alt Hacker NewsIs there any vehicle that uses it's sensors to make a gentle suggestion about following distance?
It's probably the best single thing anyone can do to improve safety. It also reduces wear-and-tear on your car, and increases your fuel economy as a side benefit.
Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?
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My car beeps at me far too much now. I am responsible, not my car so I want less distractions.
Instead of pretending to shift responsibility to the car, how about people do training every so often instead? Maybe every ten years for an hour or two.
The amount of work a young person has to do here to be able to obtain a "full license" takes literal years and multiple tests.
But then nothing for the rest of their life despite advances in technology (in and out of the car) and changed traffic conditions...
My Cupra Born does this; it has a little line that it draws on a "road" with the car in front, and you have to put the car in front of the line to be safe. Its quite a fun little system haha, works well on me!
Pretty sure my EV9 will actually initiate emergency braking. Though it is pretty conservative (no nudge to follow at a safe distance).
A lot of them do. My wife's VW beeps an alert if you're too close to the car ahead of you. It might be that it only activates above a certain speed.
I think it will also back down the cruise control (if set) if it detects that you are gaining on the car ahead. That might be MILs Toyota though.
I learned the "two second rule" in Driver's Education 45 years ago and generally follow that. Nothing more annoying than having the car behind you riding your bumper.
One of the few things I really don't like about my Subbie is that it tries to help braking.
I'm all in for traction control and to some extent ABS, but braking hard and upsetting the car's balance when you don't need it is dangerous.
> Why hasn't gamification of safe driving habits been built directly into the car itself before now?
I am so glad it hasn't. Data point of one, but gamification now has the opposite effect on me: it's such a well-worn pattern that it just annoys me. It was great when it was novel. I wonder how many others feel the same but without sampling it's hard to know.
My wife's VW will show the following distance and if you are too close a small icon is displayed on the dash. I believe its warning you that if there is emergency breaking required for the car it will not be able to stop in time.
It also shows how close you are to the car Infront in "car length" units with a nice big indicator and the adaptive cruse control will follow that distance mostly on its own between 30-100mph