That could be a really fun trend... start attaching mannequins and cardboard cutouts to random street signs and light poles as close to the road as possible and see when the Toyota reacts.
Whenever I almost get hit by a car while I'm walking around San Francisco, I'd say that 8 times out of 10 it's a Prius... so this is definitely welcome.
Better approach: Install a small wireless sender in the car that broadcasts at a given frequency.
Then allow people who want a minimum noise level to buy a small receiver that broadcasts those signals (or another type of indication signal) to a headset.
This allows you to keep the noise level down and at the same time provides "notifications" to the visually impaired.
1. Blind folks generally rely on directional sound. Knowing a car's nearby is better than nothing, but you can't tell how fast it's approaching you, from what direction.
Also, by forcing the purchase of a receiver for something that in some cases is vital safety information, you'll by definition have more accidents than you would if it were a real sound.
1. The directional information is perceived due to the stereo sound. If you manage to give the location information to the receiver somehow it can generate the stereo sound appropriately. Maybe by using an ultrasound sender and receivers that are located near one's ears.
2. Beeping was just an example. Just "encode" the information as motor noise and it will sound more "natural".
Headsets would also decrease your ability to hear other things. You'd hear the prius with the transmitter but not the real cars or other pedestrians or bicycles.
Volvo has similarly come out with a pedestrian detection/braking system (http://www.boston.com/cars/newsandreviews/overdrive/2010/07/...) and Volkswagen has been showing off a self-driving car (http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1062073_volkswagen-shows-...) in addition to the Google Car. Cars are going toward driving themselves. The Google car is impressive, but it will likely be a while before people become comfortable with the concept and for the cost to come down. Mainstream auto manufacturers are inching their way toward these features (mostly on their more expensive models), but I keep hearing people say, "well, what if it stops me when I can go forward."
I think manufacturers are trying to get consumers used to the idea that technology might be the way to go for a lot of driving systems. People need to get the idea that self-driving technologies enhance safety. I think that's why they're starting with braking. As people become comfortable with and grateful for their car taking control in emergency-ish situations like that, they'll similarly become comfortable with the car taking control during normal driving. At least that's the thought.
Volvo has this feature -- dubbed City Safety -- already on the road.
It may seem snobbish to some, but I'd never let myself, my wife, and my future children drive anything but a Mercedes or Volvo.
Between the two of them, they've been behind nearly every safety system developed in the last 40 years.
I feel good about knowing that our hard work has let us put my wife in a car, for her 30 minute commute, that has 12 airbags, that monitors her blindspot and will prevent her from changing lanes when it's occupied, that monitors her alertness and sounds alarms if she begins to fall asleep at the wheel, that vibrates the steering wheel if she accidentally begins to drift out of her lane, that watches for stopped traffic or obstacles in her path and will apply full force braking in microseconds in a way that her human reflexes just cannot, that has seats designed to prevent whiplash, and seatbelt pretensioners, and an extra firewall in the engine compartment to prevent intrusion.
Not to mention, compared to the often under-engineered competition, it has handling and performance capabilities that can plausibly prevent accidents where any of those things would be necessary in the first place.
Neither of us has ever yet, to our knowledge, counted on these things to save our lives. But knowing they're there, makes me feel much more comfortable when she leaves home.
I'll buy my first car in a few months (at the tender age of 31). I was eyeing Mercedes already, and your comment only confirms everything I've read about it. Do you know if these features are available in their class C cars, or do I need to get an E class?
Actually, yes. Most of those will be available on the C class starting MY 2012.
If you live in North America you can probably expect 2012's to be available in September and October.
You can pre-order now, of course. Including a wonderful option where you go to Germany, pick the car up as it rolls off the line, drive it around Europe for up to 30 days, then drop it back off to them to have it shipped to the US: And you get the car at dealer invoice less 8%. That's a little involved for a first time Mercedes buyer, but I wanted to make you aware of it, it's a very great program they've got there.
