- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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The lane keeper fucks up and tries to drive on the shoulder, driver turns it off, research group acts surprised that it’s turned off
I had a few times where my lane assist thinks I’m turning when coming up on a left turn lane for some reason.
I’m never turning that shit off though. I’ll deal with the random beeps and resistance if I get too close to the line or something.
I remember reading a reddit thread a couple years ago where someone legitimately asked “what if there’s a bicyclist on the road?” I replied with the proper precautions to take when that happens, and the same dumbass replied with “but the beeps are annoying if I try to go over the line when lane assist is on!”
I was driving home from the dealership after buying my last car, and the second I felt the wheel jerk out of my hands to take a corner on the highway differently than I typically do (I still stay in the lane, ofc), that shit got turned off and will never be reenabled. One of the most dangerous things is the car doing something unexpected while someone is driving and they try to correct/overcorrect for it out of shock/surprise and cause a crash.
Yeah this happened to me too when I drove my ex’s car. Cars should not be jerking the wheel. The sensors are notoriously inaccurate at sunrise/sunset when the sun is glaring right in the sensors, and it causes glitches. Especially in wet conditions where the road is slippery and there’s reflected glare as well… almost spun out from that shit once when I tried to turn and the car said NOPE and jerked me back into the straight lane. This was with indicators, mind you.
I also remember one time we were driving on the freeway and the car suddenly spotted an “invisible fake ghost pedestrian”, and SLAMMED on the brakes. Like screeching halt from 80kmph (50mph) in the middle of the busy road. Dunno how on earth we didn’t cause an accident; the people behind us were locked in or something.
Never drove that car again, fuck that. My ex likes that unruly beast for some reason; though they also liked horse riding, which features vehicles that are similarly unpredictable and dangerous, so I suppose it makes sense. I’m ok with beeping, that’s fine and a sensible warning feature I can choose to ignore if it’s wrong. I’m not ok with the car wrenching control of the vehicle out of my hands
I was driving a rental car with that feature once and it recognized one of those big arrows on the ground (that show a lane is ending e.g.) as side lanes. It was on a fast street with multiple lanes, so I was going over 100 km/h and the car jerked the steering wheel towards the goddamn wall and out of the lane. IDK what would’ve happened if I didn’t react in time…
In our car, there’s three levels of lane assist.
- Hey, try to stay in the lines. If you start to veer, the steering wheel will do the smallest corrections and vibrate a lot.
- The car will actively help keep you in the middle of the lane. (I mostly turn this on if I’m swapping my prescription glasses for sunglasses, then it goes right off again).
- Same as #2, but if you put on a turn signal to change lanes the car auto changes when it’s clear. (If you put your signal on with all this off and a car is in your blind spot it freaks out with beeps and vibrations).
I fucking hate #3. The only good part is it forces you to turn on the turn indicator. It both wants your hands on the wheel for the maneuver, but also will cancel the change if it feels any “driver correction”.
There are two roads mine is always trying to turn down on my way home from work. I keep meaning to go that route during a not busy time of day to see if it actually makes the turn if I don’t stop it or if it will just jog to the right a bit.
There are a bunch of black squiggly lines on the road from repairs and it gets confused there.
I turn it on when I’m on the highway. In the city, our roads are way too fucked up for it to work.
I also have an auto emergency brake, and that’s gone off when it doesn’t need to once or twice, but I’m not disabling that one. I’d rather get rear-ended than hit someone.
But if you indicate like your supposed to there are no beeps when crossing lines.
These guys are idiots that complain about the end results of not knowing how to drive themselves.
Exactly. I ended up just asking if they even took Driver’s Ed
Lane keep drives me of the fucking road when it’s sunny and the cameras can’t see straight.
Automatic braking loses it because of shadows but misses the goddamn elk.
I really love adaptive cruise, but i can see how many people (especially with lane centring) tune out - and make it a liability.
What most people don’t do is drive many vehicles. The difference between safety features on cars - and it’s not always price that is the differentiator - is staggering. Stability control isn’t the same between a Toyota and a BMW. Not halfway. A $90,000 GM and a $15,000 smart car are generations apart - the smart wins, at least on traction control. Unfortunately it’s not easy to test all these features empirically.
It’s no wonder people turn it off.
My favorite was when a car runs a yellow light at the same time I ease my foot off the brake to get the engine started in preparation for going forward. The autostart and brake assist had a little tiff of errors and stalled the vehicle… I had to turn the engine off and restart it to reset it.
