I’m a very firm believer in the fact that safety features should be annoying and uncomfortable. Your lane assist needs to beep loudly every time it moves you back, thereby not only keeping you safe, but indirectly conditioning you to keep between the lanes to avoid the annoying beep.
My dad’s Mercedes indeed beeps incredibly loudly (anyone sleeping immediately wakes up in a panic) if the blind spot sensor goes off… which it does as soon as you put your blinker on.
Guess what that wonderful bit of tech taught my dad to do? That’s right, don’t use the blinker to change lanes if you don’t want your eardrums blown out.
The fundamental problem is that car manufacturers aren’t being held liable for the accidents caused directly or indirectly by these “safety” systems. There is zero oversight and no mandate to investigate false positives of these systems, even when they cause an accident. The end result is that for the manufacturers the point is not to improve safety but to do obnoxious safety theater so regulators look away from rising pedestrian deaths. “Sure our cars are one ton heavier, but they have automatic braking soooo we’re good right?”
Who knows if these gadgets actually do anything or even if they don’t decrease overall safety. The manufacturer gets positive marketing, throws the regulator off their scent, and isn’t held liable for shit when the “safety” system fails or encourages bad habits. Win-win-win. Except the general public loses. But who ever cared about these schmucks?
I have a particular gripe against lane keep assist. When it was active on cars I’ve rented… on the mountain passes just outside of the Vancouver Area, it went off way too often, since the lines would get blurry, or you have to stay clear of oncoming trucks around a curve meaning you have to go to the shoulder a bit. Also giving space when passing bicycle riders on the shoulder you (after checking of course), move to the centre just a tad.
Making these features more annoying would lead to alarm fatigue more than better behaviour.
I had to turn off the lane assist in our Mazda for that reason. It was constantly steering me back toward obstacles I was trying to avoid. I cursed it many times.
Other false alarms are frequent enough that I’m starting to ignore the alarm, so when it actually catches me in a mistake, I’ll probably ignore it then, too, and be in a crash.
I’m a very firm believer in the fact that safety features should be annoying and uncomfortable. Your lane assist needs to beep loudly every time it moves you back, thereby not only keeping you safe, but indirectly conditioning you to keep between the lanes to avoid the annoying beep.
My dad’s Mercedes indeed beeps incredibly loudly (anyone sleeping immediately wakes up in a panic) if the blind spot sensor goes off… which it does as soon as you put your blinker on.
Guess what that wonderful bit of tech taught my dad to do? That’s right, don’t use the blinker to change lanes if you don’t want your eardrums blown out.
The fundamental problem is that car manufacturers aren’t being held liable for the accidents caused directly or indirectly by these “safety” systems. There is zero oversight and no mandate to investigate false positives of these systems, even when they cause an accident. The end result is that for the manufacturers the point is not to improve safety but to do obnoxious safety theater so regulators look away from rising pedestrian deaths. “Sure our cars are one ton heavier, but they have automatic braking soooo we’re good right?”
Who knows if these gadgets actually do anything or even if they don’t decrease overall safety. The manufacturer gets positive marketing, throws the regulator off their scent, and isn’t held liable for shit when the “safety” system fails or encourages bad habits. Win-win-win. Except the general public loses. But who ever cared about these schmucks?
I have a particular gripe against lane keep assist. When it was active on cars I’ve rented… on the mountain passes just outside of the Vancouver Area, it went off way too often, since the lines would get blurry, or you have to stay clear of oncoming trucks around a curve meaning you have to go to the shoulder a bit. Also giving space when passing bicycle riders on the shoulder you (after checking of course), move to the centre just a tad.
Making these features more annoying would lead to alarm fatigue more than better behaviour.
I had to turn off the lane assist in our Mazda for that reason. It was constantly steering me back toward obstacles I was trying to avoid. I cursed it many times.
Other false alarms are frequent enough that I’m starting to ignore the alarm, so when it actually catches me in a mistake, I’ll probably ignore it then, too, and be in a crash.