The C is a great car. We've got one in our family. If you have any questions, http://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w204-83/ is a great C Class forum. I'm active there under the same handle.
That's interesting, because Mercedes's Traction Control system almost killed me one night. Apparently it's possible to accidentally induce a very slight but controllable oversteer slide by overshooting the exit to a fast curve and touching a rumble strip with the outside tires. No surprise there.
In a normal car, you keep your front wheels on the line you want to follow, release power, then smoothly add power to "shift weight" to the rear wheels and increase traction (acceleration causes the rear suspension to compress, making the rear tires push harder on the ground, increasing the normal force and increasing rear wheel traction). Doing that stops the oversteer (rear wheel skid).
In a Mercedes, the car assumes that you're an idiot for doing that, cuts engine power to the drive (rear) wheels, and applies breaks to the OUTSIDE REAR WHEEL. That procedure has the effect of decompressing the rear suspension and decreasing traction to the rear wheels, which are already skidding. The slide that resulted was unrecoverable. Yank the parking break and shift into neutral while in a hard corner at 40mph if you want to know what it felt like. For a few seconds, my instincts and the car's Traction Control fought each other as I tried to correct for the skids that improperly braking the rear wheels was causing.
Finally, I came to rest having skid across the double yellow…and then somehow the automatic transmission stalled.
It was a "mistake" that could have been fixed in less than a second driving a 1908 Model T. After a hundred years of innovations, Mercedes has completely removed the driver from direct control of the vehicle, WITHOUT an option to turn off those so-called "features."
I spent the next several months talking to people who did tuning for Daimler-Chrysler for a shop in Montana, cracking ECU encryption to reprogram the fuel injectors and intake system to perform well at high altitudes. And apparently there's no good way to turn off that Traction Control system except removing large chunks of code from the ECU, which voids the warranty and might have serious side effects. When I learned more about how the Traction Control system actually works, I sold the car.
I will never own another Mercedes. They breed laziness and irresponsibility without giving competent drivers the control they need to drive safely.
I'm currently an avid BMW fan because of two major factors: first, it's possible to buy manual transmissions without special ordering a new car from Germany; second, it is possible–by holding a button on the console for a few seconds–to COMPLETELY disable traction control. I have driven in snow and ice, torrential downpours, and heavy traffic in the last year. I haven't driven with Traction Control on since Mercedes almost killed me in 2006.
Frankly, I think EVERY SINGLE ONE of the safety features you suggested is a horrible idea. Pay attention to what you're doing, and don't drive if you're not physically and mentally capable of driving. I don't want my car to wake me up if I fall asleep driving…I want to be smart enough to not drive that night.
Frankly, the more I hear about Mercedes safety features, the more distance I like to keep between me and them on the highway.
I think you should keep in mind that you appear to be an intelligent, skilled and avid driver. For you driving is an experience you take seriously and also seem to enjoy. I'm not worried about what you do on the road, but I am worried about the millions of less intelligent and skilled drivers that are pushing 3000lbs of metal around at lethal speeds.
I think you are justified in wanting and buying a machine that suits your needs, but please don't assume that everyone is or even should be as adamant about driving as you are. I for one will happily let the computer take the wheel and allow me to focus on things I care about like conversation or coding. If I want a joy ride hopefully I'll be successful enough to own a classic gasoline powered driving machine ;)
Driving at a high level is one thing. It requires a lot of skill and concentration.
Not killing people is completely different: it requires basic skills and some small measure of multi-taking ability. Which is more important, reacting to the car changing lanes without a signal in front of you or finishing your sentence RIGHT NOW?
The problem isn't even skill level. Driving normally at city and highway speeds is easy. The vast majority of 1st world residents know how to do it, and very very few of them make mistakes severe enough to affect anyone else's lives. The average driver is nowhere near as bad at it as most people seem to think.
But taking the driver's commitment to and awareness of the risks inherent in driving away and placing that burden on active "safety features" is a bad thing. I know their hearts are in the right place and that I'm not the person these systems are designed for. But they're going to get people killed.