That was great.
So lane assist is off, adaptive cruise control is off, driver attention is off (with some electrical tape over the fucking stupid thing) and brake assist is off. The only things on is the blind spot monitoring because that sort of works and the backup camera.
Last time I was had a rental car, I was driving down a rural curvy road with no traffic. So I cut the corners whenever visibility allowed it. The computer freaked the fuck out and finally turned off after tossing a “Maintenance needed error”. I laughed my ass off over that one.
If your talking about the auto stop/start that happened when you push the brake down at the lights you should 100% disable this.
They implemented it thinking it would be great that you would be not burning fuel and emissions for 30s while the lights were red but in reality what happens is that as soon as the engine stops your oil pressure drops, then your restarting with no oil in the cylinder and that causes an extreme amount of wear on your piston rings and other components. I dont remember the exact figure but starting and stopping while the oil pressure is low is responsible for like ~90% of engine wear.
Depending on how many lights you encounter you could be doing exponentially more basically cold starts and your going to need to service your car much more often, replace the oil and filter, replace other components that wear (+ costs of increased servicing) just to save a couple minutes of idling emissions and fuel. I can tell you which is much worse for the environment.
There is a german channel on youtube that literally did this as a lab test with a real engine to show how much extra wear was happening to your engine. The system was a ‘good on paper’ idea but they overlooked some key factors i think.Nope. They have an electric oil pump that keeps working when the engine is off. It’s not a cold start, an electric motor turns the engine to top dead centre and fires the plug on a hot engine .
Are you talking about the CVT oil pump? Or have some manufacturers started doing doing this on the engine oil pump?
Edit:
Well i looked it up myself and it seems that newer cars, especially more expensive cars have addresed the wear issues by upgrading the crankshaft bearing, hardened internal components, upgraded altenator and a specific type of battery for this use. (No mention of electric oil pump motors for average cars)You also need to replace the (more expensive) battery every 3-5 years, so the cost is still comong back to you. Higher quality upgraded components + the more expensive and often replaced battery will all end up back on your pocket, like i said the system probably isnt worth the cost of the fuel and emissions savings.
And if you have an older car with this function, then you also have the component wear issues, see the video i mentioned in the first comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu8cJ2t_ja8&pp=ygUpYXV0byBzdG9wIHN0YXJ0IGVuZ2luZSB3ZWFyIHRlc3RlZCBnZXJtYW4%3D
God, every time.
Lane keep assist. Don’t tell me how to drive my own car.
You can’t even show me the right speed limit due a sign on a different road that say 5MPH, when I’m on a 30MPH road, and suddenly you start beeping at me cause I’m going too fast?
Randomly flashing up the BRAKE! Warning for no reason at all?
None of this tech works correctly, and until it does, it all gets turned off every single time 8 start the engine.
Lane assist that pulls you into a pothole you moved over to dodge and loses its collective shit if the lines change.
Collision detection that flips out and hits the brakes to avoid a car that just completed its turn.
Blind spot monitoring that screams at you in a turn lane.
One car couldn’t tell the difference between open sky and the backside of clean white truck so it accelerated to get to the speed limit. Maybe clean trucks were not in the training data.
A place has a sign with 5 ton max weight. One car I had would always see that as 5 kph speed limit. Systems can be stupid like that.
The speed limit warning beep is fine if it’s just once on speed limit update or when you go above, so at least you can make your own judgement.
Not sure what feature you have that flashes the BRAKE! warning, only I one I know of is the collision detection one that makes a warning sound that is quite reliable.
I never had problems with the collision detection (flashing BRAKE), up until I drove a Fiat 500e recently. It seems to differ by make and model I guess.
That Fiat was insanely obnoxious though: It plays a very loud DING and flashes the entire dash red, even if you’re going quite slow and can literally come to a complete stop with enough space between you and the car in front, just by taking your feet off the pedals and using regenerative braking.
I drove it once and I got that warning like five times. Never had it before with Ford, Opel, Renault, …I’ve driven the Renault 4 a couple of times now as a rental, and it has the absolute worst combination of driver attention detection and beeps. It’ll beep randomly for … something, you look at the dash and then it’ll beep because you’re not looking at the road. Or god forbid you look in the mirror, instant warning beeps. Definitely never getting a Renault after dealing with that.
You can’t even show me the right speed limit due a sign on a different road that say 5MPH, when I’m on a 30MPH road, and suddenly you start beeping at me cause I’m going too fast?
