Comment by mort96
1 day ago
IMO most features are annoying and contribute to alarm fatigue and driver irritation, but are not directly dangerous.
Lane keep assist though? I often drive on narrow country roads barely wide enough for two cars, with a white line on each side but no center line. To avoid large oncoming cars, I need to drive on the white line to my right. When I do, lane keep assist activates motors in my steering wheel which try to force the car into the oncoming traffic.
Easy to turn on in the modern car I sometimes drive, but oh my god, that was scary the first few times it happened. Beeping at me is bad enough but messing with the steering wheel??? This should be illegal, not required!
I'm mostly pro EU but this crap is genuinely making me resent them.
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.
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!
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.
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.
My car (EU, 2018) makes a noise when I cross a line without using the blinkers but it doesn't actually do anything.
Can't you turn that feature off?
I often complain about the lack of buttons, but my car actually has a dedicated button to turn this safety feature off.
IIRC, veering from the lane is the cause of most collisions, so it makes sense to have this.
> IIRC, veering from the lane is the cause of most collisions, so it makes sense to have this.
My dad's Toyota has this. The issue is it seems to have a hard time actually centering itself in the lane, so it'll just sway from side to side like a drunk driver if the lane is somewhat narrow.
And you can forget about driving on secondary roads, which usually don't have markings on the sides. It'll keep trying to drive in the middle of the road. It's also extremely dangerous to try to correct your trajectory when there's an oncoming car on one of these roads where two cars barely fit, and you have to basically drive on the shoulder.
Then there's the collision detection thing. It's basically guaranteed to beep at me whenever I enter my parents' narrow street with cars parked on both sides.
Bonus points for it just beeping whenever it's unhappy about something, without having any kind of "log". So if you don't look at the instrument cluster at the exact moment it beeps, you'll have no idea what it wanted. I know about the "imminent collision" one because I saw the dashboard turn red from the corner of my eye and immediately complained to my dad about it. Apparently it does it pretty often when he's maneuvering in and out of the garage.
Now, I know many people drive without paying any kind of attention to traffic, which is obviously very dangerous. But I'm not convinced these systems are that useful if people get used to ignoring them.
> Then there's the collision detection thing. It's basically guaranteed to beep at me whenever I enter my parents' narrow street with cars parked on both sides.
Some of my worst driving experiences have been with collision detection + auto brake.
You try to enter a narrow steep hill driveway and it slams on the brakes with half your car hanging out into [potentially] oncoming traffic. Thanks, car
Or you try to speed up across a wide open intersection because the light is about to turn and it slams on the brakes because there's cars on the other side waiting for the next light down the block. Plenty of room to stop after you've cleared the intersection mind you, but hte car really really doesn't like that you sped up from 25mph to 31mph when it thinks you should be slowly coasting to a stop.
On the other hand, driving a motorcycle, I love other people's auto brake. Makes lane splitting (at reasonable speed deltas) easier because every Tesla will tap the brakes when you cut into its lane.
Anyway, I wish driving assists had rush our mode. They're pretty decent in average conditions but ho boy tightly packed aggressive rush hour traffic is hell in a modern car. So much beeping and constantly fighting with the assists.
4 replies →
> My dad's Toyota has this. The issue is it seems to have a hard time actually centering itself in the lane, so it'll just sway from side to side like a drunk driver if the lane is somewhat narrow.
Newer cars (or other cars) do a better job of this. Mine doesn't do the ping pong - it really does keep it centered.
However, the point is that it should direct you back into the lane and you're supposed to take over. If it's ping ponging, it's because you as the driver are letting it.
> Then there's the collision detection thing. It's basically guaranteed to beep at me whenever I enter my parents' narrow street with cars parked on both sides.
Is this detecting at the corners and not the front? For example, my old 2016 car has collision detection, but it will only detect if something is in front of you head on. With my newer car, it's checking the corners. Still, I get the warning only when parking. And I can turn it off.
> But I'm not convinced these systems are that useful if people get used to ignoring them.
Agreed. I think some manufacturers do a better job than others, though.
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To be clear, I'm not talking about auto lane centering. That's something else. The Nissan has this too, but it has to be manually enabled and although it seems to work alright, I just feel like as a driver, it's my responsibility to control the wheel.
What I'm talking about is lane keep assist, which is a "safety" feature which beeps at you and jerks the wheel when the car thinks you're veering out of your lane.
You can't turn it off, you can temporarily disable it but it gets enabled again the next time you get in the car.
Regardless, I feel like maybe "suddenly automatically jerk the steering wheel to drive into oncoming traffic" mode should maybe be off by default? Although it would definitely make me less angry if it could be turned off.
A "feature" like this can easily kill someone in some of the sketchy mountain roads I've been on in Crete.
Mine can be turned off. Three menu items deep, at each and every start of the car. No preferences.
I simply disabled the camera and radar. The car was unsafe. Did I mention it emergency braked all the time, for no reason? No, it wasn't me, and almost getting rear ended all the time gets old fast.
These systems are far too immature for use.
What car? My Kia has dedicated buttons. It's three presses.
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So you happen to be a rare example of someone that buys a new car recently, and you live on a narrow road, and you like to do a semi rare act when wide cars approach. And that has shown you a bit of the EU insanity. Now imagine just how many rules/regulations like this there actually are that you just aren't the aware of. It's insane.
[dead]
I wonder if you could successfully sue if that "safety" feature actively crashed you into an oncoming vehicle. Seems like that ought to be treated as entirely the fault of the manufacturer.
In the EU surely not worth it. You probably at most get the money back for a new car. Just like when somehow it turns out someone was mistakenly put in jail and later it is found out, they only get money they would have earned working back, and their freedom and their forever tarnished reputation is valued at zero.
iirc there was an incident not too long ago where a van crashed head on when trying to pass another truck on a 2 way road. The lane assist put the van back into the passing lane when he tried to get back into right lane, causing the collision.
That's like the jurisdictions that put rumble strips on the white line and not further into the shoulder. Very frustrating for ordinary cornering.
Why would ordinary cornering need to use the shoulder?
The most comfortable path around a curve in the road starts on the outside of the lane, peaks at the inside of the lane, and returns to the outside. This is similar to a racing line. Using the shoulder enables an even better path. The lane-centered path is less comfortable and, honestly, less natural.
It may be possible to change the default with an OBD programmer.
>IMO most features are annoying and contribute to alarm fatigue and driver irritation, but are not directly dangerous.
I agree but the "standard" for car/transportation discussions as set by the screeching morons is that indirect Nth order consequences count, so by their own rules it's dangerous even if only barely noticeable at the statistical level by torturing the data.
>IMO most features are annoying and contribute to alarm fatigue and driver irritation, but are not directly dangerous.
I agree but the "standard" for car/transportation discussions as set by the screeching morons is that 3rd and 4th order consequences count, so by their own rules it's dangerous even if only barely noticeable at the statistical level by torturing the data.