My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should.
It's not the average drivers that need help, its the bad drivers. The ones who roll through a red light turning right, but look left the entire time, which is a very common way for pedestrians to get hit by cars. The system in the article would probably prevent tons of those accidents. I'm all for taking control away from bad drivers, even if that means we also have to take control away from the average and good drivers.
And if they're running through a red light, that means the cross street has a green.
The pedestrian might be in slightly less danger if the car reacts properly. But then the car stops unexpectedly and the driver wonders what happens…and winds up stopped in an intersection for some nonzero amount of time.
Also, unless I'm visualizing this wrong (right turn on red hits a pedestrian in the crosswalk to his right that's parallel to his original direction of travel) the only way the pedestrian would have been in that crosswalk at all is if s/he was crossing against the light and crossing the path of cars going straight on a green.
The ped is travelling perpendicular to the original direction of the car (crossing from right to left from the cars point of view) and is most likely just stepping off the sidewalk.
I'm not sure I'll be able to change your mind about this, but I'd like to express my opinion on your sentiment and leave it at that.
I think that maybe you're wrong about a few things here. First and foremost, that your slide was recoverable.
I'm a car guy myself. Like you, I insist on manual transmissions with rear wheel drive. I've been to driving schools, read extensively about how suspension affects handling dynamics, and turned a few wrenches in my time. Even with all that, I try to remain humble about my own driving abilities and the fact that while I enjoy it, I don't drive professionally, so I shouldn't expect professional results.
Your comments about skid recovery apply to the input controls that are available to you as the driver. They don't apply to the input controls available to the traction control systems in your car. For every subtle detail that you learned about handling using the steering wheel, brake, and clutch, there are equivalents for the systems available to the traction control system, such as individual wheel braking.
Stopping a slide is about controlling rotation. You cannot use the brake to directly rotate the vehicle because you only get one brake pedal. The best use of that brake pedal, as a driver, is in controlling the speed and weight distribution of the automobile. That is the most you can hope for.
"My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should."
The stability program in a Mercedes absolutely knows the difference between power-induced oversteer and braking-induced oversteer. It uses accelerometers, yaw sensors, throttle position sensors, and individual wheel speed sensors to infer your intended direction of travel. Braking the outside rear wheel does transfer weight forward, but it has a far more significant positive effect on correcting rotation because of the asymmetrical application of braking force. Your slide was simply unrecoverable. You think that it was recoverable, but you'll never know for sure. Based on the physics involved, I think you're wrong.
I've tested the limits of these systems myself. My 2006 GTI had ESP. I took it out to a dirt road and explored the limits under slalom conditions and hard turns. These systems are amazing at recovering slides that can be recovered. If I pushed hard enough, I could "break through" to an uncontrollable slide, however. When you "overshoot" your mark, brake, turn, then hit a rumble strip (which significantly reduces available traction) you end up in an unrecoverable slide.
The irony here is that your Mercedes' ESP system didn't almost kill you, you did.
Thanks for offering your opinion. While I want to respect the GP's personal experience, your comments echo my feelings. My favorite part of a Mercedes (and this is surely true for other premier makes) is that everything seems to have been thought out and engineered ^1. And with my own personal experience of the cars TCS, I felt it very hard to believe that the Mercedes TCS would be so simplistic.
^1 Not to say I don't have my issues with the cars -- stuff like a crappy Chinese made iPod interface.
Edit: That video is stunning. Thanks for the share.
I'd strongly encourage you to take advantage of any driving school that Mercedes offers. I've read countless messages from individuals who insist that these safety systems (ABS, TCS, and ESP) are a detriment to their ability to drive the car, but I've experienced them in two makes of automobile (VW and BWM) now, and I now know from first-hand experience that they work fantastic. There is no replacement for testing them out for yourself.
