BMW drivers will only ever be able to drive in a straight line then
BMW has had lane assist (I believe standard) for a few years now. As others above have said, it gives resistance and visible feedback with varying degrees of force if you try to change lanes without a blinker. Many others makes now do as well.
Essentially, in a 2018 or newer model BMW it is a pain in the ass to change lanes - even on an empty road - if you don’t use a blinker. And it probably snitches on you to your insurance company if you frequently make the light come on.
As for the lowered 2011 3 series with the loud exhaust and not quite right looking M badges passing you in a cloud of strawberry mountain dew flavored vapor, well… yeah what do you expect. The forest of little tree air fresheners makes it hard to see through the rear view anyway.
Seems good to me!
If you need other cars to use turn signals you shouldn’t be driving.
Get off the road, asshole.
Because people are supposed to have the psychic ability to predict what the driver in front of them is going to do?
Yeah it’s really not hard to read what a car is going to do. It’s clear that many people cannot do it and to that end should not be driving.
Cars are not animals, they don’t have subtle body movements that you could read. If you can see what the car is doing, it is already too late. The idea of turn signals is that you let other drivers know in advance. Even if they are “stupid” and can’t “read” your car. Even if you are stupid and you are doing something really stupid, signals give people around you time to notice you and avoid you. We drive to get from point A to point B, and different rules and mechanisms are there to make the whole process safer. Go feel superiority somewhere else.
In the majority of cases you can anticipate what other drivers are doing based of subtle changes in speed or lane position. If someone is slowing and moving further to one side of the lane than they have been, it’s a pretty good indication they are preparing to turn.
It would be nice if people could explicitly signal that by using their indicators, but most people are fairly predictable, and the subtle movements are there if you watch for long enough.
What a silly thing to say. Crashes don’t happen the majority of the time. It’s the minority of cases that are the problem.
By majority it’s 100%, physics exists and the time required to maneuver in being capable of turning or lane changing is plenty to clearly signal what it will do. The reality is that if you need turn signals you are bad at driving and should not drive. Most humans are not capable and cars should not be how the majority of people get around.
Why exactly do you think cars have turn signals? Was it on a whim? Did people think it looked nice?
I bet your car insurance is astronomical
It’s really funny to watch people cope with the reality that they are not skilled at using a car. People should not drive cars, cars killed tens of thousands of people.
Ok Beemer.
Now that would make about 95% of all BMW drivers wonder why their steering is broken…
It’s not just BMWs anymore. Probably only about half the people on the road with me use turn signals and it doesn’t matter what they drive.
Any and all type of marketing completely banned.
Yes please
I think you should be allowed one sign on the building itself and a listing in some sort of directory and that’s it.
Yea as much as we hate marketing it’s necessary to some degree for us to even know that things exist. How do you think new medications for yet untreated diseases get spread? Those companies pay a ton in marketing to get the meds out into the world and in the hands of doctors. Lots more people would be dying of stuff we have the cure for if they couldn’t advertise meds.
Directories for specific products would be good though. If I need a kitchen gadget I can go to a directory of kitchen or food goods and look around. Between that and word of mouth we would be covered.
you get one research paper too but the sample size of the study should be in the title.
Is reading the abstract at the very beginning really that much of a burden?
Considering I see some people mentioning stuff like swerving to avoid obstacles or temporary construction lanes not to mention curvey roads so I propose what about automatic turn signals that activate when it detects the driver trying to turn without signaling
Because, and I have no idea why so many people don’t get this, you’re supposed to signal you’re going to turn, then slow down, then turn. That’s how you safely let anyone behind you know you’re going to do that.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost rear-ended someone because they weren’t using their turn signals until they had already started turning. You might as well not use them at all for all the good that does.
Which is why it’s an incredibly dumb idea. It’s not actually possible. But it would make the world a better place.
A few days ago I ran out to get a few things, and this car ahead of me is going 20Km/h below the 50 limit for 5 minutes, then comes to a dead stop in an intersection, starts slowly turning and then puts on their blinker. Honked at them for being a fucking dumbass and they just wave me off like I’m the asshole
God I fucking hate how easy it is to get and keep a license. Enforcement needs to be much stricter because there are far too many morons on the road.
