Friday, Jun 13, 2025 at 12:23
Problem with the 'car doing things for you' means you abdicating responsibility for the first reaction to the vehicle, once it's decided what to do and implemented it you get to try and recover.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there have been a lot of accidents that could have been avoided if someone/thing took action before it happened, vehicle manufacturers have decided for you that their programmers are smarter and have a greater ability to expedite the corrective actions before you could. Do they, obviously they do, sometimes, and sometimes they don't.
I've seen demonstrations by qualified racing drivers of the impact of ABS, skid correction and various other technology compared to what they can, and do, as a professional driver. But what they did demonstrate is you need to be taught how to use the technology or it can cause more problems than it's supposed to solve.
Without technology you had to try a bit to get yourself into deep trouble, with the technology you can get a lot further into trouble before you know it and at that point the chances of recovery are fairly slim. After all 4wd lets you get a lot further in before you get stuck than a 2wd.
Perhaps the classic example was in an ad sometime in the fairly recent past showing a pedestrian wearing head phones strutting down a footpath and then stepping out into the road, without looking, into the path a 'high tech' vehicle which immediately braked and avoided hitting the pedestrian. The vehicle was shown just prior to the incident with the driver singing happily to their favorite music hit on the fancy hifi, oblivious to their surroundings.
I have a terrible habit of getting the wrong message from most advertising but the ones I got from this advert was, 'buy our fancy high tech car, don't worry about anything apart from your play list, the smarts in the car will save you and others from self responsibility'. I've I feeling I got the wrong message from the one intended.
Now if someone could invent a '
Darwin Award autonomous vehicle' that never leaves the driveway, I reckon it could have a huge market.
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