The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/03/the-most-under-hyped-but-most-important-technology-since-seat-belts/

by MaysonL • 17 years ago

115 134 17 years ago

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

It is so reliable I no longer impulsively reach for my brakes. Let’s say the car in front of me speeds up after slamming on its brakes.

Hmm. That sounds pretty dangerous :(

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

Yeah, I could see this becoming a problem in the future. Imagine getting used to this, then for some reason, needing to drive an older car. "Oops, I didn't realize this car required manual braking".

sailormoon3• 17 years ago

There could be two classes of license, like in Japan where you can have a limited qualification to drive only automatics, or a full license including manuals too. In this case, however, the "automatic" would be the fully automated vehicle, and the "manual" would be the traditional human-controlled one.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

Taken out of context your quote does sound dangerous. If he were used to this and tried to drive another vehicle he may have slower reactions when braking is needed.

The acceleration in your quote is because the road ahead is now clear and he can accelerate up to his cruise speed unless he gets too close again. THe full paras:

>I pull onto a road, say freeway 280, and I set the cruise control. I set the top speed the car should ever go. Say 80 mph. But it doesn’t go 80 unless there’s no cars in front of me. Usually in Silicon Valley there’s traffic. So, the car in that case follows the car in front of me.

>But they just slammed on their brakes to avoid something. What does my car do? It slams on its brakes too. It is so reliable I no longer impulsively reach for my brakes. Let’s say the car in front of me speeds up after slamming on its brakes. My car speeds up too. It’s like there is a rope between my car and theirs. It is like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

Yeh sorry the accel section got copied over by accident.

I do think the first section highlights one of the big concerns though. Regardless of scobles excitment this tech is still in the infancy. There could be a dangerous transfer period.

mschy4• 17 years ago

I have a car equipped with a similar system, and have a similar reaction (my car will slow down to a stop if I let it).

I've had no issues thinking that rental cars were the same, because the driving experience with "standard" cruise control and radar/laser cruise control is very obviously different.

pclark• 17 years ago

> Just like it was criminal for car makers to drag their feet pushing out seat belts, air bags, and anti-lock brakes in previous safety fights

Apparently Honda couldn't get consumers to pay for ABS and had to install it by default at no extra charge in order for people to have it.

mike_organon2• 17 years ago

I agree that is part of the issue, many customers don't care. I think there is another relavent point.

The video of the Ford guy illustrates how companies are competing on improving this tech. If it were mandated, might that be like forcing commoditization? Companies with inferior tech would push it out too soon. There would be less competition because customers would accept the minimal and it would be harder for companies to differentiate. As opposed to now: forward-looking customers with the money can look for the best system which pushes the tech forward.

dschobel• 17 years ago

And let's not forget that there are still laws on the books in most (all?) states to compel passengers to wear seat-belts.

People are very peculiar about which safety features they wil like and use.

mjs• 17 years ago

"Ford’s version of radar prepares the brakes so that all you need to do is touch them to get full braking pressure if the car thinks it’s headed for a collision."

That sounds like a really good way to get hit from behind. Does the system try to stop you as fast as possible, or as slow as possible while still avoiding the car in front? The second option is kinder to cars behind without such sophisticated safety systems.

adamsmith• 17 years ago

It'd be especially cool if it took both front and back radar into account. If nobody is behind you break more liberally but otherwise exercise more caution.

(It does seem like there would be room for such an "aggressiveness" parameter, since you can't predict the future breaking behavior of the car in front of you and it might have stronger or weaker breaks.)

Either way I hope all of this stuff works out to be a net win. We should know more in a year or two!

jacabado2• 17 years ago

I just saw a Top Gear episode where they tested the last Mercedes S which does just this. (talk about serendipity and having new ideas!)

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

Wouldn't the ideal step be to harmonize the radar/lidar technology and have a system enabled that forces a safe driving zone. It's all too common on highways that vehicles can't stop within a safe distance if the vehicle in front of it stops, which leads to 5 vehicle pile ups.

You'd only need a moderate percentage of vehicles with the radar/lidar technology to keep a highway reasonably spaced. EG if you're tailgating, your vehicle will brake, if someone is tailgating you it will speed you up (within the speed limit) to get you to a safe distance, or (when capable) shift you safely into a different lane when you're in cruise.

