The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.
At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.
Call me a Luddite but I won’t ride in a “self driving” car. I don’t even trust lane assist although I’ve never had a car with that feature.
I think my sweet spot is 2014 for vehicles. It’s about 50/50 with the tracking garbage and the “advanced features” on those models but anything past 2015 seems to be fully fly-by-wire and that doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m old though and honestly if I bought a 2014 right now and babied it as my non commuter car I could probably keep it until I should give up my keys. You younger people are going to have to work around all this crap.
I liked lane assist. It’s kind of like the Playstation triggers haptic feedback. It just makes the wheel slightly stiff as you near a line, but it’s very passive.
I have a Sprinter van with lane assist for cross country travel. As obnoxious as it is 99% of the time, it has come in clutch a few times when I started to get drowsy and drifted off my lane.
I hear you, but a 99% chance of being obnoxious isn’t a great review.
I think I’ll just stick to not driving when tired.
That’s easier said than done. You can’t judge your own behavior when impaired because you are impaired. By the time you are aware you are that tired, you’ve already been impaired for a long time.
You absolutely can judge your own behavior when you are impaired, I have done that plenty of times and decided that I needed a break when driving plenty of times.
The issue is that you are a worse judge of your own behavior when impaired, so you need to take that into account
By the time you realized it you were already impaired. That’s why professional drivers have a schedule. It’s not up to them to decide for themselves that they could go longer.
For sure, but when you are driving cross-country you sometimes do not have a choice because there is nowhere to stop.
“Guess I’ll just drive off the road then!”
Unless there’s a safety concern, there’s always the side of the road. I drive 2 lane backwoods roads periodically, and it’s not uncommon to see a car pulled a bit off the road with no visible driver’s seat.
Respect for sharing your mistakes.
Massive disrespect for not learning a thing.
Yikes. Chew gum, pinch the lobe of your ear, take a nap.
Your anecdote terrifies me that people may be relying on this shit when they are overtired.
My 2023 Subaru has lane assist. It was absolutely obnoxious so I turned it off.
It turns itself back on every time you restart the van.
Driving when tired enough to drift out of your lane multiple times?
You shouldn’t have a license.
I suddenly got very tired today when driving, and noticed my car drifting out of lane as I was unfocused, I was far from home, didn’t have any snacks or anything.
Luckily I found a place to park soon after, pulled over, and rested for 20 min or so.
Tiredness can come sudden, it doesn’t mean you should loose your license as long as you can deal with it in a safe manner.
I’ve had tiredness come around everytime I try to drive West around 3:30-5:00 when the sun is around setting is the perfect time where it just hits me and the traffic slows to a crawl were the last 10 miles are just hitting myself until I get to class and then Im suddenly fully awake.
If it happens to someone multiple times and they treat lane assist as a crutch then they are not safe to drive on the road.
The best part is they followed up with this gem so I know they didn’t pull over like you did:
Fair point.
I think Ford does a good job of offering the features and tech, but not making them required. Even their EVs have settings that can mimic a gas driving experience. Be a Luddite trust what you trust. But don’t pigeon hole your acceptable years of manufacture.
I’ve got a 2008 manual. It doesn’t even have cruise control. It’s perfect. I’m keeping it as long as I possibly can.
'96 and '05 pickup trucks I keep flogging along for work, '05 SUV that’s owned by my wife. They aren’t going to last forever but I’m going to try.
I’m helping by using it as little as possible.
I like electric cars well enough for their simplicity and acceleration. It’s all the other computerised gubbins they hang off them that I dislike, and Teslas are the worst for that.
I saw an old VW Beetle that had been converted to electric on the road recently. I wonder how hard/expensive it would be to do that with my 2 when the engine dies.
I’ve never had any issue with the lane assist in my Mitsubishi. It’s absolutely built as an “assist” and not something that will actually try to take control from you. It’s trivial to “overpower” it manually and turn out of your lane without signaling if that’s what you want to do, but does a perfectly reasonable job of steering on its own when left to its own devices.
That said, I wouldn’t be driving a vehicle new enough to have the feature yet either if I hadn’t been rear ended a couple of years ago and had my 2012 Lancer written off. :(
I quite like lane assist in the 2019 Honda I drive, even though it gets it wrong occasionally. It will not function unless it detects that you’re providing some steering input of your own, and it’s easy to override just by steering the way you want to go. That and cruise control are handy on the highway and have worked well for 6 years with no problems. But it’s very far from either functioning or being advertised as “full self driving.”
So it does move the wheel under your hands? That’s just gross to me. I guess maybe I should rent a car with it and give it a shot but I don’t think I’ll like it.