I live in a country were, without exaggeration, 90%+ of drivers don’t use turn indicators or do it last minute unless is for their own benefit (for example they’d turning left and need to cross the opposite lane in).
If it’s for the safety of others, especially pedestrians, forget about it.
I just so happen to have lived 2 decades abroad, one of which in Northern Europe, so this crap (and the trying to bully pedestrians on zebra crossings) gets on my nerves big time.
i want to live in a world where only those who truly have no other option choose to drive, and even a minor mistake in traffic immediately costs you your license and you have to re-take it from scratch.
It’s insane to just let anyone drive a multi-ton vehicle capable of going 120+ km/h for personal transport, if people are going to do so they damn well better do so carefully.
i want to live in a world where only those who truly have no other option choose to drive
That’s how you get terrible drivers. Meanwhile those who like driving will care about doing it more safely then those who are forced to drive.
even a minor mistake in traffic immediately costs you your license
Well that’s dumbest thing I’ve heard in a while. Just say you want to eliminate all cars and be done with it. No human being could meet that standard, because even the best drivers make a minor mistake once in a while. Won’t even get into reacting to an emergency where you have a split second to decide what to do. We are not omniscient robots.
lmao someone took it personally
Because, and I have no idea why so many people don’t get this, you’re supposed to signal you’re going to turn, then slow down, then turn. That’s how you safely let anyone behind you know you’re going to do that.
Damn right. I was taught to give a minimum 3 blinks before turning. That also gives you time to look around for other vehicles/pedestrians before committing to the turn.
Yes, but also don’t turn them on until the last car that was passing you is slightly in front of you, too many people that turn them on while you’re still a bit behind, potentially in their blind spot, which can make you think they didn’t see you and maybe even swerve as a reflex.
lol. imagine being a 30,000lb vehicle and some dingdong in a rush swerves in front of you with their 2,000 lb vehicle (because getting in your lane early is an ancient, lost courtesy) and decelerates by 30mph over the course of three seconds to pull into mcdonalds, setting off several of your vehicle’s alert systems and automatically registering you for a performance review from your manager in addition to elevating your heart rate substantially
Large [multi-lane] highway curves.
Computers are stupid. A"I" is stupid. Humans are smart. Trust humans.
I like this idea but with a twist. If you manually activate the turn signal before turning, you’re good to go. If you fail to activate, a big lightboard on the back of your car lights up saying “I forgot to signal” and then they automatically turn on anyway. Now we have shame in play. Some people are immune to shame though, so you get, let’s say, 2 of these a day, or 4 a week, or whatever, for free to account for the unexpected. If you exceed that you have to take an online remedial training class. If you get dinged again within one year you have to take an in-person class. 3 times in a year and every time thereafter, and you get points on your license. After 5 or 6 times you’d lose your license. This way normal people in abnormal circumstances aren’t impacted, and the bad drivers slowly get escalated into either doing it right or losing the privilege to drive.
Turn signals need to telegraph what you are planning to do, not show what you’re in the process of doing.
In the book version of Hitchhiker’s guide to Galaxy highly advanced elevators are given limited precognition in order to proactively be on the floor and open just as someone wanting to use an elevator arrives. So maybe in some highly advanced future where we inexplicably still use cars our turn signals can see a few seconds into the future and turn themselves on before we turn.
Ah, but instead they would use that to shove an advertisement into your eyeballs as you walk around a corner.
Sadly true
Honestly, why doesn’t your car automatically engage the turn signal after the wheel turns more than a certain number of degrees from center?
Some new MG cars do this, but it’s super annoying because the tolerance level set by them is super low. It engages with the slightest turn, much lesser than a lane shift also, and it confuses drivers behind you. If you’re taking a uturn, if you do a wider arch for a second, the guy behind you thinks you’re going the other way and have suddenly changed your mind. While parking it’s a nightmare as it keeps going on left and right every second. People behind me must think I’m an asshole. It’s a good idea, but really badly implemented by them. But then again they’re not really selling a car. They’re selling a mid range android tablet with a car accessory attached.
Because you’re supposed to signal before you start turning, not when it’s already obvious that you’re turning.
Well for one, it should turn on before your turn. Two, roads sometimes bend without an actual turn.