Eventually you could simply have vehicles communicate, so when the guy in front of me brakes, my vehicle gets instructed that it's approaching a decelerating object. It'll be small 'safety' steps that will eventually remove human error from vehicle accidents.

Retric3• 17 years ago

The goal is to minimize the force of a collision not to stop 10 feet behind the car in front of you. As a collision avoidance system, if you can stop with a reasonable distance from the car it's not going to start and if the other car is not stopping as fast as expected then it can relax some.

WesleyJohnson• 17 years ago

I suppose I would have to experience first hand to really weigh in on whether I would use it or not, but from an initial reaction standpoint, I would think I'd prefer an all or nothing approach. Meaning, either fully automated driving or don't help me at all. I just can't help but imagine that I'd never be able to get used to this type of selective assistance. Someone cutting you off doesn't necessarily mean you're headed for a crash and no cars in front of you doesn't necessarily mean you can drive 80 mph without caution. If you grow to rely on a system such as this, it only takes one incident where the vehicle doesn't believe it's about to be in a crash when you really are for it to ultimately fail. Or worse yet, for the car to sense you may be in a crash and apply counter measures which causes panic by the driver and ultimately leads to a crash anyway due to overcorrection or something similar.

vlad2• 17 years ago

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, electronic stability control is the most important technology since seat belts.

Yet, as recently as a couple of years ago, the Volkswagen Rabbit (Golf) was the only car under $20,000 I could find with the option, other than Suzuki. As an example, the Honda Civic did not have it, and you had to buy an Accord or an SUV to get Honda's version of it.

An electronic stability system "makes the vehicle go where you're pointing it by applying the (computer-assisted) brakes. I think this is definitely a milestone." This includes driving on ice, or making tight turns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hHWSQhKuc)

CamperBob• 17 years ago

There are some really interesting risks associated with electronic stability control, though. One system used by GM on the Corvette works by comparing the input from an inertial yaw sensor to the current steering-wheel angle. Any disagreement results in selective application of braking at one or more wheels, as needed to make the two sensors agree.

Now: what happens when one of those sensors fails? http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c6-tech-performance/2336065-...

I wish I could find the video I saw earlier, where a Z06 doing about 90 MPH did a hard right turn into the wall at a drag strip for no apparent reason. I don't know with any certainty that the active-handling system was at fault in that incident, but it was enough to turn me off of the technology in a 500+ HP car.

bmalicoat• 17 years ago

Interesting that it doesn't always perform in severe weather conditions as this seems like it could be when it was most useful, eg avoiding a pile-up in a whiteout. He mentions that you shouldn't be driving in such conditions but unfortunately Michigan is famous for rapid and surprising weather changes. Other than that it seems like very cool technology that hopefully becomes standard soon. It's nice to see that car manufacturers are willing to take things slow to avoid rejection because they think it is important as well.

jordanb• 17 years ago

The thing about ABS is that it operates on the principle of least surprise: It takes what the user expect brakes to do (slow the car down) and makes it work even when traditional brakes would fail to perform that task.

So it took a technology that the user expected to work in a certain way, and made it work better in that way.

It made brake behavior less surprising to the user.

This technology seems to do the opposite (at least, the way Scoble described it). It massively changes the behavior of the car based on some sensors, and then expects the user of the car to deal with the different behavior of the systems, all in a high-stress situation with alarms going off.

mschy4• 17 years ago

In practice what it means is that if you're about to crash into something, and you hit the brakes, that it hits them 100% right off the bat, instead of the 50% or 80% that most people would go for.

I've not used the system in the Prius, but I've used a competing system and it's not at all surprising.

ams61104• 17 years ago

In many cases you're better off trying to steer around the collision than (or in addition to) stopping short of it. I've seen a few crashes where people could have just steered onto the shoulder or median to avoid the crash but it seems that they just applied the brakes and hoped for the best.

I don't think driver's education in the USA teaches emergency maneuvering much. How is it elsewhere?

ugh2• 17 years ago

Driving cars is very dangerous. The earlier we radically change how we use cars the earlier we can avoid deaths on the streets.

