Something Random
- Thread starter ddrueding
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CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Yeah, since the government saved GM's ass, the company really stepped up on the safety of its vehicles. Back in the Cavalier/Pontiac GrandAm days, on the safety side, your cars were junk. But now, except perhaps for Volvo, your lineup is the one that scores the highest on collision test. My car is really due to be changed and most of the vehicles I look at to replace it are GM's.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Pretty impressive.
For the record, the Volt body was basically done far in advance of the bankruptcy and there as been no change in our safety strategy because of anything to do with that.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Well, something's changed in your design since the early 2000's because your vehicles resist a lot better during impact tests. You were near the bottom of the lot back then while you lead the pack now. If the strategy hasn't changed, then the execution has. The point is, GM builds better cars than it used to. You've improved faster than the industry average too, so it's not just a question of following the trend.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Awesome. While ESC I believe is now mandatory in Europe, most manufacturers have to be dragged kicking and screaming to improve safety. Remember the protests against seat belts? And airbags? Seatbelts, ABS and EBD now seem to be standard even in economy cars in most parts of the world. Airbags still are optional or not available on cheaper cars in some countries.
I wish Stability Control would become commonplace too. I read somewhere that the Insurance Industry says 70% of accidents can be prevented if stability control was offered as standard equipment in all vehicles. Of course that doesn't help in situations like the one where the drunk hit her. Then again, maybe it would have, if the drunk was able to control his car better.
I'm surprised that most trucks still don't have ABS. I've seen so many skid when they slam on the brakes. If heavier aircraft had it first, why can't trucks?
I wish Stability Control would become commonplace too. I read somewhere that the Insurance Industry says 70% of accidents can be prevented if stability control was offered as standard equipment in all vehicles. Of course that doesn't help in situations like the one where the drunk hit her. Then again, maybe it would have, if the drunk was able to control his car better.
I'm surprised that most trucks still don't have ABS. I've seen so many skid when they slam on the brakes. If heavier aircraft had it first, why can't trucks?
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
My take on this is without mandatory safety devices cars still wouldn't even have brakes, never mind all the other stuff. That said, I question whether things like ABS actually make things safer. People compensate when they know they can stop faster by cutting things closer. End result is no improvement in safety. The real problem exists between the seat and steering wheel. Google's self-driving car is the only solution for that.
Ignition interlocks with BAC sensors, and RFID driver's licenses, would prevent problems like that far better than stability control. It's better if someone who is drunk, or without a valid license, just can't drive, period. Ignition interlocks are what is needed to ensure this. I believe there even exist sensors and algorithms to determine if someone is too tired to drive. Again, if that determination is made, the vehicle won't proceed. I would also like to see GPS used for speed control, at least on urban roads. Ideally, such a setup would prevent a vehicle from exceeding both the speed limit and a reasonable acceleration rate (3 mph/sec?) when driving on local urban streets. I personally don't give a rat's behind what motorists do on highways, but on local streets far too many drive too fast, and do the stop light Grand Prix.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
jtr, I never implied ESC os good for drunk drivers. You can be in the best condition to rive, you can be a very good driver, and can still benefit from ESC. Nasty, unpredicable bends, snow, sand, unexpected patch of water, etc. can all cause serious loss of control. There are enough videos on Youtube; please check them out.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I know you didn't imply that. ESC is very useful, little doubt about it. My entire rant was that the best way to prevent collisions due to drunk driving is to ensure that vehicles won't operate if the driver is drunk (or unlicensed, or tired or on the phone). Not drunk driving related, but I'm just getting of reading about stuff like this. Motor vehicles are lethal weapons, especially in areas with cyclists and pedestrians. We as a society should treat them that way.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I just want to mention that I'm against these measures. All of them. There are times when you need to accelerate quickly, even in urban area. There even are emergencies when it's useful to break (slightly) the speed limit. I'm not in favor of fools driving at 50mph in scolar zones, but there's quite a step between those and hard-locking cars into speed limit compliances. And I certainly don't want to limit the acceleration of my car just so some cyclists can brag they can beat me on a cold start, which seems to be the point here.
ddrueding
Fixture
I don't believe that any of these are worth pursuing. Self-driving cars will be here soon enough, and most will simply choose to press the button and go back to texting. I'm sure part of the liability trade-off the govt. will offer will be self-driving cars that constantly report their speed and location even when being manually controlled. So they can just mail me a ticket if I am speeding. If I have a good reason, I can argue it later.
