Auto Safety Tech May Encourage Dangerous Driving 601
longacre writes "Modern highway planning schemes designed to make roads safer combined with the comfort and safety technology found in the modern automobile may actually be putting us in danger, according to a compelling piece in Popular Mechanics. Citing studies and anecdotal evidence, the article points out that a driver on a narrow mountain road will probably drive as if their life depends on it; but the same driver on an eight-lane freeway with gradual curves and little traffic may be lulled into speeding while chatting on his cellphone. Quoting: 'Modern cars are quiet, powerful and capable of astonishing grip in curves, even on wet pavement. That's swell, of course, until you suddenly lose traction at 75 mph. The sense of confidence bred by all this capability makes us feel safe, which causes us to drive faster than we probably should. We don't want to make cars with poor response, but perhaps we could design cues — steering-wheel vibration devices, as in video games? — that make us feel less safe at speed and encourage more care. ... In college I drove an Austin-Healey 3000 that somehow felt faster at 45 mph than my Mazda RX-8 (or even my Toyota Highlander Hybrid) feels at 75 mph. That was a good thing.'"
Solution: Motorcycles (Score:3, Insightful)
are you sure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have stats to back this up, or are you handwaving?
I'd expect most accidents to be in urban centers simply because that's where most of the cars are.
Re:No kidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot.
But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
Learn to drive. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Alabama region SCCA has a new driver car control clinic program that teaches kids around the age of 16 how to handle a car when it loses control. The courses look like regular autox courses and it truly makes a huge difference in their ability and confindence, without making them feel like they can drive dangerously. http://www.alscca.org/ [alscca.org]
Re:Only problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that by number of miles driven?
Most accident stats are reported on the bases of number of miles driven, so a rarely used road would have a lower absolute number of accidents on it.
Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
Basic economics says that we we are endowed with something like safer cars, we will use:
1) Part of it to actually increase safety, and
2) part of it to trade-off against things like speed, convenience, etc.
The fallacy that the headline implies is that safer cars lead to less safety.
In short, we are our own worst enemy (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue is that when everyone behaves as such, what you end up with is what we have: a bunch of idiots with rapidly moving large hunks of metal and plastic, most of whom are relatively oblivious to what is around them simply because they don't feel they need to pay attention.
The quote by Hans Monderman in the article rings true: "When you treat people like idiots, they'll behave like that."
Of course, with everything how it is, chances are good that things won't be changing anytime soon--people tend to want to be lazy, and a lot of attempts to change, say, intersections with traffic lights (or stop signs) to circles will be met with stiff opposition by drivers who, unfamiliar with circles, will balk at the lack of "safety" because there's no automatic indicator saying that they can step on the gas pedal now.
Makes you wonder where the hell situational awareness and the general sense of self-preservation up and went, doesn't it?
~EI
Re:Learn to drive. (Score:2, Insightful)
But the idiot driving it is relying on the airbags, crumple zones, seatbelts, anti-lock brakes and rack and peanut steering to keep Darwin at bay.
Everyone's a great driver when they take the test; once that's over complicity kicks in.
Re:everything old is new again (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing worse than not having a parachute, is having one that doesn't open.
If we 'teach' people to ignore warnings that their car is losing tractions, such as wheel vibration, we are taking an active role killing people. There are reasons we have traffic laws, policemen with laser and radar, and traffic courts.
All we can, or should do, is punish stupid behavior. Teaching people to ignore danger signals, will simply lead to people ignore a very serious warning. I'd much rather see someone in traffic court paying a hefty fine, having their insurance fees jacked up and possibly lose driving priviledges - than see them dead. This is especially true, because we all know that when a traffic accident occurs, the people killed are often innocent passengers, and/or another totally innocent vehicle who simply got in the way.
Re:Self-correcting? (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of the drivers can use feedback mechanisms such as "the speedometer" and "vision" to realize they are driving fast.
The speedometer only tells you how fast you are moving, it tells you nothing about whether that is too fast for current conditions.
