I feel absolutely conflicted about this. On one hand, I do think this should be a catalyst to require front camera and or collision detection, especially if it saves lives. On the other, I find it reprehensible that these tragic stories are fingerpointing and blaming car companies, given their context. They more point to the drivers not paying attention, in my opinion.
You can keep an eye on them, and those children will still take off full speed charging headlong to their deaths.
In the relatively recent path they just died and families had lots more children to make up for the loss. Now we have far fewer children and we are expected to watch then 24/7 without a lapse in observation or concentration.
Ah, yes, the call of the void is very real, and I do agree that children learn to go towards very dangerous things in astonishing speeds, but I disagree that they require constant undivided attention. Situational and location awareness really helps.
Driving in particular is different...and as I teach my wife to drive I realize how stressful and compute intensive it is. Slow down if there's cars on the side of the road, a kid will dart out. Keep an eye on what's around and behind you in case you need to swerve, etc etc. It's hard. But the fact is, if you're moving forward and hit something, it's your fault. You either weren't paying attention well enough, or you have serious tunnel vision. Either of which are grounds for retraining in my eyes.
The truth is, and most drivers in learning would probably agree, is that we really shouldn't be driving faster than 25 MPH. Even on protected highways most people drive far faster than they should and only get by because nothing went wrong.
TBH, the more I drive, the more I realize that our low advertised risk appetite is incompatible with the high actual risk appetite; this is the reason autonomous driving is in trouble, as we're asking the impossible: "drive as quickly as human drivers, but without the high risk profile inherent in their behavior."
Wait, so you dont enjoy 80+ MPH on the interstate? Like in Texas/Oklahoma/Kansas- Flat roads in the middle of nowhere with barriers on all sides?
I love going fast- In the city or in neighborhoods/parking lots with little ones 25mph is too fast- I generally idle through those areas or go about 20. On city streets 40-45mph is comfortable where I am....Much of how safe I feel going is actually up to good civil engineering. 'Road Diets' are all about mixed use and slowing down the speed delta with cars, bikes and peds sharing the same area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet
I love going fast- with technologies like forward collision radar systems and lane assist technologies we are hacking the human condition to augment our abilities. Cars are getting safer as we go even faster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
I disagree with your statement that we should not go over 25. But I am also willing to be that I drive through more nothingland than you do each day. Going over 25 in a crowded city is not the same as a highway in BFE. Am I accurate there?
For some of us, Driving is a hobby and cars are very fun. I love the hell out of my cars.
I spent a few years in Singapore in the 90s aged 5-8. We were taught to cross the road with a hand in the air. I think this is still the case for children in SG today. It wouldn't help so much in a driveway situation but at pedestrian crossings it can be the difference between getting home safely or not.
Kids should be taught to be aware of their surroundings and that if you can't see the driver of a vehicle, then they likely cannot see you either.
Ultimately though, all that is really just a last-resort safeguard against driver inattention and/or poor parenting. The driver of the vehicle should be 100% responsible for their actions, regardless of safety assistance features like cameras.
Even in my own experience of rear view cameras, pedestrians crossing close to the rear of the vehicle are obscured by the rear pillar until the last second, so it doesn't make mirror checks optional. I imagine similar issues exist for forward-facing cameras where a child walking towards then across the front of the vehicle could be obscured by the A-pillar until it's too late to stop. Again, the driver is responsible to check those areas by moving their head or even getting out of the vehicle and physically checking the blind spot if there are any doubts.
I was taught to look the driver in the eye when you cross in front of a vehicle - if you can't see their eyes, don't cross! I also do raise my hand and wave, usually with a smile, just to further say "thanks for keeping your foot on the brake." It seems silly/paranoid but the number of times I've seen people roll through stop signs makes it seem worth it to me.
Looking in the eye doesn't work any more: people look at you, but they completely fail to register you. If you're not exactly car-sized (walking/biking/motorbiking/driving a damn LIGHT RAIL TRAIN ffs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tt8f_2kyRA), you're a part of the scenery, IDCLIP style, and drivers WILL ignore you.
