Definitely make it easier for people on crosswalks to start walking. Knowing that they are slowing down.
‘Here’s an idea: let all those around you know your status.’
‘Revolutionary!’
It’s weird we haven’t already done this, but good.
Once we have proper self driving cars none of these recent “innovations” like that or the speed limiting would matter.
Ideally self driving cars would also be without a steering wheel and just be half width with a single seat or two seats facing each other to reduce energy requirements. You could just develop this with a manhattan style project and test it in a single city banning all other private cars except delivery vehicles.
Might as well ignore all attainable goals that would benefit society in the short term in favor of sci-fi pipe dreams that are perpetually delayed as we endlessly run into stumbling blocks.
Forget solar/wind/geothermal/etc. development as well, fusion power could happen any day now so why bother with any of that comparatively inefficient junk?
How about reducing the brightness of headlights so I don’t feel like the sun is driving at me at night?
Also, if the car is in drive the headlights should go into auto mode. Always see people driving with just parking lights on at sundown.
Yes… WHY DO CARS STILL HAVE 2 SETTINGS LIKE ITS 1935. it would take basically zero effort to have low, high, stun for headlights so the rest of us who drive normal appropriate cars don’t have to be blinded by selfish assholes driving a massive truck alone by themselves that they never used for work once in their lives. Yes, im a car person and despise truck posers.
You say this like those same people won’t leave it on stun
Higher up and brighter lights=driver can see more and feels safer. Yes, even if shadows and the area immediately arounds the car are less visible and the vehicle becomes more dangerous for everyone around you.
I was having a very hard time seeing any possible benefit of a front brake light, since nobody accident prone ever looks in their mirrors.
I suppose in today’s world of automatic transmissions that move the car forward whenever the brakes are released, they might serve some purpose at a four-way stop adding information about immediate intent of the other parties, but even there… that’s more of a Darwinian situation where people who get into crashes at four way stops are sorting themselves out from the rest of reasonably competent drivers. If they’re going fast enough for injuries at a four way stop, they deserve what they get. If they get a minor fender bender - that’s a lesson to read the other traffic better next time.
I can’t trust a car even with its turn signal on unless I see it actually slow down because I see them misused too often. The lack of signalling though is the biggest problem. People who suddenly change lanes right in front of you without warning are the worst. Then you have people who force you to wait because they can’t be bothered to indicate if they are turning or going straight at intersections.
Also, don’t start signaling as you are turning. I see you turning so you are just indicating what I’m already seeing. Signal before you turn.
Is love then to know when someone is slowing down to turn when I’m trying to pull out. So few use turn signals, and even those I don’t really trust until the car is noticably getting slower.
You’re right about turn signals.
A lot of people have “target fixation” and telegraph their moves somewhat. I look at where the car is tracking in the lane and what their head is doing (if I can see it). Most people drift left or right on the highway before they change lanes, exit, or turn. It’s no excuse for bad manners, but it helps.
Oh yea. I’ll watch the wheels, their head, and if I can see them reposition their hands, I’ll look for that.
I don’t trust anyone when I’m on the road.
Same when crossing the street in front of a car. I don’t cross unless I have a crosswalk light or I make eye contact with the driver.
The crosswalk light might help in the lawsuit after you are seriously injured or killed, if anyone submits video evidence at the trial.
I don’t trust anyone when I’m on the road.
And you shouldn’t. Everyone is equipped with a lethal weapon masquerading as personal transportation, where safety is predicated on mutually-assured-destruction and the presumption that everyone is a sane actor. Keep your head on a swivel and stay safe out there!
Some people don’t care about their cars at all. They will damage their own just to spite another driver.
I’ve driven big 30ft box trucks that are governed at 60mph and daily a 2 seater sports car. There is nothing worth fucking up my day just to win an argument on who gets to go first.
Accidents aren’t isolated though, they will sort themselves out by hitting good drivers and people.
Well, around here “good drivers” can “read” the bad drivers’ intent, and in a setting like a four way stop they can usually avoid getting hit by yielding, regardless of right of way circumstances.
Can I have indicators that are in the same place on all cars and not buried in the headlight? That’d be cool.
Maybe redo the driving test like… At least every 20 years? There are people on the roads who got their licenses when their town didn’t even had traffic lights. People who never saw a roundabout in their first 20 years of driving.
Its nice that we restrict young people by making them take more and more driving lessons and paying more for tiered licences, like we do in Europe for motorcycles and trucks.
But maybe also take a look at the 70+ year old grandpa who had two strokes and one heart attack, has two pairs of of glasses but his license says that he’s perfectly fit.
At least give them some new info like now it’s legal to go the wrong way on a bike if the speed limit is 30 km/h where I live. Guess not a lot of people know about that and a gazillion other things.