And we needn't worry about how long it will take for self-driving cars to be ubiquitous; as soon as they are accessible and data is available, the actuarial tables will make it a financial necessity for most.
And we needn't worry about how long it will take for self-driving cars to be ubiquitous; as soon as they are accessible and data is available, the actuarial tables will make it a financial necessity for most.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I'm curious here about what type of emergencies you're referring to. Most of the "emergencies" in driving situations which require other drivers to react are exactly the result of people driving too fast for conditions. I tend to think if you limit speeds and acceleration rates you won't end up with these emergencies in the first place.
Even with a 3 mph/sec acceleration rate, you'll probably still beat most cyclists to 20 mph. None of the measures I mentioned would be necessary if people didn't insist on racing at high speeds between traffic lights or otherwise getting rapidly up to speed just to gain one place at the next red light. Incidents like the one I linked to happen practically every week. They couldn't happen at all if cars just couldn't build up enough speed between stoplights. At 3 mph/sec it would take almost a full block to reach the 30 mph speed limit. The idiot cab driver probably reached twice that speed in the half a block he ran amuck. If we don't put GPS speed limiting on all vehicles, we should at least put it on commercial vehicles, especially taxis and private garbage trucks (two of the worst offenders in NYC).
I would love to share your optimism here but from what I read there's a small minority of drivers who will do their best to stop self-driving cars from becoming a reality. Remember, once self-driving cars are proven roadworthy, the actuarial tables will dictate that human drivers aren't allowed to drive on public roads at all. And there would be little public support for allowing a small minority to drive, even if they could afford the higher insurance, when everyone else can't afford to.
Don't get me wrong, I personally love the concept of self-driving cars. I just think we'll need to work through a whole host of legal and political issues once the technical ones are solved. If this ends up taking many years, there are other measures we can take in the meantime to make human driving safer.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
3 mph/sec...that will get you killed getting on a major highway. That will also get you killed when trying to pass a slow poke [ or horse and buggy ] on a two lane road. If you want to do something to make the roads safer, develop a device that blocks all cell phone traffic inside the car as soon as it starts moving, including the ones built into the car. That would be a good start.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
JTR, you don't own a car, you don't drive a car and AFAIK, you don't even have a permit. If you would, you would not even consider any of the solution you wrote about above. Your arguments are noted, but dismissed (on that subject, your view on other subjects is very often valuable). I have a lot of respect on what you have to say on bikes because you ride one a lot. But regarding car driving, you know about as much as me regarding endurance swimming races (hint : I don't know how to swim and I drop like a rock in water). You only view this from an exterior perspective and yes, in this case, in order to be relevant, you need to know what it's like behind the wheel.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Agreed on the device which blocks cell phone signals. If you read what I wrote, I said 3 mph/sec on urban streets. In other places, the acceleration rates would be whatever the vehicle was capable of. There's a time and place for everything. IMO, high speeds and high acceleration rates are incompatible with streets which have pedestrians or cyclists.
I have a perspective as a cyclist and as a pedestrian. From my perspective, the streets are unsafe because the vast majority of people are clueless how to handle their overpriced, overpowered toys. In fact, I wish there would be a class action lawsuit on the automakers for making vehicles which are inherently dangerous because their performance envelope greatly exceeds what the average driver can cope with. It's like sticking a Cessna pilot in an F-14 without training. Until and unless we can take the human out of the equation, we need to tame things. If you have any better answers than me on how to do this, I'm all ears. If you don't think a serious problem exists on urban streets because of motor vehicles, then frankly you're seeing things from a windshield perspective and we have nothing more to discuss. Maybe you should spend a bit of time at this place. I know you walk and you bike, so I would think you would be aware of how dangerous the streets are to people who aren't in cars. Maybe things aren't as bad up north as they are here in the US.
I'm also equally annoyed in this discussion of safety that automakers take zero measures to protect people outside the vehicle. Maybe we should have airbags which deploy outside the vehicle when it hits something.
BTW, I did have a permit at one time and did practice driving, including 100+ mph on the highway in a friend's Mitsubishi Precis. I didn't bother pursuing a license because I'm a city person who never really wants to go places you can't get to by public transit. Besides that, cars are horribly expensive for whatever benefits they offer (which in a city really are limited). So yes, I can see both sides of the coin.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Disabling the technology that enables phones to communicate inside a vehicle could also potentially disrupt other telecomm services the phone might be using, such as traffic information systems. Also, that's a pretty severe restriction to place on passengers. I don't like people who drive and text/email, but I do talk on the phone quite a bit if I possibly can and feel kind of hobbled when I can't (it's illegal to do so in Illinois).
