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Comment by star-glider | Hacker News Reader

I recently got back from Europe; rented a car. This "feature" is _insanely_ dangerous. Whatever idiot bureaucrat decided that having crappy machine vision software jerk the steering wheel around while you're driving should be sent to an island somewhere.

The damn thing tried to kill me every time we came up on a construction area on the freeway, because it got completely flummoxed by the lane realignment. I couldn't turn it off until we parked the car, and we were on the freeway. Fighting that piece of crap for an hour made for the most exhausting drive of my life.

Far from being mandated, I can't believe that safety regulators allow _anything_ to jerk around the wheel at 60MPH.

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Or you could look at some of the research, which suggest that this feature may in fact reduce fatalities significantly (I'm finding estimates in the 20 to 25% range). Well done idiot bureaucrat!

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-ou...

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Surely they could've found a better way though than to make the car automatically swerve into oncoming traffic?

I'm 100% on board with the idea that the lane assist feature might, on average, improve safety in many conditions. Maybe enough to be a net win. But I'm absolutely certain that its terrible implementation (in legislation, not just in cars) leads to situations where it reduces safety. When I'm driving on small country-side roads without a center line, no amount of "but it reduces traffic fatalities on highways" will convince me that automatically swerving towards the oncoming semi trailer is safe.

> When I'm driving on small country-side roads without a center line

My guess is that people drive these types of roads a lot less often than they swerve on highways. Hence the statistics working out. Steering into oncoming traffic does indeed sound, uhm, suboptimal though. :-/

All the cars I’ve driven with this feature vibrate the wheel when they trigger but don’t try to steer.

My Honda Ridgeline (2021, USA spec) has two modes…

Default is “sticker shaker” mode - if it senses lane departure, it shakes the wheel and displays a warning on the dash. On by default, but can be disabled after start-up.

The other mode is “lane-centering” - has to be turned on after start-up, and actively steers car to the center of the lane. Really only makes sense on a highway/interstate - clear lanes, no sharp turns, etc. On dual carriage way, it gets a bit “stupid” when turn lanes appear with a gap or change in lane marking - it thinks the lane got extra wide and tries to center, pulling me half into the turn lane.

But, like I said, it’s 100% optional, so I use it on the highway/interstate, but nothing smaller.

Sounds like the EU mandates “lane centering” all the time that can’t be easily disabled, which is pretty silly (if it behaves anything like the Honda system, whcih is only really designed for true interstate use).

> Sounds like the EU mandates “lane centering” all the time that can’t be easily disabled

I'm in EU, on my 2023 Civic it's off by default and needs to be enabled after every car start if you wanna use it. Also works pretty well, other than when driving straight into the low sun or in heavy rain at night. The collision warning and road departure warning are on by default, the last one can be disabled until car is restarted.

In fairness, I haven't done much experimentation. It jerks the wheel and that terrifies me. I don't know if it's a jerk back and forth to make the wheel vibrate or if it's a jerk to steer the car to the left, either would probably give me a feeling that the wheel is moving by itself and would probably be scary enough for me to disable.

This just goes to show how bad at driving a large number of people on the road are. Driving test standards are way, way too low.

Personally speaking I felt like I somehow accidentally cheated or something when I passed my test. It was too easy. Even now I sometimes question if I should really be trusted with piloting a 4k+ lbs steel box at highway speeds.

I thing most people are bad drivers some of the time. It only takes a moment of being distracted/tired/angry/whatever to cause an accident.

What the first article actually says:

"Lane departure warning and prevention systems could address as many as 23% of fatal crashes involving passenger vehicles."

That appears to be something like a stat about how many fatal crashes involve unintentionally leaving a lane. It provides approximately zero evidence in favor of specifically mandating haptic feedback from the steering wheel.

The second article is marginally more on point - 24% fewer crashes for vehicles with lane keeping assist (so my guess at the meaning of the 23% stat may have been wrong). But the 95pct confidence interval is 2-42% and the study acknowledges that its efforts at controlling for confounding factors in the type of cars that have this feature are imperfect. It also took place in the US, so there's certainly no mandate for haptic feedback and I suspect very few cars had it. This is marginally more helpful evidence but not very good, I think--it seems very plausible that audible lane keeping features are helpful and moving your steering wheel (which sounds terrifying) is unhelpful.

As an anecdote, I crashed a car as a teenager thanks in part to panicking (unnecessarily) when a rough highway started moving the car's wheels (which I noticed of course via the steering wheel) without my intending it. Fortunately there were no injuries.

This entirely tracks to me but hints at a different problem. I suspect if this really does reduce traffic incidents and fatalities in general, it's because a large number of people are driving while tired and drift into adjacent lanes without realizing it and the lane-assist jerks them awake. Problem being this is a blunt force instrument that annoys or even endangers drivers who are not impaired and know what they're doing.

Thankfully, every car I've ever driven that has this feature allows it to be turned off and I have it turned off on my own car, which I drive for maybe ten miles a month in the middle of a Saturday when I'm wide awake.

Your snarky comeback here is "suggest[s] that [it] may" and you couldn't find the links to support even that.

I agree that my comment was a bit snarky. Thing is, I'm getting tired of people dismissing 'bureaucrats' that easily. I know little about road safety legislation, but I know enough about the EU to state that they commonly have very smart subject matter experts work on legislation. Does that mean things always turn out perfect? Far from it. But 'idiot bureaucrat' is way too cynical for my taste.

EU has a huge revolving door problem, especially in automotive, which is a major industry in its (now declining) economic champions.

They might have people with credentials working for it, but the implementation described falls into the category of "some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe it." To an external observer, incompetence and malice are hardly distinguishable, especially when there is a huge economic incentive for both the automakers and legislators to be evil.

It's safety profiteering, squeezing millions in the name of saving lives.

The motivation of a bureaucrat isn’t the effectiveness of the policies they produce, but instead the political ramifications of those policies.

The safety minded “take no risks” at all approach has been if not popular, tolerated because it’s hard to argue against safety, even if the safety gains are dubious, and expensive. And so they keep their jobs.

Fast forward a few decades of this, and now nothing much new can be developed.

But of course the bureaucrats are “smart” so they’re never to blame.

Frankly they deserve the ire they get for being part of the problem. When is the last time they got rid of an ineffective rule in the EU?

The genius bureaucrat probably did as much research as you did and came to the same conclusion.

now you're thinking like a bureaucrat!

Never. Take. Away. Control. Authority.

The only way that system could be more dangerous is if the air bags were replaced by Claymore mines.

Based on the recall patterns, I think that's a free upgrade that self-installs to every older car eventually.

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