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A Step In The Right Direction?


Razors Edge

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Just what we need!

We're still years away from fully self-driving cars, so car makers continue to focus on adding new safety features in a bid to reduce the risk of accidents occurring. Toyota is taking safety a step further this year by adding the ability for its cars to ignore accelerator pedal input.

As Reuters reports, Toyota is responding to an increasingly common cause of accidents in its home country of Japan. With the population there aging rapidly, elderly drivers can get confused and press the accelerator pedal when they intended to press the brake pedal. Quickly responding to such a mistake is also difficult, which therefore leads to an accident.

Toyota's solution is called an "accelerator suppression function," and it relies on the huge amount of data Toyota has managed to collect from its internet-connected vehicles. This so-called big data can be used to determine in any given situation on the road if the driver really did intend to press the accelerator pedal or not. If it decides the wrong pedal was pressed, acceleration won't occur.

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My wife did that, and ran into a wall. Fortunately, the total distance traveled was about 4 feet, and a concrete planter absorbed some of the energy.

But it was embarrassing when half the city's employees showed up. We needed one cop to fill out the paper work. We got 2 cop cars, a fire truck, a fire supervisor in his vehicle, and somebody else. All for a 5 mph impact.

I may have grown up here, but I will never understand how they manage to get so much right, and so much wrong.

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1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

Maybe the elderly should be checked often to determine if it's ok for them to be driving.

We did that here in maine. AARP and some other elder groups had a major temper tantrum, and the State backed off.

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1 minute ago, late said:

We did that here in maine. AARP and some other elder groups had a major temper tantrum, and the State backed off.

Keep in mind, folks here - very pragmatic and middle-of-the-road folks -have gone on rants about their DMV experiences. You think increasing their time in a DMV is a good thing?

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40 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Just what we need!

We're still years away from fully self-driving cars, so car makers continue to focus on adding new safety features in a bid to reduce the risk of accidents occurring. Toyota is taking safety a step further this year by adding the ability for its cars to ignore accelerator pedal input.

As Reuters reports, Toyota is responding to an increasingly common cause of accidents in its home country of Japan. With the population there aging rapidly, elderly drivers can get confused and press the accelerator pedal when they intended to press the brake pedal. Quickly responding to such a mistake is also difficult, which therefore leads to an accident.

Toyota's solution is called an "accelerator suppression function," and it relies on the huge amount of data Toyota has managed to collect from its internet-connected vehicles. This so-called big data can be used to determine in any given situation on the road if the driver really did intend to press the accelerator pedal or not. If it decides the wrong pedal was pressed, acceleration won't occur.

No.   Nope, nope, nope.  Just don't.  BAD idea.

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22 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Keep in mind, folks here - very pragmatic and middle-of-the-road folks -have gone on rants about their DMV experiences. You think increasing their time in a DMV is a good thing?

Yep.  But the DMV needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century.  There is no reason that drivers can't be tested in a simulator.  Vision tests need to be more than letters on a wall.  The elderly need to be tested for night vision and their ability to see beyond oncoming lights.  Even younger drivers need better testing.  Why shouldn't they know how to steer out of a skid on ice.

Driving is not a right granted in the constitution.  

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1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

Yep.  But the DMV needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century.  There is no reason that drivers can't be tested in a simulator.  Vision tests need to be more than letters on a wall.  The elderly need to be tested for night vision and their ability to see beyond oncoming lights.  Even younger drivers need better testing.  Why shouldn't they know how to steer out of a skid on ice.

Driving is not a right granted in the constitution.  

Hear hear!  We need to catch up with the Germs on this stuff!

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3 minutes ago, RalphWaldoMooseworth said:
5 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Yep.  But the DMV needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century.  There is no reason that drivers can't be tested in a simulator.  Vision tests need to be more than letters on a wall.  The elderly need to be tested for night vision and their ability to see beyond oncoming lights.  Even younger drivers need better testing.  Why shouldn't they know how to steer out of a skid on ice.

Driving is not a right granted in the constitution.  

Hear hear!  We need to catch up with the Germs on this stuff!

Think you're gonna be successful pitching that to 50 different states?  Good luck.  I'd love to hear whose tax dollars you are using to upgrade the thousands of DMVs across the US to the standard you are hoping for.

A more likely bet, and the one folks are betting on in various statehouses, is that tech will solve the problem for them - in the form of automated driving - full or at least able to prevent the most egregious dangerous driving.

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Just now, Razors Edge said:

Think you're gonna be successful pitching that to 50 different states?  Good luck.  I'd love to hear whose tax dollars you are using to upgrade the thousands of DMVs across the US to the standard you are hoping for.

A more likely bet, and the one folks are betting on in various statehouses, is that tech will solve the problem for them - in the form of automated driving - full or at least able to prevent the most egregious dangerous driving.

You can pay for it now or you can pay for it then.

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1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

You can pay for it now or you can pay for it then.

Not me.  Sell it to a taxpayer and a legislator. You may even know your local representatives. 

I'm confident in placing my bet on "pay it then" for most if not all state legislatures.

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Just now, maddmaxx said:

It's getting so bad around here that the fast food places need to look like embassy gates with steel and concrete bollards.

My wife was at Trader Joes about a year ago, and someone had earlier in the day driven through the front of the store taking out the cut flowers section.  We were there this weekend, and they had just completed installing the new bollards in that area. They asked HQ for them and eventually got them.

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13 minutes ago, Longjohn said:

Most of those “step on the wrong pedal” accidents just put them through the glass doors and closer to the counter at McDonalds. 

@2Far knows all aboot that. :D  Details in one of our "nearly bought it" threads. :D

I'm only laughing because he came through it unscathed and I can just picture the "holy schitt" feeling when that happens.  The closest I came was being in a restaurant and heard this bang like a china closet fell over or something, and there was a car at a 30 degree angle up against the building.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Keep in mind, folks here - very pragmatic and middle-of-the-road folks -have gone on rants about their DMV experiences. You think increasing their time in a DMV is a good thing?

That is a different problem.

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Nearly 16,000 preventable crashes occur each year due to pedal error – when a driver mistakes the gas pedal for the brake pedal causing sudden vehicle acceleration.

Drivers under 20 years of age and over 65 experience pedal error crashes about four times more frequently than other age groups, according to an NHTSA study.

The Storefront Safety Council, which collects data on vehicle into building crashes, estimates commercial buildings sustain approximately 50 vehicle-into-building crashes per day.

https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2015/07/17/264606.htm

In typical fashion, the fault is in the design.  Clearly storefronts shouldn't be allowed.

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