The feel of the car provides the best clues about whether you're going too fast, but modern cars do their best to mask that as much as possible, because it interferes with your other distractions.
Re:Get rid of the windshields! (Score:2, Insightful)
Excellent article addressing that point: (Score:5, Insightful)
In particular, how SUVs separate the driver's experience from the road in a dangerous way. And on the shopping habits of American car buyers in general. It's a favorite article of mine.
Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety [gladwell.com]
"In the Jetta, the engine is clearly audible. The steering is light and precise. The brakes are crisp. The wheelbase is short enough that the car picks up the undulations of the road. The car is so small and close to the ground, and so dwarfed by other cars on the road, that an intelligent driver is constantly reminded of the necessity of driving safely and defensively. An S.U.V. embodies the opposite logic. The driver is seated as high and far from the road as possible. The vehicle is designed to overcome its environment, not to respond to it. Even four-wheel drive, seemingly the most beneficial feature of the S.U.V., serves to reinforce this isolation. Having the engine provide power to all four wheels, safety experts point out, does nothing to improve braking, although many S.U.V. owners erroneously believe this to be the case. Nor does the feature necessarily make it safer to turn across a slippery surface: that is largely a function of how much friction is generated by the vehicle's tires. All it really does is improve what engineers call trackingâ"that is, the ability to accelerate without slipping in perilous conditions or in deep snow or mud. Champion says that one of the occasions when he came closest to death was a snowy day, many years ago, just after he had bought a new Range Rover. "Everyone around me was slipping, and I was thinking, Yeahhh. And I came to a stop sign on a major road, and I was driving probably twice as fast as I should have been, because I could. I had traction. But I also weighed probably twice as much as most cars. And I still had only four brakes and four tires on the road. I slid right across a four-lane road. " Four-wheel drive robs the driver of feedback. "The car driver whose wheels spin once or twice while backing out of the driveway knows that the road is slippery," Bradsher writes. "The SUV driver who navigates the driveway and street without difficulty until she tries to brake may not find out that the road is slippery until it is too late. " Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn't the solution; it's the problem."
Such a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you arrive at your destination exhausted because the car was nagging at you the whole way. Back in my college days, I drove from Northern Calif to Southern in a noisy, rattletrap. I pulled into Pasadena around 5 hours after starting and was bone tired from the drive. So tired in fact, I didn't notice a kid crossing in front of a stopped car in the next lane. The stopped car driver realized I wasn't slowing down, saw that the kid was in jeopardy and so he leaned on his horn. Had that driver not blasted his horn, I could well have hit the kid. As it was, I'm sure the kid never realized how close he came to being hit because he stopped and glared at the horn blower.
Quieter, smoother cars just don't fatigue you as much as cars used to. I think that's a good thing. Being in an accident because you're tired, not so much.
Remember Ralph Nader? (Score:5, Insightful)
When he wrote "Unsafe At Any Speed" people were still getting impaled by their steering wheels which didn't collapse and crumple out of the drivers way.
I remember as a kid driving by an accident where most of the car was torn away except for the engine and the steering column which we sticking up and through the young woman who'd been driving the car.
The other car that had slammed into her from the back and propelled her into traffic in the intersection was also dead from the impact with his steering column.
I'll never be able to wipe that image from my mind so ... joke away but realize that the idiots behind the wheels were sometimes innocent victims.
Too bad statistics disagree with their "point"... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to all of the statistics I have seen, injury and fatality rates continue to steadily decrease (latest US statistics [dot.gov]). I understand the point the article is trying to make - and in specific cases it is probably true - but on the whole, making vehicles and roads safer does in fact translate into an increase in overall safety in spite of the idiotic driving habits of the general public.