I want an autopilot for cars as soon as possible.

houseabsolute2• 17 years ago

Absolutely. The moment we develop an autopilot that is safer than average human drivers by a statistically significant margin, it should be mandatory in all cars. I am hopeful that we will see this during our lifetimes.

mike_organon2• 17 years ago

Scoble's text is different from what the Ford guy says. Ford doesn't automatically hit the brakes, only preps them and when you hit the brakes, it automatically applies them 100%. Prius automatically applies the brakes and Scoble says he no longer instinctively hits them himself. I wonder if that loss of instinct is worth the benefit.

teuobk• 17 years ago

There's a lot of interesting automobile safety research going on in Silicon Valley. For example, Mercedes-Benz has a building in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto where they design next-generation safety systems. My former roommate works there, and, though I probably shouldn't give details, I can say that there are some neat safety systems under development.

One tidbit: a number of stoplights in Palo Alto and Redwood City broadcast information about when they are going to change. A properly equipped car can receive that information and decide whether to proceed as usual or begin braking, even before there is a visible change. As a corollary, if the red light is about to turn green, the car can decide not to slow down.

weaksauce2• 17 years ago

The slowing down for a red is nice but the not slowing down because it is going to turn green is scary. My friend died in a car crash because he timed the light and saw that it was going to be green. A mild red light runner t-boned his car and that was that. I say mild red light runner because had he not timed the green perfectly he probably would still be alive.

Don't get me wrong this is promising technology but I would be hesitant to rely on it to do too much.

vijayshankar• 17 years ago

One more argument is that there is usually a time gap between one light turning red and the other turning green. This gap should allow most of mild red light runners to pass through safely. (At least in my city in India this is true, the time gap is as big as 5 to 8 seconds)

mschy4• 17 years ago

I've had the radar-assist cruise control for two years (complete with braking) and everything, and I view it as a first step towards automated driving.

People aren't likely to accept automated driving (even if it's statistically safer than the average driver) but they will pretty readily accept driving aids that watch the car in front of you, and watch if you're in your lane, and what not. I expect those "aids" to continue to advance and expand with them being "aids" for a long time, until liability problems are solved.

And FWIW, I've had no issue when driving rental cars that don't have the radar/laser based cruise control. The experience of regular cruise control and radar/laser cruise control is sufficiently different that there's really no way to mix them up.

elblanco3• 17 years ago

On long stretches of Highway in the American West, there really isn't a whole lot of driving to do except keep the car in the lane. It's pretty clear that we're getting painfully close to fully automated highway driving.

mschy4• 17 years ago

I wouldn't describe fully automated highway driving as painful in the least. I'd be quite happy about it.

After all, highway driving isn't remotely interesting from a "driving" viewpoint, so I'd hardly miss it.

ricree• 17 years ago

"Think about that. If we could cut down on car crashes by even 5% we could save more than 2,000 lives!"

I don't know whether or not this is true, but the argument is fallacious. Without further evidence, it is a bit premature to assume that the fatal:nonfatal ratio in crashes prevented will be the same as that of crashes in general. It is possible, though unlikely, that a chance might only prevent nonfatal crashes.

Retric3• 17 years ago

They used could save not will save for that vary same reason. Most likely the net effect would be much like seat belts which transform many fatal accidents into non fatal accidents and many non fatal accidents into non accidents.

PS: Unlike airbags seat belts do help avoid accidents. But, it's rare to see people talk about that outside of drivers education.

ams61104• 17 years ago

Seems that I've read about studies that show that people have a certain, nearly unconscious risk tolerance. For example, ABS and all-wheel-drive made driving in the snow and ice easier, so people drive a bit faster or more aggressively until they reach their previous risk tolerance level. Thus the potential safety benefit is not realized in actuality. In fact, if people overestimate the added safety of the new technology, they may be more likely to have an accident than without it. Witness the common sight of four-wheel-drive vehicles spun off the road in a snowstorm.

michaelbuckbee• 17 years ago

Agreed, my dad always described 4 Wheel Drive as a way for people to get stranded farther from help than they otherwise would have.

epochwolf• 17 years ago

I agree with this. I am far more comfortable driving faster with 4 wheel drive on, so I disable it as soon as I don't need it.

Retric3• 17 years ago

Looking at the data, the steady decline in deaths per passageway mile suggests improving safety actually works. Now, it may be useful to make people feel less safe, but IMO most accidents are caused by people not really paying attention and automated systems which tell them something bad happens should help as long as they alert the driver that something bad almost happened.

