Are driving aids dodgy?

[smutchin]

[QUOTE 5277107, member: 9609"]will we negate any benefits by thinking it can do it instead of us?[/QUOTE]

My feeling on this (by no means scientific) is that those people who don't pay adequate attention without tech aids will be the same people who don't pay adequate attention with them. Those who do pay attention won't stop paying attention just because they've got tech assistance.

I'm optimistic that automation will lead to an overall improvement in safety on the roads.

Too optimistic? Remains to be seen...

 

[nickyboy]

The more mundane driving stuff automated the better as it lets the driver concentrate more on the important stuff like not hitting things

 

[Drago]

The effort and expense invested I develoing these gadgets who'd be better spent getting people of of their cars for unnecessary journeys. As always, it's more profitable to treat the symptoms than the disease.

 

[Drago]

And the lane keeping th action is ideal when you want to roll a J.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

[QUOTE 5277187, member: 259"]I can personally vouch for Kia's refrigerated glove compartment. It keeps the vodka lovely and cool, which is always a boon on a long drive.[/QUOTE]

A farmer I worked for bought a new tractor. £40,000+ It was huge and massively powerful, capable of doing a dizzying number of jobs but the thing that Johnny was most impressed with was the mini fridge in the cab which was the perfect size for two cans of Tennents. Which was exactly what it was used for.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

And the lane keeping th action is ideal when you want to roll a J.

That's what knees are for.

 

[Julia9054]

I'd just be happy if my car didn't rattle constantly. Oh, and passing it's MOT first time - something it's never managed - would be a bonus

 

[DaveReading]

Kegworth. As in the air disaster. As in when multiple people died in part because, in the stress of dealing with an emergency, the pilots instinctively assumed the layout of the aircraft they were flying was the same as all the previous ones. But the manufacturer had changed a couple of things -swapped sides - and so people died.

There is no suggestion in the investigation report that any of the engine indications had "swapped sides" in such a way as to confuse the crew regarding which engine's data was being displayed where.

 

[swansonj]

There is no suggestion in the investigation report that any of the engine indications had "swapped sides" in such a way as to confuse the crew regarding which engine's data was being displayed where.

No, indeed (and for the record I didn't actually say they had).

The main "layout" (my term) that they'd changed was which side engine the air for the different cabins was drawn from. So, when smoke became apparent, the best guess is that one of the mistakes the pilots made was to assume that the layout was the same as the 200 and 300 series aircraft they were more familiar with and to deduce from the presence of smoke which engine was damaged - but to get it wrong because in the 400 series it was the other engine. There were other factors in their catastrophic mistaking of which engine was damaged but that seems to have been one. (From memory, another thing that had changed was improved engine vibration gauges - it appears that because the pilots were used to unreliable gauges, they didn't prioritise checking them which could have led to them correcting their mistake, whereas the actual gauges they had were more reliable).

I first encountered Kegworth on the HSE course on behavioural safety, where, in the section on cognitive biases, they used it as one of the case studies of representativeness bias - assuming that what applied last time will apply - be representative - of all future occurrences. That was the (only) point I was making in reinforcement of @Profpointy's point - we are all trained and familiar with cars as they are, and in an emergency, we will instinctively assume that things are still as they always have been. In the car context, there's a lot to be said for not changing around things that we might need to rely on in a stressed situation or which an emergency is the extreme.

 

[rugby bloke]

My car has cruise control - very useful for long motorway journeys (especially long hauls through France) and parking sensors - also very useful as the car is stupidly big and parking in tight spaces can be a challenge. I can remember loading it on the Jersey catamaran, which involves turning a corner on the boat - the sensors were going crazy so it was a matter of ignoring them !
Never driven a car with the any of the new gizmos - self braking, self parking etc. I am sure it would seem strange at first but I guess it will be standard practice in the future.

 

[Profpointy]

You just have to make sure you don't get a car fitted with the Parisian version...

Quite ! I think the rationale goes "why have bumpers on your car if you're not going to use them?"

 

[Deleted member 26715]

There's an advert on TV currently I think it's for Nissan Micra, but it might be a Toyota Something, where they are going to the airport & encounter traffic so they take a shortcut to the runway & somebody walks out in front of them with a piece of glass & the car autobrakes. This does frighten me, you just know there is somebody out there who is going to be relying on that feature, they are going to assume the car will have all eventualities covered so they don't have to.

 

[Nibor]

adaptive cruise control is great when you are in average speed areas on motorways, if the car in front slows so do you to maintain a safe distance if it spoeeds up so do you to the maximum you have set. If it slows a lot it beeps and tells you to brake.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

adaptive cruise control is great when you are in average speed areas on motorways, if the car in front slows so do you to maintain a safe distance if it spoeeds up so do you to the maximum you have set. If it slows a lot it beeps and tells you to brake.

So if the car in front speeds you also get a NIP?

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Ah - but then that's not an issue with the technology but the meatware controlling it.

But that is the failure in most of these scenarios. just like those who believe ABS will save them on ice.