I tend to think that having a more extensive driver training program where drivers are exposed to poor conditions and limits of vehicle handling are a much better idea than purposely making roads and vehicles worse. Maybe even have rigorous enough testing that the incompetent are actually weeded out and not allowed to possess driver's licenses.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem there is that jets aren't flying 10 feet from eachother, and aren't controlled by road-raging madmen swerving around traffic dangerously to attempt to save 30 seconds from their trip.
Long story short, it will never happen on the ground. Even if spontaneously every single car in the country (or even world) were changed at the same time to all be as automatic as jet (and hell, for the sake of it, we'll say even antique or older cars were also changed to be automatic somehow), you WILL have tons of people who will find a way to change it manual again so that they can CONTINUE driving like madmen even moreso now, because all the OTHER cars on the road are so predictable now.
Re:Solution: Motorcycles (Score:3, Insightful)
ROFL, right, which must explain all the high speed motorcycle accidents that happen every year once the weather gets good...
Re:Not new news (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe people drive faster because it's such a frustrating situation, at least in the US. I drive to work every morning, and drive home every afternoon, in rush hour traffic. I really have no choice in the matter. My employer says I will be at work at 9 am, and I can leave at 5 pm. There is no public transit that would get me where I want to go and the apartments near where I work are way out of my price range. It takes me half an hour and two toll roads that cost over $2 a day. If I don't take the toll roads it's even longer in the car.
It really grinds my nerves that voters continue shoot down competent public transportation, but I can't drive anywhere without seeing miles of road covered in orange cones, snarling traffic for miles because the already congested highway system is in need of expansion (half the reason it takes so long to drive anywhere in the first place). And by the time they finish the work (five years from now) they'll just have to start again. I really just hate driving. Even without all the traffic, I'd rather just get on a train and have someone else do the driving. You can drive and eat breakfast, listen to music, and basically turn your car into a living room, but you need only see rush hour once to see that everyone does it poorly. Traffic would probably move faster if people didn't try. Or if they had another option for eating that breakfast while commuting.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
A modern airliner is actually safer than the usual small plane (Cessna etc). Things would be safer if they required all drivers to be as skilled, trained, responsible as a typical airliner pilot. But then most drivers would fail, and they would have transport problems. Politicians would lose lots of votes.
The point you raise about safety brought something else to mind. The emphasis the summary placed on speeding really did not sit well with me. Generally speaking, it works this way:
Speeding == a way to generate revenue for the state while talking a good game about safety. Failure to yield, following too closely == two things that receive very little emphasis which cause a hell of a lot more preventable accidents that speeding could ever cause.
A close third would be those people who don't seem to understand the purpose of the passing lane and why they create a hazard for everyone else when they try to monopolize it. Ideally, drivers should have patience for this and value safety above immediate gratification. However, the reality is that if you make it that tempting for people to weave in and out of lanes or to cut right in front of you because there's no other way to get by you, they will do it, count on it. The people who do this should know what situation they are setting up.
Like the summary, I am of course speaking of highways. I think speeding can be an important issue when you're talking about a residental area where there might be pedestrians walking or children playing. The mistake is to think that this must be some sort of universal truth because of such a special case. When you cover a few basics like discouraging tailgaters and not allowing the pacers to hang out in your blind spot, speeding in and of itself is hardly a threat on an open highway. If you don't cover those basics, strictly obeying the speed limit isn't going to do very much for you if something unexpected happens.
Re:are you sure? (Score:5, Insightful)
The per mile death rate is lower, in general, in more urban states than more rural ones. My guess is that with everyone stuck together in traffic, most of the accidents happen with a relatively low closing speed so less people are killed. It's certainly not because New Jersey drivers spend more time paying attention to what's going on around them, at least in my experience.
It's not exactly the same point but it's certainly true that vehicle death totals are down significantly on a per mile basis over the last 40 years, at least in the US. So while there may be a false sense of security brought about by ABS, air bags, and traction control, it doesn't overcome the actual advances in safety.
Re:Self-correcting? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
...people will drive as fast and with as much care as they feel safe getting away with. Some think we should come up with ways to make people feel less safe than they actually are.
