johnlocke said:
ACC and anti- collision braking need to be mandatory features on all new cars Just like side view mirrors and taillights. As safety features they rank up there with seatbelts and airbags. I understand your feelings about making it easier for drivers to be inattentive. But the fact is that drivers are already inattentive and anything you can do to reduce accidents and injuries benefits us all.
FSD will take time but at some point you may need a special license to manually operate a vehicle. We'll all be a little safer and driving will be a lot less fun. God only knows what they'll do about motorcycles and bicycles.
We agree on AEB, but not on ACC. The former is an additional layer of safety on top of the human driver, while the latter, especially when combined with autosteer essentially replaces the human driver. Until such time as an ACC and AEB-equipped car can deal with the fairly common situation of the car it's trailing changing lanes to avoid a stopped vehicle, and the ACC system then identifies that stopped vehicle as such and safely brakes to a halt or changes lanes, IMO it's not safer than a human driver. We have numerous accident reports of DAS-equipped Teslas with both AEB and ACC, rear-ending stopped vehicles on freeways, including stopped emergency vehicles with their lights flashing. Absent statistical data to show a decrease in such accidents, mandating ACC at this time is unjustified IMO. OTOH, AEB has clearly been shown to reduce typical rear-end accidents, and even though those aren't the accidents with the highest probability of severe or fatal outcomes, it's still justifiable to mandate AEB with its current capability.
I expect that the time ADS become common will be about the same point my reaction time has so increased that I'm no longer able to drive safely. As we have a large, aging population. we will definitely need ADS cars, lest seniors suffer major reductions in their ability to socialize. I saw this with my dad, who was very social until he lost his license in his late '80s, and was then dependent on me to drive him around. As I was often unavailable when he wanted to do something, his life shrank. Uber etc. have made things better since then, but are probably too expensive for many seniors for now; removing the most expensive item, the driver, will be a big help, and will also allow people to use their own (ADS) cars, if they wish.