To support my point, here is a video of Tiff Needell testing an older version of ESP in a Jaguar on a sheet of ice. The ability of the system to stop a car from sliding out of control under these conditions is just mind boggling.
This 6:21 start point shows both (with/without) tests:
I'm afraid this is whats going to prevent adoption of more automatic cars. The people who care about cars don't want the features, but its the people who don't care about cars that would benefit most. And they don't pay attention.
Once again, they won't benefit if the systems aren't a hell of a lot better than Mercedes was capable of producing in 2006.
And unless you know what's going on "under the hood" well enough to either evaluate their code or design a real-world test that you can perform in an empty parking lot…you're left to decide based on what Mercedes says. And they're never going to say "our system can't detect the cause of a skid…it just reacts based on detecting the speed wheels are spinning and assumes the driver is completely incompetent."
Some of the systems are great. There's no reason a car sold today shouldn't have ABS: the driving techniques required to get similar performance out of non-ABS brakes are very skill specific and time-intensive to develop. It's not worth it for >99% of drivers. And there are "good" traction control systems. Subaru's computer-controlled differentials in their AWD system are pretty good. But that system isn't capable of making a mistake as bad as the "active braking" systems that are coming out.
You may not want the car to wake you up, but you'll certainly want the car of the incompetent driver next to you to wake him up before he careens into you on the highway.
No, I don't. I'd rather he have to take responsibility for his actions and decide whether he really needs to take that chance instead of thinking "it's okay that I'm exhausted…my car will wake me up."
Most of the time, in my own experience, when I am close to falling asleep while driving, I would have never been able to realize how tired I was before leaving on the trip. Even if you feel wide awake before you leave your destination, a late night drive on the highway can induce sleep, with the hum of the highway and the flying by of the lines on the road.
You're basically suggesting that people decide to not get in their cars if they even slightly think they might be too tired to drive. You know as well as I do that there's no way to measure this (unlike drinking, where if you consumed any alcohol in the last several hours you shouldn't get behind the wheel.) So, it's a bit of a pipe dream to think drivers are actually in the position to make a judgement call about their own risk of falling asleep at the wheel before leaving.
Regardless, my point was that these safety systems are meant to protect responsible drivers from irresponsible ones. I'm skeptical that the presence of safety systems could somehow convert a responsible driver to an irresponsible one.
You don't make the decision to drive and then that's it. At any point, you can decide "i'm too tired," and pull off.
Take a nap in your car. Let someone else drive if you're not alone. Call a cab and pick up your car in the morning. Call Safe Ride, and they'll send a driver and a moped that will fit in your trunk if you're somewhere they operate.
There are always alternatives to putting yourself in a dangerous situation. And, I believe these systems will lead people to drift further into these types of dangerous situations before even thinking about safer alternatives.
I'm sure you feel very strongly that you're correct and that the systems were incorrect. And that's fine. But the fact that you disable the TCS in your BMW indicates that it's the technology you dislike and not the Mercedes implementation.
I'm happy for you that you've found a car you like. For me, I don't feel BMW has the same track record of safety innovation, but even before I grew to value that, what disuaded me most from owning a BMW is the fact that they use runflats only. And even if you've got a salesman willing to swap them out with conventional tires, there is no place in the trunk for a spare without it just sitting in there rolling around, taking up space. But I respect that BMW makes some fine cars and they feel very different on the road than does a Mercedes.
The criticisms you have about making drivers "lazy" is the same thing some people said about antilock brakes. And in fact, I have an uncle who swears as you do that if he had full control over the brakes, he'd have avoided an accident.
For me, knowing that these safety systems -- able to react in fractions of a second -- are there to help save my life and keep safe the woman I love, is invaluable. And I believe that for every one of your stories, there's dozens or hundreds of stories where these things led to a person walking away from an accident than they may not otherwise have survived.
I think the average person would agree. A system that beeps if you fall asleep at the wheel? Yes. A system that nudges your steering wheel fi you drift over the centerline? Yes. None of these things even augment your driving, they just direct yoru attention to the road.