I see too many people treat a roundabout like a stop sign when it is clearly empty.
IMO, the big problem is just a matter of standards and practicality. The bar for a DL is “can operate a vehicle” and not “can safely drive a vehicle in public for extended periods of time.” I agree with periodic re-licensing though; everything else called a “license” seems to need that for a host of reasons.
In Finland we have this thing called “huoli-ilmoitus” Super useful when you meet elders driving 70-80km/h in 100km/h area.
I have to contend with 70-80 year olds doing 30km in an 80 while swerving across the midline because they saw a bird across the street.
Sometimes you see those videos from a dash cam of a truck that hits a bridge, obviously the truck driver was been being attentive but often so was the recording cars driver. All I can ever think is, “why were you so close behind, it was blindingly obvious that was about to happen”, yet to them apparently it wasn’t, and now they’ve got bits of truck roof in their windscreen.
There was an astounding number of people who really cannot drive, and yet they think they’re driving safely. They just haven’t gotten a crash yet.
If we limited drivers permits to the 8% or so of drivers who are actually competent we’d solve a lot of problems in several domains.
I self-selected as ineligible to drive years ago, and I’ve never regretted it. Of course I had to move away from my home country and learn a new language, but those are the shakes.
Because it wasn’t blindingly obvious? I don’t know how tall the truck in front of me is, and since I don’t drive tall vehicles I know even less about the heights of bridges. Usually commercial drivers are the better ones.
Well the thing that made it blindingly obvious was that it was a 30 second video of a tall truck driving full tilt toward a low bridge, so obviously something was about to happen!
Reading all such things I’m starting to think “what if I can drive?” I’ve always thought I can’t, but since everyone around who thinks they can drive like suicide bombers, maybe I should find those driving lessons.
Define safe? If everyone drives safely enough that you are more likely to die of suicide than an automobile accident, is that safe enough?
That is a weird question.
How do you calculate odds of dying by suicide anyway, wouldn’t they be personal?
Wouldn’t better driving education and testing work just as well, if not better?
You can pass multiple driving tests, and still be an idiot driver. So many people drive HUA, (Head Up Ass), while thinking they are the best driver on the road that it isn’t even funny.
Remember Kiddies, driving should never be viewed as “relaxing” or “enjoyable.” It’s work, hard work and should be mentally taxing every minute you are on the road.
As someone with ADHD, it is relaxing. And it is super enjoyable. I like thinking about how the weight of my car shifts going around corners. I like trying to be as smooth as possible shifting gears. There is a lot of information and the focus on it all quiets the noise normally in my head.
Leave early enough you aren’t stressed about being late.
Just let the asshole aggressive driver in.
Leave more than enough space that you have time to react.
Don’t treat it as a competition and it’s a pleasurable experience.
100% agree, but it’s amazing how quickly some people forget their education once they get out on the road, especially after a few years accumulating bad habits. How about less reliance on cars in the first place?
Passing a test is very different from internalizing the lessons tested.
No test prepared me for black ice. Sure they tell you to be careful when temps drop but how much slower should you go? I guessed wrong and crashed. There are too many conditions that you just never get to experience where one misjudgement has dire consequences.
What fucks me up is hearing about experienced drivers crashing in similar ways, so you’re never really going to figure out everything, especially during snowy seasons, you just have to hope that whatever you do is correct and risk your life.
I learned to drive in Florida. Saw my first snow while driving five years later, I was trying to take a (rented) front wheel drive minivan out to get breakfast and about 5" of snow had fallen overnight. I put it in drive and it barely moved. I cut the wheel and it moved a little, I cut the wheel back and it moved a little more. I tried saw-toothing the steering left and right and got up a little speed, finally getting up to about 5mph while sawing the wheel back and forth. I drove around the parking lot like this, twice, before deciding: people do this all the time, it has to get easier after I get going… as I started toward the exit, I noticed: the parking brake was on, I had been dragging the locked rear wheels around the parking lot behind me. I released the parking brake and driving in snow became 100x easier from there on out.
How about less reliance on cars in the first place?
Americans seem to think of buses as some sort of commie plot.
Buses, as implemented in the US, are vehicles of humiliation and mental torture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZkouut-9RQ
How to waste an entire day? Take a bus trip somewhere that you could drive in a private car in 20 minutes.
Or on your motorcycle in 15.
Everyone with the usual compliment of legs should be forced to start on a motorcycle or moped. After 2 years of that we let you graduate to being in a box. Riding a motorcycle will force you to learn how to remain attentive and focused 100% on operating your machine, and when you’re finally afforded the luxury of a roof and heat, not having to get rained and snowed on half the year, you’ll really appreciate what you’ve got instead of treating it like the world owes you a car.