PS: The fact you can take little damage while rear ending someone at 65MPH is not something the average person wants to test out.

Devilboy5• 17 years ago

BMW has a system in their top-end saloons that will safely pull your car over to the side of the road without crashing if the driver is suddenly incapacitated (e.g. a heart attack). These system are great and I hope we can overcome the social barriers eventually. Car accidents are still the #1 cause of preventable death worldwide.

EDIT: Here's another great system expected to start trials in 2011: http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/road-trains-and-modular-veh...

If you have a vehicle fitted with this system you'll be able to join 'road trains' where the front vehicle is driven by a professional driver (e.g. truck or bus driver) and the rest of the cars follow behind it - driven automatically.

mhartl• 17 years ago

N.B. saloon == sedan. (As with many of the Britishisms in my brain, I learned 'saloon' from The Economist.)

sjs• 17 years ago

And here I was searching Google Maps for a classy place to drink and brawl.

slyn• 17 years ago

What, you don't watch Top Gear?

Though more entertaining than educational, I know the difference between my boot from my bonnet thanks to that show, as well as what a saloon, spanner, pillock and many other british-english mannerisms mean.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

how does that work if you're not right next to the shoulder?

vaksel• 17 years ago

my guess is lasers, they already check to alert you when you have cars in your blind spot, so it most likely checks those before moving you over.

Devilboy5• 17 years ago

GPS combined with various road / traffic sensors. VW has a system that can drive itself all the way to a hospital (or anywhere really) in city traffic. They're going to trial some of these systems in Germany this year. Because of more stringent liability laws in the US you won't see it in America any time soon though.

patio112• 17 years ago

Car accidents are still the #1 cause of preventable death worldwide.

That strikes me as unlikely, given that car accidents kill something like 50,000 people a year in the US. Just inside the US, an obvious candidate for prevention -- medical mistakes -- kills far more people. (Estimated at 200k per year preventable deaths in hospitals alone.)

Casting our glance worldwide, poorer nations have millions of deaths from causes that aren't even "hard problems", such as clean drinking water, food distribution (solved in Europe in about the 1700s), malaria (solved in America over half a century ago), etc, etc.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

(Estimated at 200k per year preventable deaths in hospitals alone.)

For the United States ALONE? I don't buy it. But prove me wrong by citing an authoritative source if there is one.

Devilboy5• 17 years ago

World stats (causes of death) according to WHO:

1) Coronary heart disease - 12.2%

2) Stroke and other cerebrovascular diseases - 9.7%

3) Lower respiratory infections - 7.1%

4) Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - 5.1%

5) Diarrhoeal diseases - 3.7%

6) HIV/AIDS - 3.5%

7) Tuberculosis - 2.5%

8) Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers - 2.3%

9) Road traffic accidents - 2.2%

Although maybe it's more correct to say the leading cause of accidental death is car crashes. I guess 'preventable' is too broad a word.

jacabado2• 17 years ago

Just to put in context, a link that was here last week or so about the Automation Paradox:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to-dea...

Will there be a compromise between traditional crash deaths and safety systems induced deaths ?

Not to dismiss the new systems, I'm an optimistic by nature.

lincolnq• 17 years ago

How is it not still a net win? The automated systems fail a lot less often than humans. Even if they can't get the failure rate to 0%, it is still making things safer to replace humans by robots.

axod6• 17 years ago

I don't buy it. If you need a radar to tell you you're about to crash, you're probably not paying attention properly.

We should tighten up driving tests. Driving shouldn't be a right, it should be something only competent attentive people can do.

It'd be interesting to know stats on Manual vs Automatic car accident rates. I'd guess that Automatics are involved in more accidents since the drivers are probably paying less attention. Similarly cruise control.

mattmaroon4• 17 years ago

It's not that you need it to tell you that, it's that the human brain, even when focused, is relatively slow to respond. Not to mention many people have a panic impulse that causes them to yell first and then step on the brakes. In certain situations where a half second can mean the difference between death and a bruised knee, it's pretty impressive stuff.

axod6• 17 years ago

Sure but that's why you pay attention and drive properly, and look out for any dangers/issues.