The obvious solution is to raise the ground clearance even further! But seriously, what else would one expect from taking trucks, customarily driven by people engaged in heavy work and painfully aware of their awkwardness, and marketing them to checked-out suburban consumers? The larger the vehicle, the more you need to inspect around it before moving - like when renting a moving truck, it's good to have a friend that can pop out and spot for you. People that take hopping in their vehicle and zooming off for granted are not going to do this work every time. Although of all the bad results from the ignorant zeitgeist of the early oughts, this is pretty minor.
I had thought this article was going to be about A pillars. With modern ones I feel like there is an insufferable blind spot right in the arc of my turn. I know about increasing fuel economy and crash standards, but it feels like there has got to be another way.
I totally see that with my newer car. And the sloping windshield also creates glare in the late afternoon that makes it hard to see pedestrians.
I think driver viability has be seriously compromised in the last 20 years. And suspect that we've only be rating cars by how safe they are for their occupants. Instead of over all. Not sure but I think pedestrian deaths are up sharply in the last ten years.
„In 2016, 5.320 pedestrians were killed in road accidents in the EU (excluding Lithuania and Slovakia), which is 21% of all road fatalities. During the decade 2007-2016, in the European Union, pedestrian fatalities were reduced by 36%, while the total number of fatalities was reduced by almost 41%.”
As for the A-pillars, I read about a solution somewhere, goes like this:
- There is a camera on the 'out' side of the A-pillar;
- There is a screen on the 'in' side of the A-pillar;
- The car tracks driver's gaze and projects the camera view on the A-pillar screen, so as to stitch together the views from the windshield, A-pillar screen, and the side window.
The result being, it looks like the A-pillar is not there at all.
I wonder if some car already has that. Iirc some teenager presented similar solution on a science fair.
I had this idea years ago when teaching a girl to drive some. She had to put seats all the way as far as they go, and with several vehicles she would not drive them because the thickness made the blind spot too big for her comfort, on both sides.
Not sure if this has to do with airbags being there with some vehicles?
Anyway, I had seen an article about flexible led screens, bracelets maybe? and thought to put them on those blind spots with a few cameras on the outside.
I wasn't sure the idea would be popular, or who to even present it to. Glad to see others talking about it and doing it!
TBH, I am thinking of doing a poor man's version of this with a RPi Zero, a fish-eye lens, and a small display (times two, one for both sides). Not sure how well it would mesh with the airbags, crumple zones et al, though; camera-to-display latency might be an issue, too.
Something needs to be done more proactively about mitigating the impact of cars on people/animals/objects around them.
Cars (and the distrust of the ability of the people driving them) are the cause of so much worry and concern.
- There’s anxiety over walking, biking, or running places (not even that far away) because of the worry over cars.
- No parents I know want to let their kids ride their bikes across the neighborhood to their friends’ houses or to/ from school because of the worry over cars.
- Some people even drive their dogs to the park instead of walking around the neighborhood because of the worry over cars.
Cars basically monopolized the idea of transportation, and in effect it is also hard to separate from them. “Sharing the Road” doesn’t work in practice, as the sharing is never enough to make anyone not in a car feel comfortable about it.
We need some kind of government initiative or legislation or something meaningful to equip cars and safety features to mitigate the dangers of cars for the rest of the world around them. It’s going to take forever to be implemented if car manufacturers just roll out these things as “premium features” - that’s like enabling a system of charging extra for a car to come with seatbelts.
I’ve heard, “Well, I grew up in the {60s, 70s, 80s} and we would play in the streets and be ok around cars.” Yea, well, go look at the specs of cars from those decades. People weren’t driving around in F-150s, Chevy Surburbans, and 260hp 140mph sportscars like they are today.
> It’s going to take forever to be implemented if car manufacturers just roll out these things as “premium features” - that’s like enabling a system of charging extra for a car to come with seatbelts.
I support safety mandates to implement safety technology in cars and retrofit it to older vehicles too.
The road is filled with assholes and dumbasses, and while the assholes certainly suck, as a person who walks/scooters around in the city, the dumbasses are the ones that I've learned to really to watch out for.
People looking at their phone while driving, people distracted that are looking away from the road, old people driving that can't even see a crosswalk and don't notice red lights, etc.
Part of the reason, I think, are the almost laughable qualifications to renew a license in most places, and another part is the lax assignment of responsibility on drivers to be competent.
