Not to mention all these electronics make the car much more expensive and harder to repair.
As a matter of fact I think forcing people to drive slower seems to cause more accidents. I mean moving away from 85th percentile engineering criteria - I mean laws making people drive slower ignoring engineering design.
That said, I'll bet even if emergency braking fails to prevent a collision, even slowing down a modest amount will pay off with significant crash energy reduction.
(energy goes up with square of velocity, so e = 1/2mv^2)
Cars slower: Not Good
You don't need slower cars. Just efficient at X, Y, Z average speeds.
Cars are mostly getting bigger due to safety regulations though. The interiors are smaller than ever but the exteriors get bigger and bigger. The gap is being filled with crumple zones and airbags.
You want a drive a big lifted truck? You need to be on the hook for the deaths and damages from those monstrosities.
There is no reason for any casual motorist to be going 91+MPH on surface streets or highways.
The minimum follow distance alone would prevent a LOT of crashes.
This is something that law makers can actually achieve.
There are a handful of cities here with mass transit systems that aren't an absolute joke. Everyone who lives outside those cities relies on a car. What you're describing would be political suicide.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
Cars are large today because people buy them. Bigger seems to indicate prosperity and better value. People don't passionately buy modest vehicles (except maybe cars like the fiat 500 or mini cooper)
Personally I think this has an unfortunate effect on small pickup trucks. Think of toyota's "pickup" which was renamed tacoma and then got bigger every year.
Headline: Most Small SUVs Are Bad at Automatic Emergency Braking, IIHS Says
https://www.thedrive.com/news/most-small-suvs-are-bad-at-aut...
"The SUVs that participated in the test were the Subaru Forester, Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Ford Escape, Mazda CX-5, Hyundai Tucson, Jeep Compass, Mitsubishi Outlander, Chevy Equinox, and the Volkswagen Taos. Of those ten SUVs only one (!) received the IIHS' "Good" rating—the Subaru Forester. After that, only two were rated as "Acceptable," the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4. The Ford, Hyundai, and Jeep were rated "Marginal," while the rest were sent home with "Poor" ratings and their heads hanging low."
Basically you always keep enough distance between you and the car in front of you to be able to avoid rear ending them, keep an eye on what's behind you, and resist the urge to road rage. For example, when someone cuts you off you put distance between you, "You're still moving forward".
I was offered that advice by a California Hwy Patrolmen when I was just 16 years old shortly after I got my driver's license. It's worked for me. I'm 65 now and I've never been in an accident or crashed a car, and I've never gotten a ticket. So it's really worked pretty well for me.
I'm personally not ready to want a car that drives for me, but I would like others to have one that would put on the brakes when they get too close behind me.
> Unsurprisingly, automakers are unsure whether this is possible
I'm in the same camp. I don't think technology will become mature enough in the stated timeline to make sure this is actually possible without creating a huge ton of false positive triggers (phantom braking).
We live in Australia so we regularly do a cross country 1800km+ trip to travel between the cities, and there are hundreds of overpasses. I don't recall ever getting phantom braking during one of these trips.
I would highly rate Toyota safety sense as one of the best ADAS on the market despite being not very sophisticated in comparison to i.e. Tesla.
Automakers can and will make AEB.
Anyway, placing the dividing line at 62mph is interesting because many areas (in the US) fluctuate between 55mph and 65mph speed limits. What was once a seemingly arbitrary difference in speed will now carry more implications.
I wish NHTSA published videos like the Euro NCAP.
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40207981
I applaud the idea, but I'm quite skeptical that it will actually work, given the nature of most drivers.
> At speeds of up to 62 mph, these next-generation automatic emergency braking systems must avoid a collision with a vehicle stopped on the roadway ahead. Sounds great, but it’s worth keeping in mind that braking distance is proportional to the square of the initial speed.
It won't work, unless it also forces you to keep an appropriate braking distance from the vehicle ahead. That distance would be substantially larger, if it was raining or snowing.
Not sure if anyone that came up with this idea has actually had to drive on a highway around a major metropolitan area, but that ain't happening.
