Right off the bat, let me say that I’m a big fan of safety, and anything that can make driving safer is most likely a good thing. At the same time, when your vehicle starts making decisions for you, is that necessarily good or safe?
Warnings that you’re drifting out of your lane - good. It’ll get your attention back to driving; at least that’s the idea, right?
Car that jerks you back into your lane when you’re drifting - not so good. It’ll get your attention, but what if you start to rely on your car to react for you?
Car that brakes for you - can be good, since its reaction time is probably better than yours, but is it bad because you figure you can check your texts and the car will stop you if necessary?
Then what happens if your safety systems fail - it’s an imperfect world and that could happen. Or what if you’re driving a car that doesn’t think for you - will you remember that you have to do the thinking again?
As you might have guessed already, I’m skeptical of the value of this technology. Unless everyone is in a full-automated, self-driving vehicle with a proven track record, I feel like these features may lead to more accidents than they prevent.
Is my gut right or wrong? What do you think about these sorts of vehicles? Do you drive one, and if so, has it affected the way you drive? Do you think such features will become as standard as power steering and anti-lock brakes?
I’d disagree that everyone has to have a fully-automated car for accidents to decrease. I don’t necessarily think fully automated cars of any number (1% or 99% of cars on the road) would lead to a net increase in accidents/injuries/fatalities.
There definitely is an issue with level 3 (not fully autonomous) cars, as I understand it (I thought autonomous car companies said this from testing). The problem being the drivers, that quit paying attention, because they aren’t actively driving. Similar arguments have been made regarding cruise control and even automatic transitions. But I don’t know of any studies (or how you’d do the studies) to measure how many accidents averted v. how many accidents caused as a result of the technology existing. And then, of course, there whether the accidents are more or less likely to result in injury or fatality.
This very problem came to mind when I saw a car commercial recently: The father is arguing with the daughter about dropping her in front of the school, and suddenly the car slams on the brakes to avoid hitting someone that stopped in front of them. The daughter just gets out of the car to meet her friends, the father watches her take off…and neither one seems concerned about his inattentiveness to the road. The commercial then touts this "auto-braking’ as a great safety feature, adding nothing at all about how it is no substitute for attentive driving.
**Czarcasm **- that’s definitely one of the ads that got me to thinking about this. There was also one where a car automatically stops from backing up before running over a kid - um, why wasn’t the driver looking behind and why wasn’t the kid’s father paying attention rather than letting the kid run ahead across suburban driveways??
Yeah, I know, commercials don’t reflect reality entirely, but still - you’re the driver - you’re responsible!!
So, don’t text and drive, but if you do, your car will react while you’ve got your eyes on the screen. Unless it doesn’t.
They already do. Whenever a new safety feature is introduced accident rates dip slightly and then recover.
ABS is a great example, basically drivers tend to stay within the same range of safety no matter what car they’re driving. So if you’re a moderate driver you tend to leave less space when driving a car with a shorter stopping distance but still enough space to stop safely under most conditions. If you’re an aggressive driver, you have the same tendancy and the increase of safety that ABS is supposed to provide just has a relative impact on the driving habits instead.
It’s very hard to keep paying attention to something just in case something unusual happens. So a car that can drive itself 98% of the time but then requires the driver to take over with pretty much no notice is going to be very problematic. However, if the car simply stops and tells you it can’t continue autonomously, that’s not a real issue.
Another problem is systems that make driving easier. Sure, power braking and steering make driving easier, not to mention all the electronic stuff that’s hit the market more recently. But when you lose those tools, driving becomes much more difficult and probably a lot more dangerous. So maybe those systems should be made that they don’t really fail. And maybe do what they do here in the Netherlands with automatic transmissions: if you learn to drive in a car with one, there’s a note on your driver’s license that you’re not allowed to drive a stick shift.
Bottom line: more technology doesn’t help under all circumstances, so it must be added with care.
Another thought - your car stops automatically and suddenly because of something ahead of you - the car behind you doesn’t have the sensor and you end up with an engine in your trunk. Yes, it’s no different from you slamming on the brakes in an emergency and the person behind not being able to stop. I suppose when all cars have such sensors, there might be fewer crashes.
Is that where we’re headed? Will all cars be required to drive defensively despite the drivers?
I don’t have actual statistics but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that an awful lot of accidents always have and continue to be caused by human error and/or negligence behind the wheel, and I don’t see that inherent trend we have ever going away. There are varying reasons for different types of negligence and they come and go in a person over time; they vary between people and are not consistent, so it’s hard to find a way (new law, education campaign, etc) that will help reduce the results of negligence for the majority of people since it’s caused by so many different things.
