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Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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