In fact, the only thing I mentioned that does intervene in your driving is the blind spot intervention.
Anyhow, glad you didn't have any serious issues. And I hope we both know how fortunate we are to be able to sit here and debate the relative merits of one German sports sedan vs another.
Yikes. I like safety features like airbags and strong cages that won't collapse on the driver in a crash. I don't want my car making driving decisions for me. It may be done in the name of safety but until they invent a car that can't break, I don't trust it not to cause more problems than it helps.
I somewhat sympathize with your thinking. However, why do you like airbags then? Accidental airbag release can kill you a lot easier than sudden brake application can.
Luddite. :P Seriously, would you prefer a car that was built by a robot or a human?
Personally, while I see where you are coming from and share your reservations about unproven technologies, I also foresee a time - within our lifetimes and hopefully sooner than later - where cars are 100% computer controlled and roads are at least an order of magnitude safer.
Imagine if every drunk at the bar could just press "home" on the dashboard of their car and then sleep it off during the trip?
Are you saying it's worse to potentially cause an accident due to the sudden stop than to certainly have an accident as you run someone/thing over? I'm not sure I agree with you there.
Especially considering the difference in injury for a rear-end accident versus mowing down a pedestrian. Even if we assume that 100% of the time the car behind you will hit, the death toll is still likely much reduced.
This line of argument hinges on the assumption that braking input is the only means by which to avoid an accident. Cars have steering wheels and swerving is often an effective maneuver when attempting to avoid an accident.
Incidentally, heavy breaking reduces a car's ability to corner which may end up causing accidents which could otherwise be avoided.
At below 22mph or whatever they said, and at the distances they show in the movie, I'm almost positive that braking is the correct action. In that situation, stop distance is short and it's too late to swerve. (It's true that swerving becomes a progressively better option as speed increases.)
This would be "certainly" only if the system worked perfectly. I think there will way more false positives than actual preventions (at least in the near term).
> Automatically making a decision (that the human is better at making)
What about when the car really is better at making that decision? IMHO, we are few scarce decades away from cars that will just be plain better drivers than the median meatbag.
We need some empirical data on this - run tests, get results, interpret them, etc. Until then, it's all a bunch of pointless what-ifs - "But what if I'm being carjacked and I need to get away, BUT Adolf Hitler is blocking my way, BUT ALSO he's carrying the baby Einstein, BUT ALSO it's actually evil Einstein!"
> IMHO, we are few scarce decades away from cars that will just be plain better drivers than the median meatbag.
...except that we've been a few scarce decades away from this for a few decades now. For the most part the history of this thought process is that we dramatically underestimate the problems involved.
One could argue that the same arguments in the aviation industry are simply playing out now in the automotive industry. What you'll probably end up with is a Boeing and an Airbus: some manufacturers will trust the driver more than the computer, and some will trust the computer more than the driver.
Toyota has clearly never considered the parable where one is required to run over 1 pedestrian in order to stop another car that is about to take the lives of 5 other pedestrians.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadBetter approach: Install a small wireless sender in the car that broadcasts at a given frequency.
Then allow people who want a minimum noise level to buy a small receiver that broadcasts those signals (or another type of indication signal) to a headset.
This allows you to keep the noise level down and at the same time provides "notifications" to the visually impaired.
1. Blind folks generally rely on directional sound. Knowing a car's nearby is better than nothing, but you can't tell how fast it's approaching you, from what direction.
2. In a city, it'd never stop beeping at you.
2. Beeping was just an example. Just "encode" the information as motor noise and it will sound more "natural".
Dumb idea.
I think manufacturers are trying to get consumers used to the idea that technology might be the way to go for a lot of driving systems. People need to get the idea that self-driving technologies enhance safety. I think that's why they're starting with braking. As people become comfortable with and grateful for their car taking control in emergency-ish situations like that, they'll similarly become comfortable with the car taking control during normal driving. At least that's the thought.