What I'd like to see is better phone/car stereo integration for hand free services. Some phones already have pretty good voice control and many car audio systems have a two or three line text display on the head unit which is probably enough to convey information ("Turn Left" or "8 Messages you can read when you get out of the car."). But behaviors are not uniform across products and setup isn't as simple as it needs to be for wide adoption
What I'd like to see is better phone/car stereo integration for hand free services. Some phones already have pretty good voice control and many car audio systems have a two or three line text display on the head unit which is probably enough to convey information ("Turn Left" or "8 Messages you can read when you get out of the car."). But behaviors are not uniform across products and setup isn't as simple as it needs to be for wide adoption
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Merc, the key is context. On the highway, talking on a phone doesn't seem as dangerous. In fact, it might even help you stay more alert on long, boring stretches of road. On urban streets, where often the situation already demands your full attention and then some, using a phone can have deadly consequences. My mom get hit by some idiot talking on the phone back in 2000 as she was turning left. The woman who hit her sailed right through a red light, and actually didn't even hit the brakes. She didn't even see my mom's car in front of her because she was so absorbed in her phone call.
Auto makers do think about pedestrian safety outside the vehicle. This isn't as common but it's something that has been in the works.
[video=youtube;tNbq79xhxQg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNbq79xhxQg[/video]
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Driving on legitimately urban streets is a decided edge case that only impacts a small subset of the drivers at any given time, but you're suggesting a globally applicable punishment because there are a few places where there are too goddamned many stupid people, whether they're on foot, on cycles or in automobiles.
In fairness I've seen lots of city dwelling folk walking through the city who are also majorly distracted while crossing intersections and the paths of motorists. Often times I've seen people walk like they're indestructible or lack of common self-preservation when crossing the path of motor vehicles thinking it won't possibly hit them. Mobile phones and electronic devices distract both sides. I'm not passing the buck suggesting that walking pedestrians are the problem because motorists are the ones driving machines that can impose death when operated incorrectly, but also people who walk in and about the path of motorists shouldn't be so nonchalant about their own safety either.
I don't frequently drive in the city because I find it rather stressful. Whenever I do, I can't focus on dealing with a mobile device even when operated hands-free. There's just far too much happening that I don't want to be distracted. However, if I lived in the city, I'd probably get detuned from that heightened state of alertness and stress that helps me focus better and therefore could see the opportunity for increasing the chance of some kind of accident. I could see city motorists changing their views on things and caring less for bumping into people or objects because it's just the norm of living in a highly crowded location. It's not right, but I can see why it may happen.
I don't feel that disabling devices or imposing more governance on the vehicle will really change things. It'll be like all the DRM imposed on music, games, media, etc that don't stop the pirates who will eventually crack it anyway. If my car has to have some imposed throttling or GPS nanny restrictions it's going to be a mission for me to hack that crap out of my car. How about removing people's licenses for greater lengths of time or applying penalties of monetary value or more immediate jail time?
Actually, that's untrue. Pedestrian protection is a huge part of the design of the front end of a vehicle. Fender bracket and hood stiffnesses are tuned to be soft enough to bend rather than allow the pedestrian to get hurt severely yet still be strong enough to handle leaning loads and maintain dimensional stability of the vehicle.. Fenders and fascias are designed to allow the pedestrian to hit softer rather than stiffer areas. This frequently impacts vehicle styling, which is of course a big big deal.
Vehicles that enter markets like China/Europe/Russia where there are a TON of accidents involving pedestrians drive the design of the front end to protect them.
More expensive vehicles may even have 'active' systems (like the airbag shown) that pop the hood up when a pedestrian impact is detected so that the pedestrian will fall on a hood that is able to 'give'.
I have not been directly involved in development of these countermeasures to protect the pedestrian but we talk about it all the time.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
How about if you just disabled the devices on urban streets then? That's a fair compromise in my book. Here's the issue-if you either ride or drive in an auto, you've entered into a implicit contract where you're accepting some risk in exchange for some perceived benefit, same as people who fly, ride trains, etc. People not in cars didn't buy into this risk, and that's why steps should be taken to minimize it, even if it inconveniences car users. This type of reasoning is mostly relevant in heavily urban areas where the majority get around by some means other than auto.
