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Comment by Aaargh20318 | Hacker News Reader

Aaargh20318

> “Cars must include modern life‑saving tech like automatic braking and lane‑keeping.”

I rarely drive my car. When I do, 99% of the time it's within a few kilometers of my house. I have no need for lane keeping or automatic braking in city traffic, it's barely moving to begin with.

My car is also getting old and will soon need replacing. Ten years ago you could buy a brand new small car for well under €10k. Sure, it didn't have all the bells and whistles but I have no need for those anyway. Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations, emission standards and the fact that it's practically impossible to buy a car with an ICE anymore.

I understand the need for these things for cars that are driven daily, but why do they have to apply to cars that are mainly used for short trips to the grocery store? It's making cars unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

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> "Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations"

Not really. There are many reasons why new cars are more expensive than they used to be. But safety features like AEB and lane assist are a relatively small part of it. Adding AEB specifically is estimated to cost $100-$300 per vehicle in the US, and it wouldn't be much different in Europe.

And AEB is proven to work: reducing the rate of accidents by 40% or more. A small price to pay if it prevents the car getting damaged even once in it's life, let alone preventing an injury or death.

Also, it will depend on your location specifically, but there are plenty of new, entry-level vehicle models sold in Europe for well under €20k, including taxes and on-road costs.

> Adding AEB specifically is estimated to cost $100-$300 per vehicle in the US, and it wouldn't be much different in Europe.

Isn't this exactly the issue? Any given thing is "only" $300 but you add one of these requirements a year for several decades straight and now you've added thousands of dollars to the price of a car.

> And AEB is proven to work: reducing the rate of accidents by 40% or more.

It reduces the rate of accidents that occur under certain circumstances. Pretty good chance that those circumstances are "in a city in traffic". But then the feature is required on all cars, even when the owner knows they'll rarely if ever be driving it under the conditions where it's useful. Or worse, when they know they'll be commonly driving under circumstances where it's more likely to encounter a false positive and cause an accident.

But its also there to protect pedestrians and others from the owner as much as himself. From the government/regulatory perspective.

That only changes the math if collisions are "free" to the vehicle purchaser while causing damage to someone else. Otherwise their interests are aligned, i.e. neither of them wants that to happen and so will want the safety feature unless it has low effectiveness in their circumstances.

Obviously some people will make a poor choice, but that's just as true as legislators, and all costs are a trade off against what else you could have gotten for the money. In other words, all safety features that cost money have an opportunity cost, which is also measured in lost lives, so the ones that aren't effective or have diminished effectiveness under particular circumstances shouldn't be mandatory in all cases.

Most price increase over last 10-15 years is not safety equipment. Regular inflation was massively compounded by the covid chip shortages / missplanning / greed / whatever ratio of factors one subscribes to.

Note, while I do not expect we will convince each other via interwebs, every safety advance from winter tires to abs to safety belts to airbags to glass that doesn't shatter etc has had a "but I don't need it because I don't drive much | I am awesome driver | it could not happen to me | etc". I don't think it's binary, I think regulation over reach is a definite thing, I just don't think massive increase in car prices over last 5 years is because companies are forcing safety equipment on awesome drivers who don't need it.

Case in point, I got the last kia rio model with all the fancy equipment and detection and even wireless carplay for 18k before they dropped the model. They don't sell a car like that anymore. Next cheapest car kia sells me right now is 26k or more - with absolutely no more safety features to justify / blame the massive price jump :-(

Because you're potentially moving several thousand kilos at huge speed, and the people that can find themselves in front of them should not have to trust your judgement of how safe you'll usually need the machine to be.

I’ll be sure to tell that to the poor person on a bicycle in the middle of the road in front of me when I come around a blind curve and can’t jump lanes so as not to hit them.

“So sorry I squished you, my lane assist wouldn’t let me move out of the way in time.”

Fortunately automatic emergency braking is another tech that hopefully your car also has.

I will buy used cars that don’t auto-anything for me until I literally cannot find one anymore. Then I’ll buy a tune to remove the feature.