It may seem snobbish to some, but I'd never let myself, my wife, and my future children drive anything but a Mercedes or Volvo.
Between the two of them, they've been behind nearly every safety system developed in the last 40 years.
I feel good about knowing that our hard work has let us put my wife in a car, for her 30 minute commute, that has 12 airbags, that monitors her blindspot and will prevent her from changing lanes when it's occupied, that monitors her alertness and sounds alarms if she begins to fall asleep at the wheel, that vibrates the steering wheel if she accidentally begins to drift out of her lane, that watches for stopped traffic or obstacles in her path and will apply full force braking in microseconds in a way that her human reflexes just cannot, that has seats designed to prevent whiplash, and seatbelt pretensioners, and an extra firewall in the engine compartment to prevent intrusion.
Not to mention, compared to the often under-engineered competition, it has handling and performance capabilities that can plausibly prevent accidents where any of those things would be necessary in the first place.
Neither of us has ever yet, to our knowledge, counted on these things to save our lives. But knowing they're there, makes me feel much more comfortable when she leaves home.
If you live in North America you can probably expect 2012's to be available in September and October.
You can pre-order now, of course. Including a wonderful option where you go to Germany, pick the car up as it rolls off the line, drive it around Europe for up to 30 days, then drop it back off to them to have it shipped to the US: And you get the car at dealer invoice less 8%. That's a little involved for a first time Mercedes buyer, but I wanted to make you aware of it, it's a very great program they've got there.
The C is a great car. We've got one in our family. If you have any questions, http://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w204-83/ is a great C Class forum. I'm active there under the same handle.
In a normal car, you keep your front wheels on the line you want to follow, release power, then smoothly add power to "shift weight" to the rear wheels and increase traction (acceleration causes the rear suspension to compress, making the rear tires push harder on the ground, increasing the normal force and increasing rear wheel traction). Doing that stops the oversteer (rear wheel skid).
In a Mercedes, the car assumes that you're an idiot for doing that, cuts engine power to the drive (rear) wheels, and applies breaks to the OUTSIDE REAR WHEEL. That procedure has the effect of decompressing the rear suspension and decreasing traction to the rear wheels, which are already skidding. The slide that resulted was unrecoverable. Yank the parking break and shift into neutral while in a hard corner at 40mph if you want to know what it felt like. For a few seconds, my instincts and the car's Traction Control fought each other as I tried to correct for the skids that improperly braking the rear wheels was causing.
Finally, I came to rest having skid across the double yellow…and then somehow the automatic transmission stalled.
It was a "mistake" that could have been fixed in less than a second driving a 1908 Model T. After a hundred years of innovations, Mercedes has completely removed the driver from direct control of the vehicle, WITHOUT an option to turn off those so-called "features."
I spent the next several months talking to people who did tuning for Daimler-Chrysler for a shop in Montana, cracking ECU encryption to reprogram the fuel injectors and intake system to perform well at high altitudes. And apparently there's no good way to turn off that Traction Control system except removing large chunks of code from the ECU, which voids the warranty and might have serious side effects. When I learned more about how the Traction Control system actually works, I sold the car.
I will never own another Mercedes. They breed laziness and irresponsibility without giving competent drivers the control they need to drive safely.
I'm currently an avid BMW fan because of two major factors: first, it's possible to buy manual transmissions without special ordering a new car from Germany; second, it is possible–by holding a button on the console for a few seconds–to COMPLETELY disable traction control. I have driven in snow and ice, torrential downpours, and heavy traffic in the last year. I haven't driven with Traction Control on since Mercedes almost killed me in 2006.
Frankly, I think EVERY SINGLE ONE of the safety features you suggested is a horrible idea. Pay attention to what you're doing, and don't drive if you're not physically and mentally capable of driving. I don't want my car to wake me up if I fall asleep driving…I want to be smart enough to not drive that night.
Frankly, the more I hear about Mercedes safety features, the more distance I like to keep between me and them on the highway.
