Comment by tuetuopay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuetuopay | Hacker News Reader

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I almost slammed bicycles in Paris on a few occasions because of that crap. Shift a bit to the left to overtake them, get lane assist slam me back right. Thankfully those were close calls, but only thanks to the cyclist being used to traffic in Paris and having good reflexes.

Any dangerous machine (like a car) must not do anything unexpected out of the driver's control. A lane assist that resists the wheel when trying to get out? Why not, but dangerous. A lane assist that slam you back in the lane? Criminal. (same with anti-collision braking that triggers too strong too early and surprises drivers behind you)

I'm definitely of the opinion that all those features reduce security. The alarm fatigue is real, because the car always finds something to beep at you. Heck, even your hands not being a perfect 10-2 o'clock on the wheel is reason enough on some cars. You quickly ignore the beeps because there are so many reasons for the car to beep it's hard to even understand why.

In all fairness, you should have put your left blinkers on while overtaking the cyclist, and that would have disabled the lane assist.

Literally does not matter at all. The car should not automatically jerk itself into a cyclist.

My car (EU, 2018) makes a noise when I cross a line without using the blinkers but it doesn't actually do anything.

I agree, and I don't remember whether I had the blinker. I, however, also respectfully disagree as in all fairness we should drive 100% perfectly 100% of the time, but we're humans. Expecting 100% driving all the times is the worst as it puts strain on the driver (I say that as someone that's pretty strict on blinkers).

What is special is one time it was a one way lane next to the tram with a concrete stub down. I wouldn't be surprised if the anti-collision kicked in and applied lane assist even with the blinker.

At any rate, the principle of least surprise still applies: heavy machinery must not jerk unexpectedly to the side. Never ever ever.

Also lane assist typically activates after 50-60 km/h (35 mph). I like the feature because it helped me develop the habit of always using blinkers. Most modern cars also have cyclist detection and crash prevention. So I believe these feature are still much safer than a typical driver looking at his phone.

The lane asist totally annoyed me in my replacement car (2022 VW Golf) -jerking the steering around when it felt like it. I eventually bought a OBD2 dongle with associated app and managed to change the setting to 'remember last setting'. I recently rented a Renault Clio in France and that was always beeping at me about the speed limit. I was very grateful to the rental lady for pointing out how to disable the lane assist when starting the car!

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