This sounds like it'd be a good way to lose your license in the future, and maybe have a criminal court case if there was an significant accident that could have been prevented by said features you disabled.

Only criminals need to modify their car.

Now accept our integrated telemetry gathering that reports directly to LexisNexis so insurance companies can raise your rates [0].

Surely you understand, think of the children!

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

Nobody had said anything about telemetry, so far. The rest of us are talking about actual safety features.

They're often one and the same in newer vehicles, unfortunately.

Criminalizing modifying your own car only stands to benefit the corporations that salivate at the mouth thinking of the data mining opportunities.

Criminalizing driving cars with certain modifications on public roads serves to benefit other people on the road, pedestrians, and society as a whole.

In this case, modifications that remove or limit "safety features" that aren't even a requirement now, and many cars on the road don't have?

Not to mention, as others in the thread brought up, can invite issues of their own.

It’s so funny to me that people think just because a law is passed, that fixes problems.

“This wasn’t illegal and now we made it illegal, we fixed the problem!”

How’s that been working out?

I'm guessing you haven't died from polluted drinking water, contaminated food, fake medicines, smog, unsafe vehicles, unsafe roads, dangerous household goods, lethal home wiring, shoddily constructed housing, or any of the other hundreds of things that laws have improved?

Goalposts moved.

I’ll never drive a car that in any way takes control of the steering or brakes. Full stop. If I need to modify the car to disable that feature, I will.

At least I’m honest about it.

Pass all the laws in the name of good ideas for the children. If I disagree with it, I’m not going to obey it. I’m not unique in this.

I’m fucking tired of being told “I’m smarter than you and this is actually in your best interest, trust me.”

Did you know that child labor actually increased in India after laws that tried to eliminate child labor?

Let’s keep patting ourselves on the back that we can feel good about passing laws though.

I quote: "It’s so funny to me that people think just because a law is passed, that fixes problems."

I gave you a whole bunch of problems that have been fixed by passing laws.

> child labor actually increased in India after laws that tried to eliminate child labor

I did not. Which law are we talking about? 1948, 1952, 1986 or 2009?

That's a completely different discussion. OP was asking why not let him lower standards for cheaper price, not discussing the standard's quality.

Is there a lane assist that won't let you change lanes?

I've driven several brands and they just shake wheel or exert like 5% gentle nudge. But maybe there are brands that will actually forcefully prevent lane change without signal (which is automatic / reflexive for most people who'd have good reflexes but I digress).

I'm not at all saying that all Automation is good or that cars always know better than me, but I do want to understand if this is a made-up strawman argument or has anybody ever actually failed to change lanes due to lane assist.

To be fair I do not know, never driven one. Seems like the slippery slope has already been paved with good intentions though.

I'm a techie, I loved my 2004 wrx for good two decades, but which slippery slope are we discussing here?

Putting a black box in your car that records everything without my consent - I'm with you on slippery slopes and ulterior motives.

A gentle gentle nudge that helps me on long distances - I'm honestly not with you :-/

Last I heard, not all cars are "gentle". Implementation depended.

Fair possibility, that's why my question here is - did anybody actually experience a car that won't let you change lanes easily without a turning signal?

I've driven Toyota, Ford, subaru and kia off the top of my head and while e.g. Toyota feels rougher than Honda, none of them approach anything that would even remotely stop, prevent, or even slow me down if I really want to change lanes, let alone if I did it forcefully in emergency. Can't speak for other brands and I definitely never drive a Tesla :-)

lol so you’re just making shit up?

So after manslaughter you are now committing perjury? This is not how lane assist works. Like, not at all.

I don’t think the dead guy will be in the courtroom.

Clever try though.

Someone who read your car's manual might, though.

you do realise that most people slow down for blind curves for exactly this reason, right?

pre-empt potential dangers and adjust driving accordingly. if you’re concerned that you might have to act due to an unseen/unknown danger — then slow down.

it shouldn’t be necessary to swerve out when driving except as a choice of absolute last resort (ie something/someone jumped in front of you inside braking distance and you’ve got no other safe option, in which case you’re probably fucked anyway).

