I will never purchase a vehicle for my own purposes that does not use hydraulics for brakes and steering.
Putting a computer between my foot/hands and the physics unfolding in front of me is a total non-starter.
Putting a computer between my foot/hands and the physics unfolding in front of me is a total non-starter.
With ABS and ESC, most cars on the road today have a computer involved in the braking system. It seems pretty safe.
Absolutely. These systems have very simple feedback loops and controller algorithms. Determining that you lost traction is a simple problem to solve. Determining that a dangerous obstruction is in front of your vehicle is not.
ABS/ESC also tend to have a more limited impact on the vehicle, even if they do malfunction. You can typically disable these pretty easily (pull fuse/drive system configure).
> Putting a computer between my foot/hands and the physics unfolding in front of me is a total non-starter.
Which ABS does, there's literally a computer in between your inputs and the 'physics'. So which is it? There was a time when ABS was not considered a simple problem. They had to invent it for the Concorde.
> You can typically disable these pretty easily (pull fuse/drive system configure).
If they did catastrophically malfunction, you wouldn't have time to pull fuses.
I do not want to operate a vehicle wherein the exclusive means of conveying my control inputs to the final destinations is via a computer. Some limited augmentations to existing direct inputs are acceptable in my view.
Because we do have a lot of numbers on cars were there is a computer in-between. Which should indicate to me that it is safer to drive with one instead of without one.
Like just yesterday (I'm driving a new car) I thought about emergency breaking automatic vs. manual and I actually feel safer knowing that the car can potentially break faster.
In the brochure of my mother's potentially future car, it actually advertise emergency breaking with emergency steering to drive left or right. I also found that quite good to have as it should be able to determine much faster if it can evade and where to evade.
Or do you mean this different?
For me, the knowledge that some other engineer designed a system that is a complete black box (from my perspective), which can arbitrarily stop my car with incredible braking force is terrifying.
What happens if the emergency braking system decides to have a bug while you are exiting the freeway at 75mph?
I have no idea what the budgets actually are, and it's fine if you don't trust certain kinds of automation in cars. In fact my 2020 Toyota with lane-keeping assistance tried to drive me off the freeway at 80mph three times last week. (I probably should have stopped trying it after the second time, but I was kind of morbidly fascinated at that point. As it steered me firmly towards the grassy median, it also started beeping urgently to tell me that it wasn't a good idea.)
In both cases the error seems to have been related to the radar picking up a return and interpreting that as an imminent frontal collision when there was absolutely no reason for that. I had the vehicle checked out, they said it was performing to spec so I sold it. No more Mercedes for me.