've got available or impatient drivers around you start making even worse situations for themselves and you.

> This situation sounds like you may be driving faster than the flow of traffic, or the follow distance is not set far enough.

The situation I am describing is actually from a very low traffic situation on the highway, so there was no "flow of traffic". When a truck going 100km/h decides to overtake another truck going 95km/h on the highway, my car going at the speed limit of 130 km/h seems unable to see that from way ahead like a driver does, and it maintains the speed until way too late.

Contrary to that, if you are driving 130km/h and approach a car driving 125km/h, it starts slowing down probably at the same distance, which is now too soon.

Not to mention that my experience on European highways is that the when there's a lot of traffic, the "flow of traffic" speed is ~140km/h on roads with 130 limit (when I was driving 110-130km/h, I'd be constantly slowing down and speeding up, making for a much more exhausting drive — you can probably go down to 95 km/h to achieve a similar "flow" behind a slow-moving truck). Pilot Assist, however, only works up to exactly 139km/h even on really well-marked roads — this is perfectly fine if you ask me (the limit might be too high even), but we are talking about the state of assistive tech.

> You can also do the simple stay-at-this-speed cruise control, or adaptive cruise control without the automatic steering capabilities.

FWIW, the behaviour I was describing is part of the adaptive cruise system that seems to behave the same whether Pilot Assist is turned on or off.

But sure, you can still turn most of these off. I was just commenting on how bad the current implementation is in my car (2019 high-specced Volvo sedan), and that I can understand why someone might not want any of these today.

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