I rented a Hyundai Elantra. Yes, the wheel will move under your hand. Yes, it has hand detection, which is probably trivial to spoof. When I used it, winter had just ended and lines on the road weren’t always clear, so it would occasionally disable itself. Trying to change lanes without signals isn’t terrible, but certainly won’t happen by accident.
I would by no means rely on this, or recommend relying on it, just like I wouldn’t recommend relying on blind spot detection, but they can be handy aids to improve your overall driving, and can help catch your mistakes.
Does it pull the wheel when you’re trying to change lanes?
I see the blind spot detection on other people’s mirrors when I pass them and that looks cool as fuck but what happens the instant it fails? If I’m reliant on it and it breaks one day am I going to mistakenly merge into another driver’s right of way?
It didn’t so much as pull as get stiffer to turn out of the lane. Again, that doesn’t happen if your signals are on, so it’s a good reminder to use your signals, too.
Like I said, relying on these assists as replacements for proper driving isn’t something I would recommend. You should still be shoulder checking and using your mirrors. My wife’s vehicle has blind spot detection, which turns on an amber light by the mirror. If you’re changing lanes, it’s an obvious indicator that it may not be safe. A more thorough shoulder check can identify if the vehicle is actually at risk for collision. For example, if you just passed a vehicle and are pulling away, the detection light may still be on, but you aren’t at risk of collision. Alternatively, if I thought the lane was clear and decide to change lanes, the light may be on due to a speeding driver who is approaching to pass me in the adjacent lane. The light will be on even though he isn’t in the way yet, and changing lanes could result in an accident. Or maybe someone has been sitting in your blind spot for a few minutes and you decide to change lanes. A quick mirror check indicates you’re safe, but that amber light says maybe not. If your shoulder check doesn’t catch the problem, you probably haven’t done it well enough.
Again, can be good assistance tools, I don’t think they’re good enough to be replacements yet.
woah, that’s pretty cool actually.
The amber light in the mirror is what I’ve seen in other people’s blind spot assistance. It’s really cool but I’d hate to get used to it and depend on it the day it stops working.
That really is the greatest risk for some of thses features. It’s easy to get complacent when something works well, and then you’re in trouble when it doesn’t.
I have a Toyota with lane assist and it doesn’t. The “lane assist” is part of cruise control. It’s off by default.
I love it because it removes a little of the mental load giving me more time to scan the road for potential problems.
Off by default should be the default.
OK yeah, if I have the cruise control on I can see having lane assist. Can you use the CC independently of lane assist?
I drive a BYD Han, and I get to choose if lane keep or lane assist are enabled when using cruise control.
In all honesty, in 2 and a half years with the car, it’s been flawless with lane keep and lane assist. However, I only use them in the freeway. Don’t trust the tech enough to not crash me sideways in the city.
Can’t also for Toyota, but yes, my Mitsubishi has the option of simple cruise control without lane keeping.
Yeah. It can be set on or off as default when CC is activated.
When cruise control is on, yes, but it’s extremely gentle. The slightest bit of resistance from the driver will overpower it.
I should try this stuff and then see which of those cars I can disable the tracking antennas
I can’t speak for other manufacturers, or even in other countries, but Mitsubishi Canada at least has an opt-out for data collection. You need to call their customer care number and they will remotely disable it.
My wife had a rental for a trip she and my daughter were going on for a gymnastics event and I got to drive it back from the rental place and it had lane assist.
Every time another car passed in the opposite lane the damn thing would try and jerk in the opposite direction of that car, sometimes almost running itself off the road into the ditch in the process.
That’s horrible
Drove a few cars with “lane hold” and it’s infuriating to have to suddenly correct the car’s trajectory at every curve because it misjudges the road line. Some cars are worse than others but it was literally the first thing I disabled every time. I wonder how truck drivers feel about it. Do modern trucks even have this?
Closest I’ve come in a truck is an annoyingly loud alert for everything the computer reckoned was an issue and that was painful enough. Every time I’d drive it it’d be blaring the alarm for some reason or another and if it had been a long term company truck instead of a rental I probably would have ended up removing the speaker.
For example the lane departure warning would fire off every time you moved over to not run into someone parked on the side of the road, the close distance warning would fire off regularly when people merged in front of you, and if it was windy it’d set off an alarm to let you know the truck was being blown around when driving. Could be useful if you’re mentally challenged or blind but that sort of thing is just going to annoy anyone who isn’t. You couldn’t even turn the alarms off properly - you could go through the deliberately prolonged procedure to turn them off temporarily but then they come back again every time you start the truck.
I’ve driven an SUV with lane keep assist and it would pull at the wheel trying to follow lane markings that were outdated or ones it just made up, I hope that particular bit of ‘safety’ tech doesn’t make it to any truck I have to drive.
I don’t know what professional truckers have for “assist” but I’m sure they resist it. “I’m a professional fucking driver! I don’t want this shit.”