The best way to cut down the number of accidents is to get rid of all the crazy bad drivers, rather than any sort of technology IMHO.

kscaldef2• 17 years ago

That may be, but I still look with suspicion on someone who says he would have gotten in 2 accidents in 11,000 miles had his car not saved him. In my experience, it's very, very rare for someone to just cut you off with no warning. I can almost always predict that someone is going to switch lanes without signaling; usually 2 or 3 seconds before they do it.

wtallis• 17 years ago

If somebody cuts you off, the radar is guaranteed to have a faster reaction time than you.

billswift2• 17 years ago

The point someone made up thread, is that unlike the radar, if you are paying attention, you will likely notice them approaching to cut you off which the radar certainly cannot.

Imprecate2• 17 years ago

Modern cars make so much power that you really don't need to shift unless you're accelerating from a stop, in traffic, or on curvy/hilly backroads. I can comfortably drive in 6th gear between 55 and 100+ mph including passing, going up hills, and so on. Obviously it's not the ideal gear in all of those cases, but if you're feeling lazy it works.

I would guess manuals are involved in more accidents and more fatal accidents, at least in the US, since the only people who buy them here in great numbers are performance enthusiasts, frugal bastards, and diesel truck drivers. Some enthusiasts are responsible and don't push their cars on public roads, but many aren't. If there is a difference, it's probably small. My parents have two of the same car, one in manual and one in automatic, and they never mentioned a large difference in insurance cost. Actuaries would charge manual and auto drivers different prices if their risk rates differed.

elblanco3• 17 years ago

Ford is really doing a phenomenal job recently, doing its homework and engineering to try and get the company back on track. 5 years ago, I would have said they were 10-15 years behind an equivalent Japanese car. Now I think they they are only 3-5 years.

Their recent offerings are really very impressive. I'd love to see Ford be a benchmark for American car companies as well as imports. They aren't quite there yet, but their progress is amazing.

ams61104• 17 years ago

I'm sure they are getting a lot from Mazda. The Ford Fusion, for example, is basically a rebadged Mazda 6.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

I wonder how it works - Ford own Volvo, who are pretty good with safety features (e.g. the 3 point seatbelt) and who have been building blind-spot awareness systems, brake-priming systems, etc. and their concept for the next S60 had distance-to-car-in-front cruise control and pedestrian detection and so on. ( http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/index.htm?md=1468 )

Maybe Ford are getting it from Volvo?

kyro• 17 years ago

The assisted braking 'feature' where the system moves your calipers closer to your rotors sounds really stupid and dangerous. When I press the brakes, I am expecting a buffer period between initial contact with my pedal and the actual deceleration of the vehicle. Because of that buffer, I tend to push my pedal down further to initiate braking. Eliminating that buffer with drivers who have come to expect it will make for very sudden braking, which would probably increase the chance of being hit from behind.

dkokelley• 17 years ago

Presumably the ABS still works, meaning you won't lose control of the car while slamming on the breaks.

As far as being hit from behind, I suppose this is (and always has been) an issue in accidents and other emergency situations. Still, the car behind you should allow appropriate spacing to prevent rear-ending you. I don't see how emergency breaking systems change really change the basic rules of the roads.

dgallagher4• 17 years ago

GPS-enabled Governors should be put in all cars too, limiting your speed to that of the speed limit, adjusted for weather conditions. If you're in a 35 MPH zone, you car will stop accelerating (and ideally auto-slow when going downhill or onto slower roads) once you hit the limit for that part of the road.

Speed limits would likely have to be re-adjusted in some cases as they may be too low in some area's, but it would certainly cut down on accidents.

An exception would be allowing people to speed in short bursts. While rare, sometimes you need to accelerate to avoid an accident. Not allowing for this would be unfair.

Definitely wouldn't be popular with a lot of people, or police departments generating revenue from speeding tickets. But driving is simply a means of getting from A to B in a safe and efficient manner. So long as people are getting hurt or killed in between A and B, something is very broken.

portman• 17 years ago

This proposal wouldn't increase safety until all cars on the road had the GPS-governor feature, which would take 15-20 years for old cars to be phased out. In the meantime, the new cars would have an annoyance (no speeding) without providing any measurable safety improvement.

dgallagher4• 17 years ago

You're correct on some points, though it may slow other cars by way of simply being in the way. It wouldn't work on highways with passing lanes until a high adoption rate, but a single slow car on one-lane side roads will "bottleneck" any speeders. This alone would most likely increase safety.