Your first paragraph sums it up. Yes, pedestrians walk around distracted, can be annoying, etc. That's my take on it even as a cyclist. And that doesn't excuse me from exercising due care around such people because I'm the one bringing most of the destructive speed to a potential collision. Same thing with car drivers. I also realize there are scenarios where a pedestrian may suddenly dart out from behind a parked truck and there's literally nothing a driver or a cyclist can do. Fine. That's all the more reason why it's incumbent to limit speeds so the results of such an impact aren't fatal. Here's a key statistic-a pedestrian struck by a car at 40 mph has a 90% chance of dying, while one struck by a car at 20 mph has a 90% chance of living. That's the rationale behind my entire idea. If motorists where able to self-regulate, use a little common sense, then I wouldn't have even bothered suggesting it. Sadly, they don't and it gets worse every year. And yes, motorists get highly desensitized when they deal with stressful driving situations every day. It's the law in NYC to yield to pedestrians when turning yet most motorists don't. And many speed to make lights, or otherwise drive in such a manner that death/severe injury is a given if they hit someone.
Yes, maybe we could solve the problem on the licensing end, without restrictions on vehicle speed/acceleration, but we as a society in the US consider driving practically a birthright. Getting a license should be much harder, akin to getting a pilot's license. There should be regular recertifications, including certifications for different classes of vehicles with varying power-to-weight ratios. And there should be strict penalties. In my opinion, if you kill or seriously injure someone due to your own negligence, recklessness, or even incompetence, then you should never be allowed to drive again. Unfortunately, we're reluctant to revoke licenses or keep bad drivers off the roads. The existence of the assigned risk insurance pool is proof of that. If left to the free market, bad drivers would effectively no longer be able to drive because their insurance rates would be prohibitively high. Instead, their greater cost is spread among good drivers just to keep them behind the wheel. Anyway, in theory your idea could work, but as a society we have no will to seriously hold bad drivers accountable. If you dig through the site I linked through earlier, it's rare the NYPD charges drivers who maim or kill with more than moving violations, even in cases where they're clearly at fault.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
That's interesting. I'm glad to see automakers think of these things. My only concern is why shouldn't we be designing all vehicles in such a manner? Here is the US urban populations are rising, so vehicles should be designed to cope with such environments. I don't know if it would be possible but I would like to see vehicles designed in such a way that survival probability of a pedestrian at 40 mph increases from the current 10% up to 90%. Maybe it's not possible, but certainly it's worth researching.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I just wanted to add something here about this. In practical terms, it wouldn't matter whether or not you hacked such a system because most people won't. The practical effect if even 25% of vehicles have GPS speed limiters will be that the rest won't be able to exceed the speed limit except at times when traffic is light. That's the basis for my idea of perhaps only putting such a system in commercial vehicles. On many Manhattan streets half the vehicles are taxis. The effect will be to calm down everyone if the taxis can't accelerate rapidly or exceed the speed limit. And to reiterate, I only propose such a system on urban streets where high speeds are detrimental. I strongly feel the opposite on highways where I think speed limits are set too low for the most part. Look at my earlier example of doing 100+ mph with a learner's permit. My friend just said drive whatever speed you feel comfortable at without looking at the speedometer (because looking at it constantly distracts you from the road). When I finally did look at the speedo, right after I passed someone I thought was an old lady doing 40 (actually it was a middle-aged man doing about 70), I came to the conclusion highway speed limits were set way too low.
fb
Storage is cool
You know that the risk of death in case of an accident increases with 40% if you raise your speed from 90 km/h to 100 km/h? And that more people dies in traffic accidents in rural areas rather than urban? So it's probably not a good idea to drive around at 160+ km/h even if it feels comfortable.
time
Storage? I am Storage!
Complete BS. One of the disturbing trends in our modern world is that government agencies now routinely lie to support their policy positions.
Your proposition is not supported by your statements.
You're correct that the much higher energy involved in rural traffic speeds is more likely to lead to fatalities in accidents than low urban speeds. But you haven't established that fatalities scale with speed, let alone proving that 160+ km/h is inherently more unsafe than, say 120km/h.
Human factors, i.e. the driver, play a far, far bigger role in accident statistics than simple physics.
Good on you and the rest of the GM team. It's terrible that accidents happen, but they do and it's nice to know that our loved one's can be protected if it happens.
The vehicles we work on are usually global or need to be manufactured so they can be sold globally, if a decision to do so is made, so we do do that. Of course, there are exceptions for some classes if vehicle, I believe.
I still do not like that idea. I'd rather the city just ban personal motorized transportation and leave only public transportation with increased training requirements.