Because then it would turn on when driving on a windy road
My city has started putting in a lot of these figure-8-shaped double roundabouts at overpass entries/exits. Automatic signals would be real fun there, it’d look like Christmas every day.
I have a GM vehicle with lane tracking, and this is actually kinda how it works! The steering wheel will mildly fight you unless you activate the signal, then BAM you merge right over. It reminds me of an AT-field
All along the AT field was just Angel driver assist!
Motherboard front panel connectors should be officially standardized. These fucking things have been basically the same since the 90s, but we still have to line up all the individual wires instead of having one plug.
Oh, and fix RGB headers while we’re at it. They’re the flimseist fucking thing, and you shouldn’t be able to use a 4 pin plug on a three pin header.
They said dumb ideas.
Also modular power supplies while we’re at it thanks. 20 years and the cables still can’t be reused/you have to remanage the whole damn case when doing a swap
That’s already a thing? I have several power supplies that have completely detachable cables allowing the psu to be swapped directly. Not sure how standardised the psu side of the cable is between manufacturers, but this does exist in some form.
They’re talking about standardisation. Unfortunately, many manufacturers use different pinouts on the psu side. Sometimes they’re identically shaped but have the polarity reversed, or 12v on a 5v rail. Pure evil…
Make the manufacturers comply with standard rgb headers. I’ve got several accessories that came with rgb headers that I have no idea what the hell they were supposed to connect to other than maybe some proprietary controller. Absurd when most any decent common mobo all use the same connector type.
I still like to think the thing from Fight Club where they blow up all the central banks would be cool.
The idea of “destroy the banks and free everyone” is in so many movies and shows. Sneakers, Mr. Robot, Fight Club. Hell, even Tuvok had a gang of teenage hackers “ethically distribute” money in SeaQuest.
I’m destroying war, corruption. I’m ripping the heart out of greed! [as they both battle to hack into and out of the world bank]
It does have some historical precedent. In the ancient Near East it was common for all debts to be destroyed every decade or so.
Mr Robot definitely had my favorite execution of the idea. Destroying the tape backups with their own environmental control system was just the best. I still feel bad about the nice security guard guy though :(
That movie is wilder than I remember….
We don’t talk about it…
Audi gets reduced to a drag car manufacturer
Two-lane, no-passing, winding mountain road: “it’s showtime” 😎
Everyone: flies straight off the cliff
You get slapped across the face if you litter.
I always wished there was a karma system where every time you litter, when you get home what you littered is in your bed waiting for you. I would love the result for CEOs whose companies dump oil or toxic waste.
Yeah but they just order the dumping, the toxic waste appears are the lowly worker who physically dumps it in my mind
Nah, the karma system would know who is ultimately responsible
This is probably the best thing about lane assist on modern cars.
When changing lanes without a turn signal, the wheel resists a bit.
I have actually seen people I drove with be annoyed by it. I absolutely love it, because it is only annoying if you don’t use your turn signals.
Suicide assist is horrible. Around here there is no middle of the road separator, to narrow road. So it tries to hit head first the traffic in the opposite way.
Country roads here are like that.
I just turn it off.
Like a light switch
Just go click
It’s a cool little Mormon trick
I disagree, it’s annoying in general.
If I need to go around, say, a mail truck parked on the side of the road, the steering assist in our work van starts to rumble or shake or whatever it does. If there’s construction, you guessed it, it doesn’t understand that I have to cross over the line to continue driving, and if I have a turn signal on, the cop/worker directing traffic is going to expect me to go that way.
If a car is driving in the opposite direction and starts to ride/cross the double yellow lines, me moving over causes the vehicle to resist and fight me, potentially putting me into an accident because I didn’t think to put my turn signal on in a split-second situation.
My car should not be able to, idk what word I’m looking for, override me? People need to take driving more seriously and stop handing off their responsibilities to a computer system/sensor that can not only fail, but also doesn’t understand real world applications.
Lane assist fucking hates narrow and or curved roads, too. I turn that shit off when I’m driving my parents’ car. I really hate the steering wheel trying to decide what’s best for me.
I love the lane assist on my car. It does resist me a little bit in the situations you describe, but it’s not a strong resistance. Just enough to get my attention if i do it by accident, but not enough to hinder me going where i need to go.