Lifetime care for the additional seriously injured will be very expensive…
I live in a retirement center, here it is very obvious that driving licenses should be revoked when vision, reflexes and other driving skills reach the level of the average 75 year old. But, since the majority of voters here are retirees- instead they keep making it easier for the extremely elderly to keep driving themselves - because, of course the world can’t take their freedom of movement away from them.
In the US, it seems supporting policies that make the elderly retake the driving exam is complete political suicide. There is a good reason for it and it would keep people safe, but there’s no chance of it happening while the population that mostly votes is old.
Im not sure how true that is, at least FL requires you to renew your license more frequently as you get older. Idk if its just a vision test though.
I propose the following amendment, then: If you cause harm to a two wheeled rider due to negligence and/or belligerence, you get busted down to a Vespa for a further 5 years.
Shut up nerd
Maybe introducing driving lessons on the read and done by professionals all over the world would already change a lot. That and the introduction of better road systems like roundabouts, reducing road traffic by adding public transport and walkable/bikeable area’s etc.
The Wilcot solution was adopted by Morris for the 1933 range, except the cheapest car in the range, the Minor. In essence, on either side of the car, was a block of three lights looking very like a traffic light with red, amber and green elements. The idea was that the colour or combination of the colours, showing on one or both sides would guide adjacent traffic of the intentions of the Morris.
Combinations were more complex, inevitably, than just flashing orange lights. Ahead of a need to indicate, the driver would activate the system which would start with both left and right amber lights flashing, like modern hazard warning lights, meaning “Caution”, ahead of an indication being given.
The system was controlled by a knob inside the car, with a spring based plunger acting as a time control for any selection. To indicate turning right, the driver would then request the system to show red on the right and green on the left in a way that almost echoes nautical practice; bearing right was amber on the right and green on the left.
–
Morris threw a tantrum after the MoT approved the use of blinkers on rival Ford cars and vowed never to install them. The MoT ordered the Wicot “traffic robots” removed and so Lucas trafficators were used exclusively in the UK until Morris was sold to Pressed Metal Holdings in the 1950s (in Australia and Canada blinkers were required by law).
The thousands of unusable traffic robots were used in the foundation for a new factory in Cowley. Also used were used brake pads and used sump oil to keep the dust down.
Don’t worry, my fellow americans, we’ll still manage to fuck it up.
The combined indicator/brake light thing you guys do is fucking stupid, so there’s a precedent.
I’ve always hated that. I feel like I’m seeing it less and less on newer vehicles, though, so maybe manufacturers are also realizing that it’s stupid as hell.
Or maybe it’s just not worth the cost to have two different but mostly identical versions of a very expensive and highly integrated modern taillight housing for different markets.
Agreed. Are they turning, or just braking periodically with a taillight out? Who knows!
I also love the front turn signals that turn off that headlight. Dumb as hell for everyone.
Also, animated signals should be banned. On or off, no flashing, glowing, or sliding.
Clearly it’s your fault for both breaking and going around a corner at the same time. Who does that?
Can you edit that to ‘braking’, and I’ll delete this comment, please? It’s breaking my brain. :)
It’s too late, he already broke his car while going around the corner.
They’ll likely give those front brake lights an amber color
It’s possible. Red really is only supposed to be on the back to indicate the rear of the vehicle.
It’s why on stretches of road where passing in oncoming lanes is legal, they tell you to turn on your headlights (daytime headlights section.) Its so that there is a distinguishing feature between the front and rear of the car.
Since we’re all throwing random ideas out here, I want to equip my vehicle with an annoyingly loud external speaker so that when someone near me does something dumb, I can personally shame them.
This would seem quite risky to use on US roads. I mean probably elsewhere too, but at least they don’t pack the same hardware.
Yes, and an oil slick button that drops some oil on the road for the hard of hearing tail rider.
These exist. I used to deliver pizza and one of my coworkers installed one of these on their car.
Liknks or didn’t happen
I am not trying to brake check people and get in an accident but I would very much like a signal for “Please remove your car from my butthole, it’s getting uncomfortable.”
There are LED bars for mounting in your rear windows to display text to those behind you
Pretend to suddenly avoid a pothole.
I’ve never done it, but I wonder if turning on the rear fog lights would work. You’re not braking, but they might think you are. I don’t know what the legality of that would be
In some places in the world you can give it a shot and see, but we don’t have rear fog lights in the US. I’ve never seen one on any car designed for this market, and my Crosstrek just to name an example has a conspicuous filler panel over the hole where the rear fog light goes on the same model sold in other markets.
As to why, I have no idea. But we also mandate that front fog lights can’t be configured so they can be activated without the main headlights on at the same time, which kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me. So maybe asking DOT regulations to make sense is a tall order.