However, if for example all cars automatically break when they sense they are about to hit some object, it won’t matter whether the driver himself didn’t react because he was impaired, fussing with kids in the back seat, or angry with his spouse and not paying attention. You’d at least have a method to reduce accidents applicable to a broad spectrum of circumstances rather than a narrow one.
Yes there will always be a small number of people that get more complacent when they realize an advance in technology will help them… one of my school teachers years ago said she was happy when air bags came out because she felt more comfortable speeding because the airbag would help protect her if she did have an accident. But such people are a vanishingly small minority; most will choose not to get lazy and go out and have an accident, got to court, get their insurance premiums jacked up, and possibly have a traumatic experience.
I don’t think vehicle safety devices or increases in vehicle efficiency lead to decreases in most people’s skill levels or attitudes. I wouldn’t think cars designed to crumple would lead to more people driving them into things, nor an OBD2 system push people to care less about vehicle maintenance. Very bad and expensive things happen when you drive or maintain a vehicle poorly; those consequences remain the prime motivations for attentive driving habits, not the degree of effort required to do so.
I see the idea of drivers losing their skill as technology makes driving easier as sort of a slippery slope. We already have seen huge advances in vehicle safety and performance, but not a corresponding huge decrease in driver skill. As for systems failing, again it’s in the numbers. I have had exactly 1 close call in 25 years on the road due to a failed “modern” system: lost control over a minivan for about 1/2 second while making a turn when the vehicle stalled and I lost power steering… recovered control and pulled off to the shoulder to re-start the engine. On the other hand I’ve had dozens of close calls caused from poor road conditions, excessive speeds, inattentiveness, poor driving habits and so on (mostly other people’s) over that same time period… you know, the stuff that has little or nothing to do with the level of the vehicles’ technological sophistication.
In the past few decades, cars became much safer - seat belts, crumple zones, rollover protection, airbags, ABS, etc. Did these features make us worse, more complacent drivers? Probably. Did that lead to even more deaths from car crashes? Evidently not, because the car fatality rate is lower than ever.
For about 5 years or so, a few people have been saying the same thing about commercial airline pilots. Planes are automated and computerized to the point that pilots don’t get to practice certain skills like they used to.
It might help drivers to practice being oblivious.
“No, I don’t know what happened. I was texting & sending a selfie.” - loss of license/jail 2016
“No, I don’t know what happened. I was texting & sending a selfie.” -typical response of “passenger drivers” 2026
The difference between flying and driving is that when the autodriver gets confused, it can simply stop the car. That’s not an option for the autopilot.
I don’t know if this is an urban legend or not, but I recall hearing, back when cruise control was a new feature, about an RV driver who set the cruise, then went in back to make a snack…
I can easily imagine someone thinking nothing of reading and sending texts, believing the car will stop before anything bad happens. Or driving “just a little farther” while fatigued, or having one more drink… Sometimes I think technology just enables us to reach new levels of stupid.
I often talk about this stuff with my friend who is an automotive engineer. We think the solution is to add the safety feature, but not tell anyone. If people don’t know it’s there, they won’t rely on it. Ads that show cars stopping on their own only encourage reckless driving.
All I know is that if I were designing a robot car, I wouldn’t rely on a single pair of sensors with a range of 180 degrees placed high up and several feet in the car behind a piece of glass.
There are more than five million car crashes in the US every year. We suck at this. We were not built for driving and it shows. I think this is probably more like a calculator-- people will lose some ability, but the sheer power of using the right kind of tool will more than make up for it.
It was a little annoying the other day when I asked my son: “What’s 20% of $30?” Instead of just answering me, he broke out his calculator (on his phone) and gave me the correct answer. Ugh! I wanted to scream!
Been then I thought about it. What’s more important? Achieving the objective? Or understanding the process in achieving the objective?
I think the former is more inclusive. Therefore better over all.
I read once of a pilot of a small plane (4-seater? 6-seater?) who set the autopilot, then climbed into the back seat to have some sexytime with his girlfriend. They ended up creating joinder with a tree.
I suppose that might only work for some kinds of safety features. Some other kinds, a driver probably couldn’t help but notice, sooner or later. Like automatically staying in a lane, or correcting when the driver starts to drift. I’m sure a driver would notice that happening.
Smarter cars probably will lead to worse drivers since they won’t need to be as good. On the other hand, drivers make “human errors” all the time already. So, the question is does removing the latter more than make up for the former? I think it probably will.
It’ll be a while before an automatic system is better than an alert, skilled driver; the problem is, there’s a lot of people on the road who are lacking one or both of those qualities.