Now i’m curious what the lane assist parameters look like for different makes and models…
On a Hyundai, there’s a very annoying beeping pretty much coinciding with the wheels hitting the lane markings - which IMHO is too little too late, and besides around here most lane markings are made to rumble so it’s not like an additional audio signal is needed.
On my ex’es brand new car, that feature got turned off after very few kilometres, and has stayed off ever since.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard people say they almost got into a crash because of lane assist, especially with the white/yellow temporary lines. But that does depend a ton on the car.
I have to agree that if you have to turn, you should be able to turn, lane assist be damned - we’re not yet at the level where a car can accurately judge 100% of the road situations. But it’s probably a good thing we’re moving into a future where crossing lanes without turn signals feels like a virtual bump on the road.
Mine works like yours, it’ll jottle me a bit but if I want the car to go there it goes there, I don’t need special efforts to make it happen. It also has the auto-brake thing in case you’re about to rear end someone and I’ve set it to high to see it working but even that I only managed to make it beep and flash but not actually brake yet, looks like it would only do it pretty late. I think most people complaining about this are having an “back in my days” moment tbh, but maybe there are indeed cars out there where the implementation is more invasive.
I drove a Honda Pilot with lane assist, and I hated how it jottled the steering wheel. It felt dangerous to me how much it resisted, even if it’s not really that much.
I currently drive a Honda Fit with lane assist, and I love it. Literally use the lane assist every time. It beeps and has a warning on the dash about leaving the lane, and maybe it even has the same amount of resistance, but it feels a lot safer/natural
I think I just don’t like the steering wheel “rumbling/jottling” or whatever, because it’s like a false tactile feedback. I’m sure I could adjust to it, but it’s not the best implementation imo
This is probably the best thing about lane assist on modern cars.
Absolutely not. It’s fucking dangerous. The one time I drove a rental like that, I went through a construction area downtown, and it tried to steer me right into a construction fence when I was following the yellow temporary construction lane markers that were going around the fenced off area.
You’re just a shit driver. It does not prevent you from steering the vehicle.
What if their arms are just really weak, you do have to turn the wheel slightly more than normal.
If their arms are so weak as to be unable to overpower the lane-assist nudge, I really hope for everyone’s sake, that they are not behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. The ‘nudge’ isn’t strong in any sense of the word. You can overpower it with two fingers if squeezed tight. My semi truck had lane and steer assist, which nudged a little harder to steer the truck back into the lane, but that, too, could be overcome with a tight two-fingers grip.
A car nudging you towards an accident is dangerous, even if it’s not forcing you into an accident.
An unnecessary distraction that needs active attention in a chaotic situation is a bad thing, bad driver or not. And yeah, there are many bad drivers out there. Cars should be designed to be driven by bad drivers, not armchair experts.
Why not just have expert bus drivers and as few cars as possible by having proper driving tests. (looking at the US)
Yeah, but that’s a whole 'nother topic.
I live in a country with proper driving tests, but most drivers (myself included) are still shit at driving. Even professional bus drivers are limited humans.
I agree, but still fewer drivers should be an improvement for safety and climate and one day maybe most roads could be replaced by train tracks with bike lanes on either side.
I agree, I just really want to insert my non-relevant ideas into the discussion
Surely you can disengage it when the markings are bad, right?
If you know it’s there & how to disengage it, yes. As I said, this was a rental with a dangerous system enabled & no warning. I disengaged it right after this incident.
Fair enough.
Bullets cost $5,000 (each)
– Chris Rock
It’s such a lib solution. “Let’s make sure guns are inaccessible except to rich people”.
Well the conservative solutions have been working out fucking great, haven’t they?
Have you considered a leftist solution?
That’s part of the original joke, and also why the idea falls under “dumb”.
First time I’m hearing of this, but it makes perfect sense! Another angle would be to reduce the tax in exchange for harm reducing behavior like taking a voluntary safety class.
I’m all for this. I mean, gunpowder is not particularly difficult to manufacture. If the legal sources of ammunition charge $5000 per bullet, I could make a fortune with blackmarket black powder.
(Ok, I’m not actually “all for this”…)
We could fix so many problems with mandatory training.