Insurance company using police report: “Sorry, your rates are going up because you were going 25MPH over the speed limit. What were you thinking?”
Lane assist almost crashed me once. Lines were painted over as the lanes were rerouted due to a construction. This must have confused the system, as it tried to pull me into the concrete wall to the right.
I stopped and turned it off at the next gas station. Never again
The safety tech is not mature enough, simple as. People turn it off because of the false positives and general nagging behavior
This is the correct answer. Most of this stuff is half baked at best.
Really depend on the safety tech. My partner’s Honda Civic is so bad, that turning off CMBS (Collision Mitigation Braking System) and LKAS (Lane Keep Assist System) is essential to operating the car safely, as accidentally leaving these systems on has almost wrecked the car on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, the same systems on my fake Mustang work great. Sometimes backing out of the driveway, it will panic and warn me that I might crash into the ground, but it doesn’t slam the brakes. The hands-free driving is actually really good, and a feature I would continue to use if it wasn’t several hundred dollars a year. In comparison to Honda, Ford’s safety tech is much more predictable and reliable.
This is my personal experience with two cars that I drive relatively frequently, so other people may have other opinions and experiences that are completely valid.
For me they have often created a more dangerous situation than the one I was already working on unfucking
Lane assist is only good on highways. Everywhere else it’s a detriment.
I hate it even on highways. Some cars assist is gentle and more of a ‘hey be careful’ reminder which is the best option and the one I can get behind but others have an aggressive ‘you have to fight me’ attitude even if your indicators are on. Those can burn in hell.
Only good on good highways. If you’re dodging potholes and road debris it’s fucking annoying.
Even on a highway it tried to kill me once by steering into a truck I was overtaking…have it turned off ever since.
What you mean a bunch of bells and chimes and warning lights happening every time the road markings are ambiguous isn’t helpful?
I have driven some number of hundred thousand miles and departed the highway once to avoid an oncoming semi and 0 times for any other reason. I have operated a vehicle with lane assist turned on for some 10s of miles and they have attempted to take control to depart my lane/the highway a handful of times, which results in me parking the vehicle and figuring out how to turn it off.
The problem with some of these “safety” features is they malfunction at such a high rate they seem more likely to kill me than save my life. They also don’t anticipate future consequence in any way.
The collision detection malfunctions regularly giving a loud beep or applying breaks when nothing is ahead.
The lane departure does not understand situations where you had someone wander into your lane and you may drive onto the shoulder quickly before signalling. I don’t need my car fighting me while im making the correct call. I also think having the car take over, even gently, is so startling that it could cause the accident it was meant to prevent. If I’m startled I might over correct and lose control. While that has never happened, with everything considered, it seems safer to leave some of these features off.
I don’t need to be an early adopter on flawed technology that could get me killed.
The lane departure does not understand situations where you had someone wander into your lane and you may drive onto the shoulder quickly before signalling
This is one of the biggest things I hate about my parents car. You almost have to fight against the lane detection when when changing lanes, being in a merge lane, or more importantly when another car starts drifting into you lane. It’s great if you’re on a long haul but it’s detrimental because it’s conditioning you to not have to pay attention as much.
I drove a rental that had collision detection in it. Three or four times, it suddenly slammed on the brakes for no discernable reason, and with no regard to how close/fast traffic behind me was moving. I had to pull off, download the manual, and figure out how to turn it off before the car killed me.
One of the most important things in safely operating a vehicle is using gradual, predictable movements. My car braking without my input makes predictable movement impossible.
- adaptive cruise control
- AR HUD
- driving mode
None of these were meant to save lives
Also, both lane assist and auto emergency brakes are mostly poorly implemented. Even the ones that aren’t really bad don’t fare well with the chaos of the roads.
Also, voice assistant is bullshit. You know what would be better? That’s right, physical buttons.
I was driving a newer Skoda on vacation last winter and the windshield started fogging up as I was passing through a narrow little village in blowing rain bordering on snow. In my car at home (and probably most of the cars ever made) there are three knobs to control the heat which can be operated by purely tactile means. In this particular car, I had to go through pages of menus with no tactile feedback on the touchscreen while driving. I was only seconds away from having to stick my head out the window and limp it to the next safe stopping spot. I am glad it didn’t happen on the motorway at 140km/h. Who thought this was smart? The only modern car I drove that didn’t suck was a Mazda with their multi-axis joystick and physical climate controls. The touch screen disables at speed and the tactile joystick is a comparative delight. The display sticks out of the top of the dash so when you are looking at it you can still see the road beyond it.