I still agree with CougTek in that making such a change to reduce the acceleration rate can cause accidents by itself. It is unsettling when you need to clear an intersection or get out of the way of something and your vehicle doesn't respond like normal because of an imposed throttle regulation. I'm more in favor of training the operator better or place a more stringent test and re-evaluation on a more-frequent basis. I'm tired of the world dumbing down everything to the lowest common denominator of people. Why make my vehicle more complicated, expensive, and limited at the expense of other people's inability? Set the bar higher and encourage people to meet the bar rather than lowering it and spreading that cost among everyone else. This encouragement to meet the new bar could be done with better training and tougher tests like I've heard about over in Europe and other countries.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Personally I'm looking forward to autonomous vehicle navigation so that the amount of driving I actually do will be minimal.
ddrueding
Fixture
A lot of this. I think we would be better off if the bar was raised to the point where only 50% of current license holders could qualify.
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
I was going to suggest that also but I figured it might go over like a lead balloon. But yes, in places like Manhattan, perhaps even the entirety of NYC, you can make a great case for banning personal motorized transportation on the grounds that we have great public transit. I also feel bikes can fill a niche, particularly trips under about 5 miles. Thanks for bringing this to the table.
Look, I feel exactly the same way. I pride myself on my bike riding skills, and I wish most drivers would view driving as a continual learning experience. The problem I think is twofold. One, far too many people really don't want to drive. They just do it because they live in places where they have to, but they regard it as a chore, not a skill. Two, with car ownership at high levels due to relatively low costs the people mentioned in #1 are the majority. People already consider driving a burden, and would vehemently fight anything which would make licensing more burdensome. It's sort of like raising taxes. You can only do it so much before people get fed up. Anyway, that sums up where we are.
How we got here gives some insight into how to fix the problem. Back when cars where rich person's toys, motoring was an exclusive club, and most drivers prided themselves on their driving ability. Somewhere along the line we got the idea to give the masses automobiles, ostensible for the freedom it gives, except that if more people drive suddenly most of the speed is lost to congestion and low speed limits which cater to the least common denominator. As more people owned cars we systematically dismantled public transit, to the point that car ownership was no longer optional in many places. Once driving was mandatory, it needed to be dumbed down in order for the masses to do it. Universal driving did for the roads what AOL did for the internet. I submit if we start rebuilding our dismantled public transit systems there would be political support to progressively make licensing standards more stringent, just as it is in Europe where one can often chose not to drive. We can also at the same time remove a lot of the dumbing down for the masses on our streets. Traffic signals are really the worst offenders. Studies show they actually make things more dangerous, but they're used because many drivers are now utterly clueless about how to negotiate intersections without them. Removing traffic signals/stop signs, along with decreasing traffic volumes due to fewer licensed drivers, would be a boon to cycling as transportation. That in turn would get even more cars off the roads.
So yes, I agree in principle. I laid out one possible path to raising the bar. Remember my initial suggestion was sadly based on the current low level of driver proficiency. You two are thinking from the viewpoint of two highly skilled, intelligent people. Sadly, that's not the general population.
No, of course not. However, I'm also very self-aware of my own abilities and understand that if I don't meet the requirements then I would then work harder to train myself to meet the standard defined or accept that I'm not capable of safely operating a motor vehicle. On a more-complex example I would see flying/operating a commercial airliner as above my current skill or abilities. I would not qualify to operate one of those machines. I feel with enough training I could operate it and possibly pass their testing requirements. Granted this is a more extreme example but for some people the relative operation of an automobile is the same. They may not meet what is actually needed but they met the basic needs of what is currently defined by today's driver's testing standards. I suggest we augment the testing and not unnecessarily augment the vehicle to compensate for every little detail that compensates for the untrained or inexperienced driver.
ddrueding
Fixture
I would consider the odds of that quite low. And if it was in fact the case I would train/study as needed to qualify. It is very much a privilege and carries significant responsibility. It should be treated as such.
fb
Storage is cool
Personally I think it's worse that huge companies can buy the truth. But that has nothing to do with this.
But it's fascinating that even the official statistics from USA lies to us and say that more people die in car accidents in rural areas rather than in urban areas.
Of course, as long as you don't hit another object speed doesn't matter. But there's plenty of research out there that wants us to believe that people hit other cars and/or stationary objects more often when they drive faster. How silly. I always say that a 5 cm margin is always a 5 cm margin, it doesn't matter if you drive 30 km/h or 200 km/h, it's still a 5 cm gap.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
Want to lose your next election by a landslide? Take away 50% of people's drivers licenses.