Of course, then people learn to distrust feedback and cues, knowing that they are designed to fool them. End result, people start driving fast again, only now they have no cues that they trust, including the real ones.
Re:Antilock Braking Systems... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the first case, your main problem was driving a Grand Am. The second case, is buying a Scion. Try buying a car that is reliable and well-built and you'll be much better off.
Re:Antilock Braking Systems... (Score:1, Insightful)
I realize that ABS doesn't exactly minimize stopping distances -- it attempts to synchronize wheel rotational rates to maintain directional stability -- but on high-traction surfaces like dry asphalt or concrete those goals are typically complementary rather than exclusive.
When you hit the pothole and thereby alter the rotational speed of one of your wheel the ABS may well temporarily reduce your braking power on the other wheels to compensate. But once the slow wheel gets back up to speed you should have full braking power again, and the interval between should be in the milliseconds range.
If you're seeing any significant increase in stopping distance you're either a world-class threshold braker, have really bad tires, or your ABS is broken (either though a failure on your vehicle or bad design).
Re:No kidding! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it'd be practical in an airliner.
Can you imagine a hundred panicked people queueing in front of an open door? You'd have the parents screaming about their children and babies, jerks trying to be the first and pushing people out of the way, people standing shaking at the door unable to jump, half the people not understanding what to do with very limited time available, and so on. Then there would be the 3 or 4 who absolutely refuse to jump, what do you do, kick them out of the door?
Also, what about children and really fat people? Can you imagine the mess you'd have if a mother and her 10 year old kid had to jump separately?
Then there's the problem of where can you safely jump. Probably a bad idea over pretty much any populated place, with good chances of landing on a highway, or crashing into a building.
I think it'd be a really horrible mess. This might work for the military, but normal people rarely think straight in such situations, and it'd be a complete chaos.
Re:No kidding! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
A. Putting a parachute on takes enough time that if you aren't wearing it, it's not going to help you in anything but the most unlikely circumstances.
B. I'm sure you've noticed those little masks that drop from the ceiling in "the event of sudden air pressure loss". Those are needed because most commercial flights operate high enough that there so little oxygen (or air pressure) outside you'd be unconscious in a matter of seconds without supplimental oxygen.
C. Unlike exploding cars, those action movies where the hero opens the hatch on a plane and everything suddenly gets sucked out aren't that far off from the truth. Overpressure in the cabin means even at low altitude, opening that hatch is likely to get a lot of people hurt.
D. Actually, parachutes require a lot of training to use properly. Even if you got one on, and the plane was low enough to jump, and you didn't get screwed over when the door opened and suddenly everyone is in a pile in the aisle, you still have a really low chance of actually surviving the fall.
Those are the 'reality' reasons why.
But also remember that airlines already have to deal with the issue of people considering them unsafe. Would you want to be the airline that introduced "Parachutes for every passenger" as a marketing campaign? When they are counting the number of peanuts you get in each bag, do you think the idea of inspecting each parachute before every flight to ensure the last passenger didn't screw theirs up is going to go over well? How about the liability when someone lives a crash but ends up a paraplegic due to their failed landing?
At the end of the day, there's just too little benefit anticipated from such a plan for anyone to consider it.
Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is almost the definition of speeding.
No, it's not even close. "Speeding" is driving faster than a number written at the side of the road by people sitting in offices 300 miles away. Every driver is responsible for assessing traffic, road, and weather conditions, and adjusting speed accordingly.
Exceeding the appropriate speed for conditions is what gets you into trouble.
"Speeding" just gets you ticketed.
Re:Get rid of the windshields! (Score:3, Insightful)
Then put your pants back on, pervert.
Re:No kidding! (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of a serious failure ...
What happens if the "serious failure" impacts the satellite link / remote control system?
Human ingenuity on board is almost always the most robust option.
Wheel vibration is a stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)
If we 'teach' people to ignore warnings that their car is losing tractions, such as wheel vibration, we are taking an active role killing people.
