Volkswagen AutoPilot: Deal or No Deal?
erco
Posts: 20,259
http://www.roboticstrends.com/consumer_education/article/volkswagen_debuts_temporary_auto_pilot
Cars are getting smarter, so it's fine that human drivers get dumber. Have you seen the commercials for Mercedes (I think) where these classy, smart-looking people (including a Google president) testify how their Mercedes saved their life by sensing the congestion ahead and applied brakes, while the idiot drivers were completely oblivious to the situation? Great role models!
How us that something that I want to aspire to? "If you're a complete boob, this is the safest car for you!"
Sadly, most bad drivers don't KNOW they're bad drivers.
Cars are getting smarter, so it's fine that human drivers get dumber. Have you seen the commercials for Mercedes (I think) where these classy, smart-looking people (including a Google president) testify how their Mercedes saved their life by sensing the congestion ahead and applied brakes, while the idiot drivers were completely oblivious to the situation? Great role models!
How us that something that I want to aspire to? "If you're a complete boob, this is the safest car for you!"
Sadly, most bad drivers don't KNOW they're bad drivers.
Comments
Like the traffic signal ahead switches to yellow, then red. He keeps his foot on the accelerator - does not think about beginning to slow down *now*.
Or people/vehicles stopped on the edge of our narrow rural roads around here. Does not think to slow down from 55 while passing them or moving into the oncoming lane (if possible) to give them some room - avoid possibly hitting them.
Then yesterday we were on a 6 lane freeway (3 lanes our side), speed 60. Up ahead I saw the traffic completely stopped! I said what do you see ahead? He said "traffic stopped." He kept his foot on the accelerator and continued to go 60! I said SLOW DOWN, SLOW DOWN, SLOW DOWN!!!
(Then I explained about some of the 60 car pileups I've seen on the freeways of California and WHY it is a good idea to immediately start *gradually* slowing down in that situation. You need to alert the cars behind you and get them to start slowing down - don't suddenly come to a stop on a freeway if you can avoid it, or you will see cars flying all over the place in your rear view mirror!)
Anyway he is starting to "get it". Not easy to get him to "think ahead" or anticipate problems...
The worst thing I see on the roads is cars 'glued' to one of the painted lines. It means the driver is more concerned about his placement on the road (and failing that, too) than noticing what is happening around him.
Mostly these are older drivers, but there's a lot of 'homeschooled' youths, too, doing it.
One day I was out driving with a buddy in the passenger seat and we had just passed the few lights on the way out of town, he asked me, 'How come you're so lucky that the lights change to green just as you get to the intersection'?
He never realised that the lights were visible for hundreds of meters before the intersections, and that I released the throttle when I saw a red light.
Generally, I'm sceptical to much of those 'assist' systems.
'Lane warning' ... Right... They should try using that in the winter, when everything is covered by snow.. Or in the spring when it's revealed that the thick(and it seems, brittle) 'paint' used has been scraped off by the plough...
'Anti-skid'... That's weird... I've been driving for over 20 years, on every condition imaginable(and a few more) and never needed it. Could it be because I actually have training in how to correct a skid, and therefore understand what causes them? (I also think that 'drifters' should be shot on sight, but that's another matter)
I've seen 4WD cars spinning wildly on very gentle slopes where my front-wheel drive car has no problems.
(I don't believe that full throttle is the solution to every problem.)
If I have to get up a slope where the front-wheel drive isn't enough, I'll BACK UP!
(That's what the Mythbusters got wrong about driving on snow/ice. It's only useful when going uphill. It's also useful for going back down if you fail to get up. Your car is then pointed the right way... Backing down a slope is dangerous)
and if that doesn't work, I have chains...
ABS is nice, I'll admit... And yes, I want it on my next car...
If someone can't drive safely without those gadgets, they don't have any business driving at all.
ABS is dangerous because when you have to slam the brakes on to stop, that is when the car takes the brakes off and you roll forward instead of stopping.
Too bad technology is more in vogue than common sense.
The second level of understanding traffic is to see where other cars and people will be in the future, i.e. predicting their trajectories. This is also important, but people who don't drive enough, or are very uninterested in driving can be pretty poor at it.
The third level of understanding traffic is to see what the situation will be several steps ahead, so that you can e.g. slow down (or, in other situations, increase speed), or maybe pull over, because you can see that this will allow another driver to move in a certain way that will again avoid a problem with a third driver or other trafficant. This, and more complex scenarios, often requires serious training and can take years to acquire.
When driving I daily see people who cannot see that the bus they stop for because it's taking a turn into their road will need space to take the turn. They don't see this, so they drive too far ahead into the junction before they stop. Then they have to back up, unless they've already created a total deadlock. Not to mention the guy who pulled up along the bus on its right side, when the bus was already about to turn right. He saw it, but didn't realise that even if the bus had its own lane it would need more space. His BMW didn't look too good after that.