Yes you have the right to keep and bear arms. On your own property. You want to take them somewhere else? Mandatory training and licensing. Just like we do with cars. At a bare minimum.
And I say this as a veteran and gun owner. The absolute lack of even having to know the basics of gun safety is appalling to me.
We already have the legal mechanism necessary to enact mandatory training.
The militia is “the whole of the people”. Congress is empowered under Article I Section 8 parts 15 and 16 to “prescribe discipline” (read: “training standards”) for the militia. They don’t have the power to mandate training only to those people who choose to keep and bear arms, but they do have the power to mandate training for everyone.
So, let’s have a high school, senior-year class on safe handling. More importantly, let’s have a class on the laws regulating the use of force, so everyone is aware of when we can use force against another, and when force may be used against us.
Careful there buddy, you’re getting dangerously close to preventing uneducated morons from buying semi-auto rifles to keep in their pickup trucks.
Semi-automatic just means you don’t need to reload between every shot, it doesn’t mean burst fire (that’s still considered automatic)
But what about fully semi automatic, huh?
Thank you for explaining to this former infantryman how military rifles work. 😂
What’s wrong with semi-automatic then?
Most states do have mandatory classes, shooting tests, and exams to get a license to carry.
And license-holders commit almost no crime, statistically-speaking. People who go out of their way and spend extra money to comply with the law tend to be law-abiding.
As a license holder I’m well aware of all that. You typically only need a license to carry concealed. At least in my state, open carry is legal almost everywhere and requires nothing. It’s those people that need the training.
The real way to do it is require a license, along with recurring training requirements, to BUY and own gun, not just carry one. But the NRA and the politicians they own have a shit fit over any reasonable barrier to gun ownership. They are perfectly ok with sacrificing school children over the issue.
I’m from Texas, where they removed most licensing requirements and it’s idiotic. You still need one to carry on a college campus and certain other state-owned facilities, but it’s mostly a free-for-all.
I still keep my License to Carry up to date because I think I should have to maintain a license. It also let’s me skip the security line in some state facilities (including the Capitol) where license holders can carry.
I used to also shoot weekly during lunch break at nearby range too to keep my skills up. Now I only go a few times a year because a buying a case of 9mm just about requires taking out a second mortgage. I also rarely carry, since in business casual it’s hard to conceal anything but a pocket 380, and I’m so bad with my LCP I’d have trouble shooting my car while sitting inside it.
My hot take that I’m sure I’ll get buried for is that in the US, proper firearm safety and training should be a mandatory middle school class. There’s just too many guns. Even if you don’t keep them in your house, your kid’s friend might. Even if some kid joins a gang and has a shootout with another gang, at least they won’t just spray and pray and kill an innocent bystander. I see no downsides except that progressives get apopleptic whenever anyone mentions guns.
Agreed. We learn CPR when though we don’t plan on heart attacks. People should be taught basic firearm safety.
I hate making something like that mandatory, but another benefit would be to reduce the stigma of guns in general.
It always surprises me how frequently I hear from otherwise pretty open minded people some version of, “I don’t own guns and I’ve never needed a gun. Therefore nobody anywhere needs one or should have one for any reason and I’d fully support completely banning them, and if that violates the constitution, so what, it’s what I want.”
Further, gun education would reduce the ideas and legislation to restrict guns based on nonsense. There’s a lot of fear of “scary guns” based on little more than superficial appearance, and I even see a lot of ideas from people claiming to want compromise, but it usually comes down to one of a few things: some arbitrary delineation between guns they’re okay with because they don’t look scary, something that would do little more than make criminals out of otherwise law abiding people, or depriving law abiding citizens of constitutionally guaranteed rights without due process.
I see you’ve worked in military procurement.
That wasn’t part of his standup act but it could be a funny addition… if it wasn’t so close to the truth.
What about parallel parking or just readjusting while parking in general?
You don’t use a turn signal when parallel parking?
I do use the blinkers to show that I’m backing in, but I would still have to turn the wheel to reposition.
My blinkers would go right, then left, then right again, and maybe left once more if I’m parking facing towards the top of a hill.
Just throw on the hazard lights. Double turn signals, do whatever you want.