Gradually as more people got the cars, things would get safer and safer. Once, say, 90% of cars on the road have governors, it'll be hard for a speeder to find the opportunity to speed.

Economic reasons could speed up adoption too. For example, insurance carriers would likely charge less for those with the device, and more for those without it. Governments could give those with the device a break on their income taxes.

But honestly, I don't think the idea has much traction. It's too emotionally charged which would make it difficult for politicians to implement it, and there are large switching costs from current cars. Self-driving cars will likely appear beforehand. Radar and governors and what-not are really all just bandaids for the real problem with cars; their human drivers.

shrughes2• 17 years ago

How about we put a GPS-enabled governor around your neck, in case you ever think of stepping on private property.

dgallagher4• 17 years ago

Different context which doesn't apply to my initial post, and worded in a harsh manner to attempt to demonize my idea without presenting an argument against its merits (i.e. "around your neck"), but I'll bite.

Stepping on an individual's property doesn't endanger others' lives needlessly. It's pretty easy to call the police and have a trespasser removed/arrested. Plus, in some states, you can shoot and kill trespassers so long as you've given them fair warning, and can legally carry a firearm. People also have attack dogs, surveillance systems, etc...

You can't shoot and kill someone who's speeding endangering your life. If you call the police about a speeder, they'll usually look for them if they're not too busy. But police departments would quickly be overwhelmed if they had to police "every" speeder on the road. There's simply not enough police. Also, you're defenseless while being in the presence of their illegal driving behavior.

Trespassing, on the other hand, is a rare occurrence. Penalties tend to be harsher than speeding (jail time rather than a fine). It must be much easier to speed than trespass since I don't know anyone I've met in the last year who hasn't sped, yet I can't pick a single trespasser out of any of them. I'd imagine this is the same for most people.

People have little incentive to trespass too. Why do it? To steal something? Murder? Most people don't need to steal things or kill others.

Speeding, on the other hand, has a number of incentives tied to it which provide immediate benefit without significant perceived risk (tickets are rare - habitual speeders may only receive a couple a year | accidents are even rarer). For one, it might save you time^. It also makes people feel good (release of aggression, showing off, feeling of freedom, etc...).

My initial idea isn't one of punishment, but one which increases safety. What's the goal of driving? Going from A to B in a safe, efficient manner. Why wouldn't you want it to be safer, within reason? So you can cut 4 minutes off your 60 minutes of travel time?

^This isn't always the case. Roadways are much like assembly lines. Their slowest points set the pace of everything on the line. Speeders mostly zip from one bottleneck to the next, never really decreasing their net travel time. Time yourself driving the speed limit to work and back one day, and time yourself speeding the next. How much time did you save? A minute or two? None at all?

NOTE: Most vehicles already have governors which limit their top speeds, though aren't used in the manner which I suggest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_(device)

aneesh• 17 years ago

What worries me about this technology are the corner cases. If it's 99.9% effective, eliminating the need for manual braking, the 0.1% of the time where it doesn't work, the user won't be ready to brake, which is dangerous.

TeHCrAzY3• 17 years ago

I think the point is that rarely would a human succeed in such a corner case, let alone in 99% of all cases.

kiba• 17 years ago

Do ya think it will have the unintended consequences of making people take more risks then they would have if they know of safety features?

Or maybe the increased safety outweigh the cost of false sense of safety?

tjmc• 17 years ago

Adaptive cruise control has been on high end cars for over a decade - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_cruise_control_syste.... It would be good to see it standardized as it can significantly reduce traffic congestion that's caused by over braking. I think BMW claimed that this would be happen if more than 30% of cars had the feature.

dnsworks2• 17 years ago

As usual, Scoble misses the boat by several magnitudes in his aim to over-sensationalize something he read on techmeme. I would personally put safety glass, airbags, anti-lock brakes, traction control, and crumple zones ahead of radar. Those are technologies that improve safety for everybody, whereas radar is for people who don't pay attention and should not be driving in the first place.

jsz02• 17 years ago

Those careless people do drive and radar might stop them from causing an accident that kills your friends or family one day. Radar also has a huge potential to improve the safety of pedestrians who otherwise might briefly admire the traction control system of a careless driver's car before they are crushed to death.

randallsquared• 17 years ago

whereas radar is for people who don't pay attention and should not be driving in the first place.