Anti-spin: I agree with Gadgetman. I've never needed that even once and I've been driving all my adult life, all over the world, not to mention at home where there's at least 5 months of snow. Front wheel drive, back wheel drive, four wheel drive. Anti-spin has no place in a car meant to be driven by someone who actually knows how to drive.
ABS: Bad, bad, bad. ABS gives a longer break length in almost any condition. Including breaking when going straight on asphalt. It's even worse in certain snowy conditions. I once stayed a couple of weeks in a region with light daily snow showers. The ABS breaks on my rental car worked reasonably OK immediately after the snowplow truck had passed, when there was a hard snow surface. After a light shower of snow over this hard snow surface the car was impossible to stop. When I was leaving the hotel in the morning there was a very short, not steep downhill road to the main road. I would go down there very slowly, like when you leave a driveway. The only way to avoid just rolling onto the main road uncontrollably was to switch off the ignition. I'm not kidding. That switched off the ABS and the breaks worked as they should (no problem with traction on that surface. Very good breaking).
Then one evening a reindeer jumped onto the road some 50-60 meters ahead, and it started to run in a zig-zag pattern along the road. I couldn't pass it due to the zig-zag, but I couldn't stop either - the ABS wouldn't let me! So I just drove off the road instead.
A colleague travelled to that same region a week after me and experienced the same weather conditions. As I was wondering if there was something seriously wrong with the breaks in my rented car I asked him if he had any trouble with his (different) car. He told me he had more or less exactly the same exeperience (minus the reindeer).
Now I drive an old car with no anti-spin, no ABS. And I pay to keep it working. To me this is much safer than buying a new car. I drive my father's new car regularly, and in winter his car's breaks are pathetic compared to the breaks of my car. Or the previous car I had.
ABS is only good for people who have never done the training they should have been through: How to handle the car if you have to sverve or slow down when turning. And those people should not be on the road.
Re ABS systems there is some interesting reading here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
Problem is, even the BEST driver can have a lapse; all drivers are bad drivers at some time or other. Out of 1000 driver on the road, statistically one of them will make SOME mistake. It only takes one mistake to kill you. This would be handy "just in case" but I wouldn't rely on it exclusivley. Just like I leave the anti-lock brakes system running, but I still know how to stop the car if it fails.
-Tor
"It is all about me." I've seen adults on IVY League colleges walk in back of vehicles backing up even though trucks and vans have backup beepers and vehicles backing up have a blind side and cannot see pedestrians. You would think that adults who have all that money and go to college would be smarter than the rest of us but "it is all about me".
Pedestrians in the hood jaywalk even though the driver has a green light and vehicles in the hood run red lights. That is why I stopped driving in certain sections of different towns and cities on weekend nights.
It snowed all night and the cheap city did not plow or salt the roads. My boss didn't have the sense to close. I went to work and when I had to stop the car, the anti-lock breaking system went on and the car kept on rolling for yards so to avoid hitting cars I turned where there were no cars. ABS is more dangerous than you think.
That is another thing I'm trying to drum into the head of that teenager: When turning right at a stop sign or red traffic signal, after looking to the left, ALSO look to the right before proceeding - pedestrians will walk in front of your car while you are looking to the left!
And when backing up from a parking slot at a shopping center, your head should look like a chicken's! (Rapidly turning head: left window, left mirror, rear-view mirror, right mirror, right window, then back...) And back up very slow. Pedestrians and other cars will appear out of nowhere.
Another "gotcha" is you are turning right and a car is approaching from the left with its turn signal on. Every once and awhile that car will not turn, but will continue on down the road! So I told the kid to not assume a car is going to turn just because the turn signal is on. Rather wait until it actually starts to turn before proceeding.
Back into it!
Sure, it's a bit more difficult to back into it than driving forwards into it, but it's many times more difficult to back out of it.
This whole thing about backing in and out is rather odd. I have had a couple of vans and several big trucks where you never could see directly behind you. Good drivers adapt by avoiding situations where they have to back up or by making sure they know what is behind them before they do. With diagonal parking, backing in is not an option - everyone parks head in and backs out.
"A young woman was riding in the car with her elderly aunt. They came to a red light and the aunt drove right through it without even slowing down. This frightened the young woman but she didn't want to upset her aunt so she didn't say anything. They came to another red light and again the elderly aunt stormed right through it. Now the young woman felt she had to say something. "Auntie, do you realize you just drove straight through two red lights?" To which her aunt replied "Oh my God! Am I driving?"
(Yes, really. There's more crashes and fender benders on that day than any other. Everone is too stressed to think clearly)
It may be a good idea to avoid driing on 'boxing day' or the 'black something'(Is that at Thanksgiving?) or other days with extreme shopping, too. You may end up spending more money on fixing your car than you saved on 'great deals'...
On a similar note...
I read that "77 percent of car accidents happen within 10 miles of your home".
So I moved away from there!