Like… a horn?
No. I want to make my voice loud enough for me to stop at a red light and ask the guy behind me if there is a proctology emergency or if they could stop riding my ass, and savor their expression as it dawns on them what is happening.
Now imagine everyone having one. Yeah, nah.
This is definitely a thing. I had a friend in high-school who put a loud speaker in his 69 Tempest. He was funny too. He would say the silliest things to people.
I want to equip my vehicle with an annoyingly loud external speaker so that when someone near me does something dumb, I can personally shame them.
CB radios often had a “PA” switch that sent your microphone audio to a loudspeaker under the hood.
I’d prefer a “FlameThrower” button next to the horn.
Yeah this is exactly what I have in mind. I want to feel like Smokey the Bandit calling people out for bad behavior with a receiver that has a coiled cable attached to it, at a minimum.
You are looking for war
Road rage 5000 initiate
Counterpoint: the dumb people could have them as well.
Every car needs proximity chat so traffic becomes like a COD lobby.
Now there’s a Black Mirror episode with true horror!
Reminded me of this Technology Connections video, in which the dude explained (among other brake-light related things) how some law allows electric vehicles to get away with not using their brake lights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0YW7x9U5TQ
I’m kind of surprised he made absolutely no mention of manual gearbox vehicles. Some of the problems he’s describing predate EVs and adaptive cruise. I have a manual car and motorcycle. I pretty regularly apply just enough to the brakes to turn the light on without engaging them during engine breaking. Engine breaking depending on gear choice can be pretty strong. Likely not as aggressive as a regenerative breaking system but more than enough to cause issues. I’m certain I’d have been rear ended if I didn’t make the lights turn on while just slowing down, not coming to a full stop.
I feel like if your car is doing anything to actively slow itself down (as in apart from just cruising) it should turn the brake lights on.
Yeah, just have an accelerometer that triggers them
Or just have it come on whenever you lift off the accelerator. I like how some cars flash the brake lights under hard braking as well. That should be more standard.
I think the flashing is actually when an assistive system triggers the break
Yeah my electric 208 is kinda like that (if I remember the video well, watched it a while ago) but since it’s Europe there actually is a regulation about how much a car can decelerate before break lights come on, so instead of making the system turn the lights on they throttle how much it can decelerate for recharge and still makes you use the break to use full regen (and eventually the actual brakes, of course). So it’s not a real “one pedal driving”.
One pedal driving just sounds like motion sickness city.
Nah not at all tbh, you can get very smooth deceleration with it and it doesn’t feel floaty or whatever, it does take a tiny adjustment to how you drive, you don’t coast anymore but rather you can finely control your deceleration by how much you lift the accelerator, it’s quite nice to be honest I always drive it in that mode (even if it’s not real one pedal).
Not selling tanks as cars could also help. Especially with fatality rates
People don’t even need car tbh. Motorbikes everywhere please. Zip zip, less traffic, everyone pays attention to road or falls and dies.
I live in Maine. Riding a motorcycle in the winter is not only highly unpleasant, it’s borderline suicidal.
I’m all for 2 wheeled transport where it works, but anywhere that gets snow for months out of each year it’s a non starter as a primary transportation mode
Yeah, no.
Those things are death traps and there’s a reason why they’re mostly prevalent in nations where people literally can’t afford anything safer.
That’s why I bought mine!
Good luck transporting a couch on a motorbike.
And the exact reason that you don’t need to buy a truck to transport goods once in a blue moon
Good luck transporting a couch in a car
Like this?
I think personally I would go with this though
(/s cause it is probably needed)
I retract my statement, this looks perfectly safe and effective.
Rent a truck for cheap
Motorcycle rider here. Yes, families with children will rent a truck anytime they want to purchase groceries, and when it’s raining. It’s not practical.
This is a stupid thread.
Yeah no shit for families but for people that have the choice. Fuckin dumbass
Let me go ahead and quote the broad spectrum claim that came before mine:
People don’t even need car tbh. Motorbikes everywhere please. Zip zip, less traffic, everyone pays attention to road or falls and dies.
Are you by chance from the US? Because other countries have sensible zoning laws and public transit, making cars for families not a necessity but a luxury. Where I live, nobody needs a car. Shopping is done by cargo bike or hand cart, family trips are taken by train or metro.
If you live in a stupid country tho people might depend on cars.
The maybe use public transport? If you REALLY need to use buy car - buy one.
Also: families were not mentioned before in this thread. Is driving around with your partner and 5 kids and a couch a daily occasion?
Lol, come here and use our public transport options before you speak. This entire thread is led by those laying wide-reaching proclamations while being unable to consider any situation other than their own.
So the answer would be to advocate for better public transport
This is stupid
This sure riled people up.
