An analysis by insurance company AAMI of 480,000 claims over the past year shows 20 per cent of drivers admit they sometimes turn off features in the car that are designed to improve safety.
…
Of the 20 per cent who did disable the features, 69 per cent said it was because they found the safety features annoying, distracting, and too sensitive.
Twenty-three per cent said they did not think they needed safety assistance features, and 13 per cent said they did not trust them.
This is why I don’t think AEB should result in giant fucking 4WDs being able to get 5 stars for vulnerable road user protection. If the bonnet is above waist height, max 2 stars if it has all the driver aids.
By all means mandate AEB still. But the reality is some manufacturers have shitty implementations of AEB and other aids like lane keep assist which encourages people turning them off.
It can’t be fully relied upon to counter the physics of taller vehicles running in to pedestrians.
I came here to say this exact same thing.
ANCAP really need to adjust their expectations on what constitutes a safe vehicle.
Just because small car can’t handle being driven over by a Monster Truck, doesn’t make it unsafe.
No shit, I’m surprised it’s only one in five. I’m very happy my own vehicles are old enough to avoid this sort of annoying intrusive features. My experience with the safety ‘features’ in work/rental/family vehicles has been less than positive. Stuff like lane keep trying to pull me into other cars due to following old lane markings rather than current one, speed limit recognition sounding an alarm at me when passing most offramps on the Hume (the off ramp limit may be 80/60, the highway is definitely not that), AEB firing off when reversing as it can’t figure out the trailer (yes, it was plugged in properly), minutes of alarms due to ‘erratic driving’ (unladen truck on a open road on a very windy day), and so forth.
Safety tech needs to be like ABS - do something which is genuinely useful for the average driver, and stay out of the way until there is a clear need to intervene. Even then there should be a way to turn it off without going through a whole rigmarole, because even that example does have specific use cases where it should not operate.
You always think you’re a better driver than you are.
I had an incident (no accident, no damage) where I lost traction for no apparent reason. Top rated tyres, good road, driving normally. It convinced me that traction control etc that might help me is gonna be on always.
Uncle Dans two road rules;
- don’t try to occupy the same space as someone else.
- assume that every person on the road is an idiot and is going to do something stupid, including yourself.
