[endentru]

> easy to become reliant on the technology and have a serious accident when a sensor fails (particularly for blind spot detection)

Recently realized this myself when the blind spot detector light went out in our SUV. It's gotten me thinking about how manufacturers would approach a situation like that without forcing the user to undergo (or more accurately ignore) safety tests like a walk-around prior to driving or something similar. Or perhaps the intended use of these sensors should be stated as supplementary - ie "do not rely on them without verifying it's safe to merge yourself"? People would ignore that too. It's an issue I haven't really seen a solution to anywhere.

[knz]

The dealer was very specific that they are supplementary sensors.

The only practical solution is probably sensor redundancy. Of course that doesn't mitigate all of the risks.