I think you are justified in wanting and buying a machine that suits your needs, but please don't assume that everyone is or even should be as adamant about driving as you are. I for one will happily let the computer take the wheel and allow me to focus on things I care about like conversation or coding. If I want a joy ride hopefully I'll be successful enough to own a classic gasoline powered driving machine ;)
Not killing people is completely different: it requires basic skills and some small measure of multi-taking ability. Which is more important, reacting to the car changing lanes without a signal in front of you or finishing your sentence RIGHT NOW?
The problem isn't even skill level. Driving normally at city and highway speeds is easy. The vast majority of 1st world residents know how to do it, and very very few of them make mistakes severe enough to affect anyone else's lives. The average driver is nowhere near as bad at it as most people seem to think.
But taking the driver's commitment to and awareness of the risks inherent in driving away and placing that burden on active "safety features" is a bad thing. I know their hearts are in the right place and that I'm not the person these systems are designed for. But they're going to get people killed.
My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should.
The pedestrian might be in slightly less danger if the car reacts properly. But then the car stops unexpectedly and the driver wonders what happens…and winds up stopped in an intersection for some nonzero amount of time.
Also, unless I'm visualizing this wrong (right turn on red hits a pedestrian in the crosswalk to his right that's parallel to his original direction of travel) the only way the pedestrian would have been in that crosswalk at all is if s/he was crossing against the light and crossing the path of cars going straight on a green.
I think that maybe you're wrong about a few things here. First and foremost, that your slide was recoverable.
I'm a car guy myself. Like you, I insist on manual transmissions with rear wheel drive. I've been to driving schools, read extensively about how suspension affects handling dynamics, and turned a few wrenches in my time. Even with all that, I try to remain humble about my own driving abilities and the fact that while I enjoy it, I don't drive professionally, so I shouldn't expect professional results.
Your comments about skid recovery apply to the input controls that are available to you as the driver. They don't apply to the input controls available to the traction control systems in your car. For every subtle detail that you learned about handling using the steering wheel, brake, and clutch, there are equivalents for the systems available to the traction control system, such as individual wheel braking.
Stopping a slide is about controlling rotation. You cannot use the brake to directly rotate the vehicle because you only get one brake pedal. The best use of that brake pedal, as a driver, is in controlling the speed and weight distribution of the automobile. That is the most you can hope for.
"My issue with Mercedes's Traction Control in particular isn't even that it makes drivers lazy. It's that in at least that situation, it can't tell the difference between power-induced oversteer and breaking-induced oversteer. In that situation, it reacted EXACTLY WRONG. It doesn't matter whether the driver is competent or not if the system makes the opposite changes that it should."
The stability program in a Mercedes absolutely knows the difference between power-induced oversteer and braking-induced oversteer. It uses accelerometers, yaw sensors, throttle position sensors, and individual wheel speed sensors to infer your intended direction of travel. Braking the outside rear wheel does transfer weight forward, but it has a far more significant positive effect on correcting rotation because of the asymmetrical application of braking force. Your slide was simply unrecoverable. You think that it was recoverable, but you'll never know for sure. Based on the physics involved, I think you're wrong.
I've tested the limits of these systems myself. My 2006 GTI had ESP. I took it out to a dirt road and explored the limits under slalom conditions and hard turns. These systems are amazing at recovering slides that can be recovered. If I pushed hard enough, I could "break through" to an uncontrollable slide, however. When you "overshoot" your mark, brake, turn, then hit a rumble strip (which significantly reduces available traction) you end up in an unrecoverable slide.
The irony here is that your Mercedes' ESP system didn't almost kill you, you did.
^1 Not to say I don't have my issues with the cars -- stuff like a crappy Chinese made iPod interface.
Edit: That video is stunning. Thanks for the share.
This 6:21 start point shows both (with/without) tests:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-hHWSQhKuc&feature=fvwre...