I trust safety technology to do it's job better than I trust 100% of people to be competent while driving.
Like many things, even if 9/10 people do the right thing, all it takes is 1 person to fuck it up for others.
In the 90s, they definitely were driving around in 140mph cars and big, big trucks, especially out in the country or in suburbia in the south; and we definitely walked around, rode bikes everywhere and so on.
People are super, super afraid of everything.
Now, I will say that people looking at their smart phones or driving with headphones on (this is a thing. What the heck, what is wrong with these people. No, I don’t care if they’re on a phone call, blue tooth for your car is a thing) is a new thing and is very distracted driving.
It was the 1960s. 1966, to be exact. My mother let my brother and I (5 and 4, respectively) walk our bikes down the road (no sidewalks) about three houses down, to the dead-end street, and we could ride them there.
A bit later, she heard the sirens. The police cars and ambulance went right past our house, in the direction of the dead-end street. She came running out of our house, to find my brother and I sitting on our bikes at the entrance to the dead-end street, watching the show.
It turned out the "show" was a neighbor boy about my age. He got hit crossing the road. He's been in a wheelchair ever since.
So, yes, we did a lot of things in the 1960s. Some fo us got away with doing them. Some didn't. For those who didn't, the consequences could be pretty heavy.
How much does this vary with the height of the driver? I primarily drive a 2005 CRV, which in my opinion is much larger (higher) than I would want, and I’m about to go check how big the blind spot is, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t 15 ft. My parents have a newer version of the same car and it’s hilariously larger than the older one, it isn’t even the same class of vehicle as far as I’m concerned. Why do ride heights keep getting higher?
Go and test it! Find a flat bit of road with a curb and draw marks on the curb or put a carton or crate or something on the curb all the way until you can see it from inside your car :)
The lightest tap of the brake pedal will not yet actuate the brake, but will illuminate the lights. Turns out the middle brake light tends to be sloped and most intense at ~5 ft. People tend to get the message and increase the distance...
It does. In the recent cars I've driven (no SUVs though), the sensors do trigger at a distance you already do see from the vehicle, and the warning gets far more aggressive the closer you get. It even turns on the camera, if you're <30 kph and it's in its probable FOV (i.e. rear sensors).
My 2013 Honda Fit sure does, have to duck and hunch over to make sure I can see around the front A-Pillar. The front windshield has such a shallow slope I can barely see to the front left without moving my head constantly like an Owl.
40 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 78.5 ms ] threadIn the relatively recent path they just died and families had lots more children to make up for the loss. Now we have far fewer children and we are expected to watch then 24/7 without a lapse in observation or concentration.
Absolutely blind and uphill alleyways are a thing I will always panic about while trying to drive out of.
I think it's relatively common to believe that weapon manufacturers are blameless and it's the owners that should keep them under lock and key.
Would you go so far as to say individual consumers are responsible for climate change because we use oil products?
If a drug company pushed doctors to prescribe more oxy, do they bear any responsibility for an increase in addiction rates?
I'm not saying I have the answers here, it just seems interesting to see where it applies.
I love going fast- In the city or in neighborhoods/parking lots with little ones 25mph is too fast- I generally idle through those areas or go about 20. On city streets 40-45mph is comfortable where I am....Much of how safe I feel going is actually up to good civil engineering. 'Road Diets' are all about mixed use and slowing down the speed delta with cars, bikes and peds sharing the same area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_diet
I love going fast- with technologies like forward collision radar systems and lane assist technologies we are hacking the human condition to augment our abilities. Cars are getting safer as we go even faster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
I disagree with your statement that we should not go over 25. But I am also willing to be that I drive through more nothingland than you do each day. Going over 25 in a crowded city is not the same as a highway in BFE. Am I accurate there?
For some of us, Driving is a hobby and cars are very fun. I love the hell out of my cars.
archive.org to the rescue:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200209133850/https://www.wthr....
Kids should be taught to be aware of their surroundings and that if you can't see the driver of a vehicle, then they likely cannot see you either.
Ultimately though, all that is really just a last-resort safeguard against driver inattention and/or poor parenting. The driver of the vehicle should be 100% responsible for their actions, regardless of safety assistance features like cameras.