My partner and I test drove a Honda with no volume knob. You have to use the touch screen. Wtf? I am so glad we didn’t buy that car. I now have two base model standard transmission cars, mid-2010s, neither of which suck and both of which are in good condition. Never gonna trade these cars in. Not even for a Bentley!
I have a 2020 CX5 and really appreciate the physical buttons. I like the dial as well. They went to touch screen for the 2026 model though and removed the dial. Dumb.
“Safety tech”. OK. I was visiting a mate in the states, and the rental gave me a Nissan. Apparently, there’s a lot of construction going on in that state, and the Nissan tried to literally run me, at 100kmh, into a median, because it recognized the (clearly) scratched off lane markers and not the (clearly) newly painted lane markers. I had to use nearly all my upper body strength (whatever little of it I had left after a 13hr trip), to force the wheel to the left and away from death. And that fucker bitched at me the entire time! would have 100% died. All because of their fucking “safety” tech. I turned that shit off as soon as I parked. All of it. I’m still so angry at them for that shit.
I hate lane assist, its so irritating. Worst thing is: in my skoda you cant turn it off for good, every time you shut off the engine it resets to default, which means lane assist on.
After my skirt with death because of this thing, it’s a ‘no sale’ feature.
I deliberately sought out a car without that stuff when I had to buy a new(er) car recently. It’s usually quite annoying - the worst was a rental car that had an alarm buzz whenever I activated my turn signal while there was another car anywhere near my blind spot.
IMO the only technological improvement from the last decade and a half that’s worth having is a backup camera, and that’s only because I must shamefully confess to being terrible at parallel parking without one despite having years of practice. (I was tempted to buy a Miata since they still have real dials, but ultimately I did settle for a car with a digital display instead of an instrument panel.)
The reverse camera is useful so you’re not backing over some little kid. Anything else it does is a bonus.
or you could also just choose a small vehicle
There’s still a blind spot on any size vehicle that isn’t a two wheel motorcycle.
Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but my thinking in that regard was “I don’t have children and rarely drive near other people’s loose children. Why should I pay for hardware I don’t need?”
Knowing that something rolled up just behind your car can be a saver in many ways… not running over surprise debris, for one, not hitting the neighbor’s anti-cut boulder on the edge of the grass that you can’t see when looking behind you for another…
First, yes it does. Second, you’re not paying extra for it at least in the US as it’s federally mandated equipment, you can’t legally get a new car without a reverse camera.
I meant that I would be paying extra for it as opposed to a hypothetical car manufactured without the requirement. So it would be like having my taxes raised to pay for providing me something I didn’t want.
Every time it intervenes, it makes things worse. They have a 99% false positive rate.
I can deal with every other safety feature, but lane assist can fuck right off.
The study found 58.3 percent of buyers say they couldn’t live without Bluetooth connectivity
Strange, when smartphones no longer come with 3.5 mm sockets… The consumer never asked for the majority of these “features”: they already had access to most of them (through their smartphone or other standalone device), or was easily and cost-effectively installed as an aftermarket gadget. All of these “safety” features, that coincidentally also happen to constitute a (future) privacy-nightmare, were pushed for by: legislators, insurance companies, and the automotive industry itself. Consumers effectively got conned into buying a duplicate of products they already owned, but which are instead subject to terms and conditions dictated by aforementioned stakeholders.
I like Bluetooth as well so I added a Chinesium Bluetooth to 3.5mm adapter to my dumb older car. Got a phone mount as well for when I need maps. Having tried Android Auto, I can say my setup works just as well for me and it comes without any of the shit software or the hardware lock-in.
Right on, same here. :)
Only? Jeez.
Like seatbelts?
The alarm is fucking stupid on some models.
I will not put on my seatbelt when I take the car out of the garage for a wash 2 feet in front of it.
I would also like the car to be “smart” enough not to beep that it’s in reverse before I had the chance to change it out of reverse myself. And of course, the tone is a 120hz sine wave and way too loud. Great to calm the nerves right before work or a long road trip.
And you know what’s the bonus point? The headlight on alarm is quiet like a fucking lullaby. Of course my battery died once.
I can guarantee the tones being as loud and obnoxious as they are is the reason people turn them off or buy those clamps to fake wearing a seatbelt.
Even when people use them, they do, they annoy and distract. Which causes accidents.
I’m not going to claim that they cause more accidents than they prevent, but I will claim that these are the most preventable accidents as they are actively caused by literal safety features!