And unless you know what's going on "under the hood" well enough to either evaluate their code or design a real-world test that you can perform in an empty parking lot…you're left to decide based on what Mercedes says. And they're never going to say "our system can't detect the cause of a skid…it just reacts based on detecting the speed wheels are spinning and assumes the driver is completely incompetent."
Some of the systems are great. There's no reason a car sold today shouldn't have ABS: the driving techniques required to get similar performance out of non-ABS brakes are very skill specific and time-intensive to develop. It's not worth it for >99% of drivers. And there are "good" traction control systems. Subaru's computer-controlled differentials in their AWD system are pretty good. But that system isn't capable of making a mistake as bad as the "active braking" systems that are coming out.
You're basically suggesting that people decide to not get in their cars if they even slightly think they might be too tired to drive. You know as well as I do that there's no way to measure this (unlike drinking, where if you consumed any alcohol in the last several hours you shouldn't get behind the wheel.) So, it's a bit of a pipe dream to think drivers are actually in the position to make a judgement call about their own risk of falling asleep at the wheel before leaving.
Regardless, my point was that these safety systems are meant to protect responsible drivers from irresponsible ones. I'm skeptical that the presence of safety systems could somehow convert a responsible driver to an irresponsible one.
Take a nap in your car. Let someone else drive if you're not alone. Call a cab and pick up your car in the morning. Call Safe Ride, and they'll send a driver and a moped that will fit in your trunk if you're somewhere they operate.
There are always alternatives to putting yourself in a dangerous situation. And, I believe these systems will lead people to drift further into these types of dangerous situations before even thinking about safer alternatives.
I'm happy for you that you've found a car you like. For me, I don't feel BMW has the same track record of safety innovation, but even before I grew to value that, what disuaded me most from owning a BMW is the fact that they use runflats only. And even if you've got a salesman willing to swap them out with conventional tires, there is no place in the trunk for a spare without it just sitting in there rolling around, taking up space. But I respect that BMW makes some fine cars and they feel very different on the road than does a Mercedes.
The criticisms you have about making drivers "lazy" is the same thing some people said about antilock brakes. And in fact, I have an uncle who swears as you do that if he had full control over the brakes, he'd have avoided an accident.
For me, knowing that these safety systems -- able to react in fractions of a second -- are there to help save my life and keep safe the woman I love, is invaluable. And I believe that for every one of your stories, there's dozens or hundreds of stories where these things led to a person walking away from an accident than they may not otherwise have survived.
I think the average person would agree. A system that beeps if you fall asleep at the wheel? Yes. A system that nudges your steering wheel fi you drift over the centerline? Yes. None of these things even augment your driving, they just direct yoru attention to the road.
In fact, the only thing I mentioned that does intervene in your driving is the blind spot intervention.
Anyhow, glad you didn't have any serious issues. And I hope we both know how fortunate we are to be able to sit here and debate the relative merits of one German sports sedan vs another.
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/07/20/safety-group-sa...
Personally, while I see where you are coming from and share your reservations about unproven technologies, I also foresee a time - within our lifetimes and hopefully sooner than later - where cars are 100% computer controlled and roads are at least an order of magnitude safer.
Imagine if every drunk at the bar could just press "home" on the dashboard of their car and then sleep it off during the trip?
(Please note: tongue-in-cheek.)
Automatically making a decision (that the human is better at making) and potentially causing an accident due to a random sudden stop = bad
Incidentally, heavy breaking reduces a car's ability to corner which may end up causing accidents which could otherwise be avoided.
What about when the car really is better at making that decision? IMHO, we are few scarce decades away from cars that will just be plain better drivers than the median meatbag.
...except that we've been a few scarce decades away from this for a few decades now. For the most part the history of this thought process is that we dramatically underestimate the problems involved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNi17YLnZpg
These technologies need to gain the trust of the drivers before they can become mainstream.
Is it because we welcome an AI which breaks, but not one which drives? Why?
Because passive AIs are less scary than active ones? And active breaking is still perceived as a passive action?