Comment by gib444
5 hours ago
> constantly driving your attention away from the road
Absolutely agree! After a few minutes you realise you forgot to disable one of the 'features' and then get distracted trying to do that.
Lane keep assist is broken and dangerous
Auto high beam assist is broken and dangerous
Auto cruise control is broken and dangerous
Collision detection-avoidance is broken and dangerous (thinks you're going to crash quite often in our narrow, built-up areas in the UK)
Speed sign detection is broken
Hell, even automatic wipers, after all these years, is far from perfect. I feel they should have had to prove themselves with that before being given anything more important
How are all these "broken and dangerous"? In my car (Volvo) they work rather well. Perhaps sign detection sometimes misses signs, but so do I so I can't fault it. The others though, I rank them all somewhere between "genuinely useful" and "absolutely awesome"
The auto high beam blinds other drivers when it fails to detect them
N.B. I didn't write /all/ were "broken and dangerous"
But some personal examples:
- Auto high beam assist saw a car at a side junction, turned off high beam, then turned back on, mimicking a 'flash' to let the car out, which they acted on by pulling out. I had to brake hard to avoid them. I was doing 60 mph
- I was on the motorway and a stranded vehicle was on the hard shoulder and the driver decided to exit from the side closest to my lane. I went to move over slightly to give space and avoid him, and the lane assist pushed me back towards him (there was too much traffic for me to change lanes)
- Driving in built-up areas with lots of parked cars and narrow sections, the collision avoidance has pre-activated with huge beeping warnings that massively distracted me, causing me to actually nearly hit something
These were all different modern (but not high end) vehicles
Auto cruise control doesn't take into account vehicles in other lanes etc. It encourages disengagement in dangerous situations/surroundings. It is by definition dangerous
edit: and speed sign detection is probably the most broken. The constant beeping and flashing. I mean, I don't have to explain that do I? Distraction -> danger.
PSA: Flashing someone is never a signal that you're giving them priority. That is explicitly forbidden in the highway code and dangerous. Flashing someone, like using the horn, only means "I'm here, just in case you didn't see me". If someone flashes you, you should make your own determination whether it is safe to perform a manoeuvre, making no assumptions about anything that the person who flashed you might be seeming to be promising.