Intrusive safety features: it's going way too far.

[JLBoucher]

A friend of mine just bought a fully loaded R-Design Volvo XC40, recently. Nice looking car. He wanted to me to drive it to see how good it was. So I did.

He left all the safety features on. I gotta say: while i'm the first in line to applause how safe the cars are these days, I must say they can be f***** annoying. In fact, I wasn't driving the car as much as it was driving me. It was beeping all the time for no reason and it even came close from sending me in the ditch once, simply because it didn't know what to do with a car brake-checking me in front (nah, I wasn't too close, far from that).

Sad thing was: I had to go into 34 menus to turn the safety features off. Very annoying. Thank God, there are still basic, well made, safe cars that are letting you drive without a nanny telling you what to do.

I'd buy a fully loaded Lada Niva (with warming seats and a/c) instead of a nanny car. I'm dead serious.

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[TheRealTVGuy]

Try hooking up to a Jetski trailer with the driver door open so you can jump in and out. The damn JL keeps going into auto park.

I know you can disable that through the Tazer, but I bought an extension to my hitch so I could see the ball in the backup camera. After that, lining everything up was a cinch!

 

[rcadden]

I think the next ~3-5 years in automotive is going to be interesting.

We see the need/benefit from all of these automated safety features, but they're still technically in their infancy from a software standpoint, so they don't work all that great. My wife's Lexus RX350 has the "lane-keep assist" feature. 80% of the time, it's kinda nice, especially for longer road trips. But man, that 20% is REALLY obnoxious, so I wind up just turning it off completely. It pinballs within wider lanes while it tries to keep track of the lines, freaks out when I try to exit without a blinker on, etc.

And we've all seen the various coverage of Tesla's non-autonomous full-autonomous mode. I'd call it hit-or-miss, at best.

Those types of systems are going to be amazing for 80% of drivers, and will absolutely save thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives.

HOWEVER

There's also going to be a large contingency of people who want *NONE OF IT*. Some of those people still need it, they just don't like to admit it. Others just legit don't need/want it. Or it's not appropriate for certain situations, like offroading, overlanding, or being out in BFE where you see 1 other car every 300 miles.

It's tricky, but I think the best solution is the one that the market is heading towards. These "solutions" will be standard on every vehicle, across the industry. They may even wind up being government-mandated, like seat belts and airbags.

There will also be a thriving aftermarket of solutions like Tazer, that allow you to bypass/disable them.

IMO, this is a best-case scenario, for a few reasons:
1. Requiring aftermarket mods to bypass/disable will prevent a large majority of people from bothering with it. While vehicle aftermarkets are a thriving industry, they serve a relatively teensy percent of the overall market.
2. From a legal standpoint, requiring the vehicle owner/operator to actively opt-out by purchasing a device, installing it, and configuring it, they have accepted a large part of the legal responsibility for operating it. There will always be systems/software malfunctions, but in court, it will come down to "was this a manufacturing defect, or did you tamper with the system?"
2a. This legal responsibility aspect will also fuel #1 above, as people won't want to assume the risk.

 

[LongTimeListener]

I'm very grateful that Jeep currently allows buyers a choice of paying for all the safety stuff. Things like blind-spot monitoring -- which just provide the driver with additional information -- are helpful.

Features that take over control of the vehicle -- like auto braking -- are not things I want.

I'm afraid we won't have a choice in this for much longer, but I'll enjoy it while I still can.

 

[jludave]

I know you can disable that through the Taser

Actually you can’t. That feature has been removed.

 

[Archie PJ]

I'm not necessarily a fan of the electronic aids (or the annoying auto park someone else mentioned as that one got me good!) the op mentioned, but am a fan of all the structural safety built into vehicles. But, after driving around the country and way too much around a large sw city, it may be time to put speed limiters in that would prevent vehicles from exceeding the posted speed limit (see the Nav system speed ) by, for example, more than 5 mph for more than 10 seconds in a 3 minute period; think Indy Car "push to pass". People driving 20 mph over in heavy traffic is simply a disaster. There seems to be far less excess speed enforcement over time. In my view, people disrespecting speed limits over time has led to disregard of other, more serious laws. Respect starts with the basics.
(as I now dive into a bunker to avoid the "response bombs")

 

[PacNWJLGecko]

I'm not necessarily a fan of the electronic aids (or the annoying auto park someone else mentioned as that one got me good!) the op mentioned, but am a fan of all the structural safety built into vehicles. But, after driving around the country and way too much around a large sw city, it may be time to put speed limiters in that would prevent vehicles from exceeding the posted speed limit (see the Nav system speed ) by, for example, more than 5 mph for more than 10 seconds in a 3 minute period; think Indy Car "push to pass". People driving 20 mph over in heavy traffic is simply a disaster. There seems to be far less excess speed enforcement over time. In my view, people disrespecting speed limits over time has led to disregard of other, more serious laws. Respect starts with the basics.
(as I now dive into a bunker to avoid the "response bombs")

Speed limits are not set in any manner that makes sense. They are completely arbitrary and are instituted in the name of "safety" with the real intent being revenue generation. Cars moving on highways with speed differentials reduces congestion and increases traffic flow. What needs to be focused on is drivers who don't move over for faster traveling vehicles and drivers who follow too closely. Both are the leading causes of accidents (besides distracted driving of course).

 

[Archie PJ]

Speed limits are not set in any manner that makes sense. They are completely arbitrary and are instituted in the name of "safety" with the real intent being revenue generation. Cars moving on highways with speed differentials reduces congestion and increases traffic flow. What needs to be focused on is drivers who don't move over for faster traveling vehicles and drivers who follow too closely. Both are the leading causes of accidents (besides distracted driving of course).

Wow. You couldn't technically be more wrong about every point you stated.

 

[Gummiente62]

Try hooking up to a Jetski trailer with the driver door open so you can jump in and out. The damn JL keeps going into auto park.

Buckle the driver's seatbelt to bypass the auto park. I learned that the hard way after digging 30' ruts with the rear wheels while winching it one day.

 

[entropy]

A friend of mine just bought a fully loaded R-Design Volvo XC40, recently. Nice looking car. He wanted to me to drive it to see how good it was. So I did.

He left all the safety features on. I gotta say: while i'm the first in line to applause how safe the cars are these days, I must say they can be f***** annoying. In fact, I wasn't driving the car as much as it was driving me. It was beeping all the time for no reason and it even came close from sending me in the ditch once, simply because it didn't know what to do with a car brake-checking me in front (nah, I wasn't too close, far from that).

Sad thing was: I had to go into 34 menus to turn the safety features off. Very annoying. Thank God, there are still basic, well made, safe cars that are letting you drive without a nanny telling you what to do.

I'd buy a fully loaded Lada Niva (with warming seats and a/c) instead of a nanny car. I'm dead serious.

Well that car is a pos then. My Camry has all those safety features and it has never, ever had a false alarm or tried to send me into a ditch. I can also turn it all off with 1 setting. Everything was turned off by default too.

 

[PacNWJLGecko]

Wow. You couldn't technically be more wrong about every point you stated.

Lmao, that was an intelligent response. Way to refute my points bud. Feels before reals, am I right?

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

Actually you can’t. That feature has been removed.

Oops. Sounds like it’s time to update my device… or not.

I’m super interested in the whole autonomous concept. I always thought it would be great if I could just put my son in the pod and have it drive him to school. Then I could go back to bed (I work late most times). Unfortunately by the time all this stuff comes to full fruition, he’ll be in college.

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