So, "for people", then. I'm confident that there is no driver who is fully paying attention to driving at every moment while driving.

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Radar is not for the people who don't pay attention. It's for the people who are driving in front of them who are going to get rear-ended otherwise. The less control idiots have over cars, the better. I would feel far more comfortable dealing with a bunch of automated vehicles than a similar number of typical drivers, to be frank.

dnsworks2• 17 years ago

Radar will just be another crutch for a bad driver. Good drivers make sure that they always have an out, check their mirrors and blind spots as often as possible, stay safely away from other drivers, and do their best to control the situation. Adept use of brakes and speed can control how far people stay from you, as well as your position within a lane. These are skills every motorcyclist learns very, very quickly.

dghughes• 17 years ago

"Another place the radar is invaluable? In fog. I drive over the Santa Cruz mountains every day to get home and there often is fog. One day there was a car in front of me that had no back taillights."

I bet the driver of that car was just using parking lights. I hate that! People who drive with parking lights on don't seem to realize the rear running lights are not on, parking lights are not meant to be used when driving that's what headlights are for.

mmastrac2• 17 years ago

Daytime running lights are mandatory in Canada. Not sure why they aren't in the USA. If the car is out of park, the headlights turn on automatically. It solves a handful of issues like this that are potentially dangerous.

sokoloff4• 17 years ago

It specifically does not solve the "no rear lamps" issue. In fact, it exacerbates it.

sokoloff4• 17 years ago

I've never seen a car where the "first click" of lights (what I presume you're calling parking lights) doesn't turn on the taillights. In most cars, they're even on the same fuse.

(Yes, there are cars with true one-sided parking lamps that will only illuminate one side front-and-rear to mark the edge of the car parked closest to the road.)

I suspect what you're actually seeing is drivers using only the daytime running lights. Those do not turn the rear lamps on.

jsz02• 17 years ago

Besides radar I think there's a lot of potential for automated systems to help drivers cope with snow & ice. For example a sensor scanning the road able to warn the driver of black ice, or at least inform the driver that they may be seeing rain on their windshield but it's freezing on the ground. Maybe speed controls based on real time weather conditions. No one should be going over 40MPH on any road in the snow. How about using cars as a way to measure road safety? Monitor the road conditions and the cars traction and report this information to the DOT so a plow/sander can be dispatched to particularly bad areas.

blahedo2• 17 years ago

Here's the reason I expect to hate this "feature": I already hate the way my seat belts work and they have nearly gotten me into multiple accidents. Specifically, if I see a hazard coming from the sides/rear and slow down and try to avoid them, I need to be able to turn my head quickly and sharply to see them. And the GODDAMN SEATBELT IS PREVENTING THIS because the slowdown and my quick sitting-up-straight has caused it to lock me tight against the seat. I am now PARTIALLY BLIND with respect to whatever threat is incoming and I have to hope for the best. This is terrifying and it is not a safety improvement. Based on the descriptions in this article, the situation in these cars of the future will be even worse, because the seatbelts will lock down more often and the brakes will become hypersensitive and work differently than your muscle memory has been trained to expect.

No matter how much training and experience you have with your car, as soon as you get in a situation that requires precision handling you are suddenly transported into a car that behaves and handles completely differently, that you've never driven in before. Put me down in the "no" column.

rglullis• 17 years ago

Humm... turning your head? Something wrong with your rear-view mirror?

anigbrowl2• 17 years ago

Sure, buddy. And not wearing a helmet would doubtless make you a better motorcyclist, too. Fortunately, in the case of motorcyclists, people who actually believe this tend to kill themselves earlier, sparing the rest of us from having to listen to their bullshit.

Edit: I suggest not slouching to start with.

blahedo2• 17 years ago

Note that I'm still wearing the seatbelt, and I'm not pushing for the repeal of seatbelt laws. If you'll read a little more carefully, you'll see that my objection is to the mechanical change in handling, visibility, etc, just at the moment when you need it the most, not to the presence of safety measures in general.

maigret• 17 years ago

Please avoid CAPS in HN. This is a civilised place here. Thanks

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

How many years of driving experience do you have? I only ask because this sounds so much like something a new driver would say.

Your car is not a finely tuned Formula 1 Ferrari. It shouldn't be driven like one.

The most under-hyped, but most important, technology since seat belts

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