> you do realise that most people slow down for blind curves for exactly this reason, right?

The parent commenter sounds exactly like one of those who don't slow down for blind curves.

You can take a blind curve at 15 miles an hour and not have time to avoid debris in the road.

Use some critical thinking.

At 15mph most cars should be able to stop on a dime, no?

extrapolating a little, 15mph is ~<10m

Speed | Thinking + braking distance | Stopping distance

20mph | 6m + 6m | 12m (40 feet)

30mph | 9m + 14m | 23m (75 feet)

40mph | 12m + 24m | 36m (118 feet)

50mph | 15m + 38m | 53m (174 feet)

60mph | 18m + 55m | 73m (240 feet)

70mph | 21m + 75m | 96m (315 feet)

> https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/stopping-distan...

note that the braking distances are not for modern cars with advancements in braking tech etc.

If you’d meet me halfway on this, it’s not some bizarro-world scenario. It really isn’t.

then 15 mph is probably too fast for that blind curve as it was not possible to see the danger.

it’s fairly simple logic.

You are arguing in bad faith. You are also creating a straw man argument attempting to rubbish a feature that works acceptably well in 99% other use cases even if your scenario is legitimate.

If there is a blind corner you should slow down enough that you can safely stop if there are obstacles in the road. You don't know what's in the oncoming lane, so you can't assume that it'll be safe to blindly swerve into it to avoid something in your lane.

Secondly, lane keeping does not lock your steering wheel preventing you from changing lanes if you need to. The additional force required to override it is the difference between steering with your pinky and gripping the wheel with your hand.

I almost died on a freeway when my Subaru Outback decided there was something in front and engaged full braking.

110 kmh to 40 before it realized it was wrong.

pure luck nobody was following too close.

As long as the vehicle behind you is also equipped with AEB, you should be ok.

Yes, let’s hope that motorcycle has AEB.

It's coming. Already mandatory for all new motorcycles in some countries.

If you try to brake a motorcycle as fast as you would a car, it has a tendency to flip over. And in general different vehicles have different stopping distances, so "just have the whole line of cars all panic brake at once" is going to have them smashing into each other.

Only if they are all driving too close the the car in front. If you keep to the recommended 3 seconds separation you will most often be fine even in bad weather. I drive my Tesla S on Autopilot with the separation set to the maximum which is about 3 seconds and it makes for a comfortable motorway driving experience.

How close cars are to each other is generally determined by traffic volume. If there are twice as many cars, they can only be half as far apart because otherwise they can't physically fit on the same length of road. If you try to leave more space than that, other cars will merge into the empty space. The only way to actually do it overall is to reduce the traffic volume (or add more lanes), which is not something an individual driver has any control over.

Which is to say, in practice cars will be following too closely whenever there is high traffic volume, and systems that don't work under real life conditions are broken.

Any individual driver can still maintain that spacing. If a car pulls in in front of my Tesla S it will simply drop back slowly until it achieves the set spacing (actually measured in time not distance) again.

There are very few roads in my experience where long stretches are filled with high speed cars. The places that are filled with cars are usually around accidents and road works where the speed and hence separation distance are reduced.

I don't think a three second separation has any meaningful impact on throughput. perhaps someone with the necessary expertise and tools could simulate it.

A motorcycle that emergency brakes without warning? If my bike did that I’d be going over the handlebars. There are no seatbelts here.

You think a motorcycle will do serious damage to a car driver when rear ending?

Emotional damage when they hit the inside of your front windshield like ground beef

Infinitely more damage than if not rear ended.

Don't brake check on a highway. Also, semi-trucks exist.

> Because you're potentially moving several thousand kilos at huge speed

No, I’m not. My current car weighs less than a thousand kilos (945 to be precise) and the speed limit in basically the entire city is 30km/h.

Newer cars are ‘several thousand kilos’ especially because of all the regulations. Just being an EV adds a significant amount of weight due to the battery.