Wheel vibration isn't a useful signal that the car is about to lose traction. It's already "taken" by other problems: It's a signal that a tire has blown out, or you have a wheel out of balance, a misaligned front suspension, a severe engine misfire, or a very cheap car.
Making the wheel vibrate artificially to signal the edge of available traction only makes sense if the rest of the car is in ideal condition (including design).
The big yellow triangle with exclamation point that flashes in the middle of my Mercedes' speedometer is a much better indicator. You really can't miss it, and it can't be mistaken for some other minor problem.
More Energy=More carnage. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm blowing my mod points here, and hoping that I'm redundant to other, earlier and wiser comments, but you are clearly too young to know a simple truth.
Greater Speed=More Energy=More Lethal Crashes
It's just this simple, peeps. There is literally no case you can postulate (including "being chased by tyrannosaurs") in which ADDING energy is the best escape strategy. Don't bother: Asteroids? Tanker truck explosion >just starting in the tunnel behind you? There isn't. Simply because the costs of your GUESS ("oh, hockey-mask-clad killer coming up behind me!") if you prove to be wrong, are fatal. Risk requires understanding probabilities and humans do not have a facility for that. We see the hero survive, we envision how it'll work, we "just know" it was the right thing to do, and it simply never is.
And so, we have this public health problem: too many people, driving too fast, making preventable crashes into fatal ones.
Don't get it? Note all the appropriate agencies no longer call them "accidents" they're crashes, and they all have the same root-cause: someone was going too fast for the conditions. The investigators' jobs are reduced to finding out who and how much.
So let's be done with this "speeding is safe" meme. It's crap. I, for one, cannot wait for our automated-car overlords to take over.
Less throttle, more tunes.
What's the fucking hurry? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent article addressing that point: (Score:1, Insightful)
And yet it seems like the craziest drivers on the road are those driving jettas....they even travel in crazy packs, weaving across lanes and around cars.
Re:More Energy=More carnage. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there is a linear increase in the danger involved in having a crash, all the way from 10km/hr up.
But most crashes are not caused by speed. They are caused by failure to give way - and the only way you could write that off to speed is by pointing out that the vehicle should have been stopped (ie speed=0) at the time.
Another major cause of accidents is fatigue. Fatigue crashes are proportional to time spent driving. Speed = time * distance says that higher speeds mean less time driving.
I agree that we need speed limits, and they need to be enforced. But they also need to be fixed at a rate where there is actual danger: 100km/h for well-used, 2-lane highways, yes; but quiet or divided highways could safely be used at 140 or above. (our speed limits were set - when, the 1960s? The concept of a 1960's vehicle at 100km/h is frightening!)
Mind you, there is a big safety dividend when all traffic on a road is at the same speed. This could be a good reason to limit speeds to what the average driver feels safe at. It is also a very good reason to scrap laws that limit towing, heavy vehicles and learner/provisional drivers to lower speeds!
Re:Learn to drive. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you've been in 11 major collisions? your an "idiot driver magnet"? You sound like my buddy working on his 4th marriage that just claims "he always seems to pick the bad ones" and doesn't know why the chick he picks up when he's married doesn't work out when he marries her!
As the saying goes.. The only common thread in all your failed relationships is you.... Perhaps you should start driving a little more defensively.
Re:No kidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is correct. You can use the highway fatality data before, during, and after the no-daytime-speedlimit years in Montana if you want to put some observational data to it.
Highway fatalities went way down, then way back up after the limits came back.
Generally, people driving on the highways during the no-limit conditions weren't going _that_ much faster, but were wearing seatbelts more often and paying better attention.
I've driven on destricted sections of autobahn. It is both exhilarating and taxing. But at no point did I ever lose focus on what I was doing. I also had the benefit of a lot of race track experience here in the US before I went to Germany. I find that 1 hour of continued driving at elevated speeds has me wanting to take a short break. 2 hours of US-speed driving has me wanting to take a long nap.