Even in my own experience of rear view cameras, pedestrians crossing close to the rear of the vehicle are obscured by the rear pillar until the last second, so it doesn't make mirror checks optional. I imagine similar issues exist for forward-facing cameras where a child walking towards then across the front of the vehicle could be obscured by the A-pillar until it's too late to stop. Again, the driver is responsible to check those areas by moving their head or even getting out of the vehicle and physically checking the blind spot if there are any doubts.
I had thought this article was going to be about A pillars. With modern ones I feel like there is an insufferable blind spot right in the arc of my turn. I know about increasing fuel economy and crash standards, but it feels like there has got to be another way.
I think driver viability has be seriously compromised in the last 20 years. And suspect that we've only be rating cars by how safe they are for their occupants. Instead of over all. Not sure but I think pedestrian deaths are up sharply in the last ten years.
Definitely not in the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/...
„In 2016, 5.320 pedestrians were killed in road accidents in the EU (excluding Lithuania and Slovakia), which is 21% of all road fatalities. During the decade 2007-2016, in the European Union, pedestrian fatalities were reduced by 36%, while the total number of fatalities was reduced by almost 41%.”
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/01/pedestrian-deaths-rea...
- There is a camera on the 'out' side of the A-pillar;
- There is a screen on the 'in' side of the A-pillar;
- The car tracks driver's gaze and projects the camera view on the A-pillar screen, so as to stitch together the views from the windshield, A-pillar screen, and the side window.
The result being, it looks like the A-pillar is not there at all.
I wonder if some car already has that. Iirc some teenager presented similar solution on a science fair.
Cars (and the distrust of the ability of the people driving them) are the cause of so much worry and concern.
- There’s anxiety over walking, biking, or running places (not even that far away) because of the worry over cars.
- No parents I know want to let their kids ride their bikes across the neighborhood to their friends’ houses or to/ from school because of the worry over cars.
- Some people even drive their dogs to the park instead of walking around the neighborhood because of the worry over cars.
Cars basically monopolized the idea of transportation, and in effect it is also hard to separate from them. “Sharing the Road” doesn’t work in practice, as the sharing is never enough to make anyone not in a car feel comfortable about it.
We need some kind of government initiative or legislation or something meaningful to equip cars and safety features to mitigate the dangers of cars for the rest of the world around them. It’s going to take forever to be implemented if car manufacturers just roll out these things as “premium features” - that’s like enabling a system of charging extra for a car to come with seatbelts.
I’ve heard, “Well, I grew up in the {60s, 70s, 80s} and we would play in the streets and be ok around cars.” Yea, well, go look at the specs of cars from those decades. People weren’t driving around in F-150s, Chevy Surburbans, and 260hp 140mph sportscars like they are today.
I support safety mandates to implement safety technology in cars and retrofit it to older vehicles too.
The road is filled with assholes and dumbasses, and while the assholes certainly suck, as a person who walks/scooters around in the city, the dumbasses are the ones that I've learned to really to watch out for.
People looking at their phone while driving, people distracted that are looking away from the road, old people driving that can't even see a crosswalk and don't notice red lights, etc.
Part of the reason, I think, are the almost laughable qualifications to renew a license in most places, and another part is the lax assignment of responsibility on drivers to be competent.
I trust safety technology to do it's job better than I trust 100% of people to be competent while driving.
Like many things, even if 9/10 people do the right thing, all it takes is 1 person to fuck it up for others.
People are super, super afraid of everything.
Now, I will say that people looking at their smart phones or driving with headphones on (this is a thing. What the heck, what is wrong with these people. No, I don’t care if they’re on a phone call, blue tooth for your car is a thing) is a new thing and is very distracted driving.
A bit later, she heard the sirens. The police cars and ambulance went right past our house, in the direction of the dead-end street. She came running out of our house, to find my brother and I sitting on our bikes at the entrance to the dead-end street, watching the show.
It turned out the "show" was a neighbor boy about my age. He got hit crossing the road. He's been in a wheelchair ever since.
So, yes, we did a lot of things in the 1960s. Some fo us got away with doing them. Some didn't. For those who didn't, the consequences could be pretty heavy.
1) people will aggressively creep up in cars against my rear; and,
2) when pedestrians decide to cut between cars when walking at a stop light.