Safety regulations are not why cars cost 3x more than 10 years ago. Emission standards have some impact, but the biggest cause is bog standard inflation and corporate greed.

"Corporate greed" -- most car manufacturers have 3-10% gross margins. Not exactly the big profiteers.

>most car manufacturers have 3-10% gross margins.

I remember some analysis saying that it is true for classic versions like sedan. But on SUVs it is a couple of times bigger...

European manufacturers all decided to focus on higher costs vehicles after Covid-19 because margins are slightly higher and they make more on the financing. They have intentionally deserted the entry market.

Now, sales numbers are starting to plummet so I fully expect to see them blame everything from regulators to China unfair exports rather than admit it’s just a normal consequence of their own strategy.

Add to that that most of them have intentionally not taken the shift towards electric and away from diesel that the regulation forced on them, you get a pretty bleak picture. But, on that point, it seems that Germany will as usual cave in and drag the whole EU down with them so they might have been right.

Emission equipment has huge impact on cheaper vechiles, as it is expensive and costs similary whether it is is cheap or expensive model. DPF in particular.

"I don't need a curb cut or a seatbelt, so I won't benefit from society having them" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect )

Dropped kerb in British English for those like me who had no idea what a curb cut was.

Its more like "Curb cuts are mandatory now so they are everywhere".

(which is not good because now cars can drive on sidewalk)

I agree with everything you wrote. But the real harm with most of these regulations are the unintended consequences, and second order effects.

Say you don't really think <10k cars belong on the road. Sure. But that could just lead to more dangerous forms of transportation like e-bikes or scooters. Or people are restricted to where they can work and live.

An example in the US is Obama era fuel efficiency standards for sedans had lower standards for SUVs. Fast-forward 20 years, nearly every car is an SUV. But it takes a few steps to figure out what the effects actually are.

But how sure are you that it was the fuel efficiency standards that led to more SUVs? Feels like bad reasoning, unless you have more evidence.

> that could just lead to more dangerous forms of transportation like e-bikes or scooters.

Yeah, removing mass and decreasing velocity, while increasing sightlines and the controller's stake in avoiding accidents, is much more dangerous. /s

E-bikes are literally good for your health. Especially for aging people and people that would not ride normal bike that distance. They are also massively more safe for third parties you encounter.

The move from cars to e-bikes would be generally unintended benefit

I've never heard of an e-bike or a scooter killing someone.

It has happened several time in the last few years in Norway and UK. Most were the riders themselves but at least once in Norway it was a pedestrian.

It's rare but not unknown.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-51707616

To be fair, that's an illegally-modified, illegally-on-the-road e-bike; not exactly the stock device.

I’m pretty sure most non-rental e-bikes in London are ones that are illegal to have on the road.

Happens a couple of times a year here in Ireland. Usually an old and frail pedestrian and a teen recklessly driving a very powerful (i.e. illegal or should-be-illegal) e-scooter.

What is your definition of an e-bike "killing someone"? What will you accept as evidence?

e-bike is one of the best modes of transportation in city

as far as there is cycling infrastructure

>> Ten years ago you could buy a brand new small car for well under €10k. Sure, it didn't have all the bells and whistles but I have no need for those anyway. Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car

If you are looking for car without bells and whistles you can buy a new car for €15k. €30k+ is a price tag for much more than basic car.

Indeed, I watched a €15k car TV commercial literally 2 minutes ago.

You are an exception if you never drive more than a few kilometers. Exceptional people need to learn that the world caters to average situations. It’s not possible to please everyone.

You can say the same things a about seatbelts and airbags. And people did.

> “Cars must include modern life‑saving tech like automatic braking and lane‑keeping.”

My observation and intuition is most accidents are caused by people using their phone, driving under the influence, wrong medicine, being crazy or just too tired or too old.

Unless we are talking about full self driving those assistances only delay an accident at best.

I enjoy those features, they are convenient, but I do not consider them safety features.

For your use case, the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

But perhaps you are making a larger point about "things I consider unnecessary adding $$ to the base cost of every vehicle." I would say, to that, that

- your governments and voters consider them important for societal reasons, e.g. airbags so you can walk away from a crash, or cameras to help crushing a child when reversing. Presumably you are ok with this..or not?

