What small changes would you make to improve road/car safety

[mikeveal]

I'd add a car to car missile and 360 degree video camera cover.

Any driver could legitmately use their missile against another vehicle if the other vehicle is driving dangerously or inconsiderately. At MOT time, any spent missile would be replaced and the video evidence reviewed to ensure that the usage was justified.

If the usage was deemed not to be justified, then it's murder, usual sentencing.


Drivers would be a damned sight nicer to each other. "Aggressive" driving would quickly be weeded out.

[otolith]

Dr Jekyll said:

otolith said:

I tend to agree with that, given that the most dangerous drivers on the road have been very recently trained, tested and passed as fit to drive.

But are they any more dangerous than those who failed the test would be if they were driving independently?

Don't know - but the evidence is that someone who passes his test at 18 will continue to get safer and safer year on year for the next forty years or so.

[paranoid airbag]

lowdrag said:

No matter what, there is only one way to improve road safety by a significant margin. Ban human beings. Either that or accept that there are good and bad drivers, that there will always be the minority who drink/drug drive, those who speed (Not a PHer of course!), always be that moment of inattention, that muddy wet bend where tractors have been in and out of a field, that black ice, and there will always be accidents. Then get on with life. It is being human that makes us dangerous.

Bingo. And we won't be doing option 2.

Really, humans are just fundamentally crap at driving compared to electronics in just about every way. The next thing to make driving safer will be an electronic device. And the one after that. And the one after that. There'll be no sudden transition to driverless cars, just fewer and fewer things the least reliable component has to do.

The only question remaining is at what point will governments decide requiring the unreliable and never-used human backup to be in the car and/or have a license is unnecessary.

[PhillipM]

Legeslate for minimum visibility limits due to impairment of massive a-pillars/tiny rear windows/mirrors, etc, and really piss of a lot of car stylists at the same time.

[Dave Hedgehog]

class A driving test

needed to be past to drive faster than 40 and to go on M Ways, M Ways speed limit would be set to 120

[oOTomOo]

Replace the driver airbag with a shotgun, you crash, you gets shot.

Might not help the figures at first..

[Dr Jekyll]

paranoid airbag said:

Really, humans are just fundamentally crap at driving compared to electronics in just about every way.

Except observing hazards and anticipating danger, which is the skill that really matters.

[robinessex]

kambites said:

Thinner A-pillars so you don't have humongous blind-spots right where hazards are likely to be positioned.

Can't. Won't pass crash tests. Sorry.

[otolith]

Dr Jekyll said:

paranoid airbag said:

Really, humans are just fundamentally crap at driving compared to electronics in just about every way.

Except observing hazards and anticipating danger, which is the skill that really matters.

Humans aren't getting better at those things - computers will. The google cars are already better at driving smoothly and avoiding harsh braking.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10411...

[paranoid airbag]

Dr Jekyll said:

paranoid airbag said:

Really, humans are just fundamentally crap at driving compared to electronics in just about every way.

Except observing hazards and anticipating danger, which is the skill that really matters.

Unless those aren't turing computable problems, then no... learning is the skill that matters.

And whilst an individual human might outperform an individual computer, we're comparing humans as a whole to teams of developers with the sole job of making better software... put it this way. How long does it take one human to become just barely competent? In my case, I believe twenty-something hours and a similar amount of someone else's time. To become "good"? Some people go their whole lives without ever getting there. That's a lot of resources to spend on every single human who drives.

The cost of each manufacturer hiring developers to encode a new piece of human knowledge of good driving practise won't be negligible. But once they've done that, the cost of rolling out that update to every single car is (or should be) negligible, at least as long as no new hardware is required. Certainly miniscule compared to training fresh meat. It's comparing treading water to rowing a boat - with the former, so much is spent getting humans up to standard there's nothing left to spend on advancing. With the latter, all the energy is going into forward motion.

And IME, whilst I wouldn't say software developers never had an ego problem, I've certainly never met any who'd point blank refuse to admit there was a fault in their code. Someone who can't admit a fault in their driving on the other hand...

Edited by paranoid airbag on Friday 18th April 02:09