- the car manufacturers in the EU are politically powerful and absolutely fearful that if the EU allowed the full range of global vehicles into the European market, they would be crushed overnight. Why buy a VW when you can get any number of Chinese minis, or Indian econoboxes, or even a cheap kei car. I guarantee that China keeps Daimler-Benz and VW execs up at night and that they have the full support of their workers when they spend money to lobby against low cost foreign imports...

> For your use case, the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

That car is not suitable for my use-case. Any situation where I would use that car is one where I would use my e-bike instead. I basically use my car for those occasions where I just need to transport a bit more than I can take on my bike. It doesn’t have to be huge, but that Ami is just not enough.

Tangential, but does your use case rule out taxi service or a car-share plan? Way more expensive per use, but you might still come out ahead.

I just use a trailer[1], I find it bonkers that one would use a car only for urban transportation. If I wasn't going regularly in remote area with my partners and my kids, I wouldn't even own a car.

[1] I like cargo bikes but storage can be a challenge compared to a trailer you can fold and remove the wheels when not in use.

> the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

It’s a quadricycle and not a real car, though.

Also I’d bet that VW/etc. executives are more fearful of Chinese equivalent’s of their mid/high-end models which cost the same as Europran manufacturer’s budget options.

Not tiny/ultra-budget/featureless vehicles which wouldn’t be that popular in Europe.

The issues with the Ami or anything similar or most cheap barebones models is that you can get a much nicer used car for the same price.

Modern cars are also much more reliable and last longer than they used to several decades back reducing the demand in the budget segment.

I recently rode a scooter for couple of times, and I find it is the best thing to move around in neighbourhood. It is convinent, parking is easy, cheap to run. Everyone should have one electronic scooter.

A lot of these features are merely software. The insane increase in car prices over the last decade is a combination of profiteering + inflation, not safety features.

Lane assist is more often annoying and dangerous than helpfull. It assumes lane markings are good/perfect, which over here is a very false premise.

If my ancient Model S can't see the road markings it won't engage lane keeping and makes a noise to alert you to that fact. Similarly when the lane markings disappear, it flashes a red warning in the instrument cluster and sounds an alarm.

Will depend on the country I guess. Over here road markings around (former) roadworks often are literally swept across the lanes (when they use some temporary yellow adhesive lane marking stuff), or stay painted on long after the works have finished.

In both cases, while mostly obvious to the human driver, following the lane markings would send you straight into the opposite lane.

Cheapest Fiat Panda seems to go for €14,700[1], so colour me sceptical on that "€30k+ for a new small car". In a quick check, it seems it was about €10k in 2011.[2]

The price increase is more than inflation, but you can't just assume that it's primarily due to safety regulations and emission standards.

[1] https://www.fiat.it/omni/configuratore/#/customize?color=CL-...

[2] https://supercarblondie.com/how-much-the-fiat-panda-has-incr...

> Cheapest Fiat Panda seems to go for €14,700

Cheapest Fiat Panda goes for €19,990 in my country. Taxes on new cars are enormous here.

That seems to be the only ICE model they still sell, and for how long will they stil sell that? The even smaller Fiat 500e is €28,990.

> Taxes on new cars are enormous here

Seems like taxes could be the larger factor then?

Stop shifting the goalposts. The argument was no cars are available sub 30k, and that was proven wrong.

Now you are arguing that <€30k cars might not he available in the near future, which no one is disputing.

Then you use the existence of a <€30k ev to prove your point?

€20k is still a third off from your earlier €30k+. And when I checked yesterday evening I saw several cars in similar price ranges.

And now you're saying that "enormous taxes" are partly responsible for price increases, instead of just regulations and emission standards, which demonstrates my point exactly: there are many reasons cars are more expensive.

Most accidents happen close to home.

Whose home?

From the source I found, it's the patient's home, not the driver's.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4375775/

What kind of strawman are you trying here?

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