[tacLog]

> At the same time, it seems foolish to tell them not to use blind spot monitors, or to even expect them to "check their blind spot" the old-fashioned way if their cars have monitors.

I have never owned a car with blind spot monitoring. Do people really just rely on them completely? Even in dense urban environments with bikes around? Or is it more of a judgement call? Different perspectives on this would be nice.

I have never seen the little light on the mirrors fail to detect me while I am riding but I never trust a driver not to just turn right cutting me off anyways.

I am not trying to pass judgement just understand how these driver aids change the way people drive.

[LeifCarrotson]

It's practially a trope how in sci-fi movies with flying futuristic cars, it's a demonstration of extreme competence for a character to demand "manual controls" to pilot the vehicle...like every normal driver does today. I expect that will become more and more real-world. Even today, most drivers don't know how to drive a manual transmission vehicle, much less how to double-clutch one without synchros or how to stop on ice without ABS. Those are disappearing from public roads and from the capabilities of average drivers, I expect that driving without aids will follow in the same way.

As part of my job, I end up renting vehicles pretty frequently, they're often newer models than my daily and have blind spot monitoring, backup cameras, radar cruise, vision-based lanekeeping assist, etc. It's frightening how in the course of a week you can get used to having to put less effort into centering yourself in the lane, trusting that cruise control will just keep a comfortable distance from the vehicle ahead of you. Driving becomes a lot less stressful. When I get back home and climb into my old manual-everything beater, though, it's quite an adjustment.

Regarding blind spot checks, yes, the Audi I recently drove had alerts for that, the blinking yellow light in my peripheral vision when cars were passing me was a nice reinforcement, but I'm too conditioned to do head checks to skip those. Likewise, reverse cameras - I've driven many work vans, pickups with headache racks, Jeeps with scratched up plastic, pulled trailers and RVs, etc where the windshield-mounted rearview mirror is useless; lots of pros get used to backing up using the side mirrors only. However, I asked my sister in law (who is extremely competent at most things) to drive my truck for an errand and she asked for help backing it out of the driveway - her car has always had a backup camera, which is honestly lots easier and she was completely uncomfortable using the side mirrors.

It's not hard to imagine that someone who only drives with assistive tools would adapt to become dependent on them; I'd argue it's more unusual to expect that they wouldn't!

[rodgerd]

> much less how to double-clutch one without synchros

Yes, well, people don't generally know how to make a horse change directions either.

[LeifCarrotson]

Nor how to goad an ox team into drawing a plow! What is the world coming to?

Seriously, though, I think it remains to be seen which of these are going to be mainstream requirements that drivers should be able to depend on.

Power brakes and ABS? If those fail on an otherwise well-maintained vehicle, you're likely to be excused of personal/moral blame in a collision.

Merge into someone that your camera-based blind spot driver aid didn't detect? Back into something because you were looking at your rear camera rather than your mirrors? That's your fault, the manual for the vehicle and the text on the rear camera display say so explicitly, and it seems people agree.

There's currently a marketing battle in the court of public opinion over whether radar/vision cruise, forward collision prevention, and vision-based lanekeeping driver aids are in the former or latter category. I think they're more likely to fall into the latter category and remain driver aids only for a long time, it remains to be seen if Cruise-like LIDAR systems are as rock-solid as ABS.

[FireBeyond]

Perhaps pedantic, but also genuine curiosity, thinking about it:

> how to stop on ice without ABS

My understanding is that ABS won't do anything to help you stopping on ice, anyway. On ice, braking is hampered by lack of traction on tires, whereas ABS is trying to avoid the challenges of tires locking up, so you can maintain (some semblance of) directionality.

[LeifCarrotson]

ABS absolutely does help you stop on ice. Locking up on ice makes traction even worse; you get a miserable coefficient of dynamic friction and a film of liquid water instead of the already poor coefficient of approximately static friction you get while there's limited relative motion between the tire and the road.

It's not a panacea, but ABS definitely reduces the distance you slide compared to if you lock your tires.

Citation: Towed a trailer a few weeks ago in the snow, and even with my beloved Tekonsha P3 trailer brake controller it was a challenge keeping the trailer behind the truck while coming to a stop on curves. It's easy to test the effects of locking the tires on ice with an empty trailer trying to stop a coasting truck...the truck brakes, with ABS, do most of the work.

[FireBeyond]

That totally makes sense. I appreciate it!

[sdoering]

> Different perspectives on this would be nice.

Driving for ~25 years. Did quite some kilometers when I was between 19 and 30.

My current car is the first one with a lot of assistance systems. I actually see them as additional safety level, but as a first instance still use my senses. Blind spot monitoring is something that I learned to value as a slice in the Swiss Cheese Model of Security [1].

And I detect myself driving extra carefully when driving a car without them. Way more careful than I was driving before I ever had blind spot monitoring.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model?wprov=sfla1

[gnicholas]

I've never owned a car with BSM but have rented for extended periods of time. I would expect that after a year or two of using the system while also actively checking my blind spot the conventional way, I would become comfortable with understanding its reliability and limitations (if any) and would adjust my behavior.

Some Hondas pipe through a camera feed from the side of the vehicle when you turn on your blinker, which wouldn't have the same potential weakness for cyclists that you mention with the binary sensor-based systems.

[FireBeyond]

No. Even as a tech geek... I use it as an aid, but not as the primary. Even when I'm driving a fire engine with a dash monitor that has seven always on, always visible cameras around it, I thought I'd use them a lot more than I do. I do use the cameras in my car supplementarily too, helps me dial parking perfectly, etc. But I still find myself doing visual checks.

But I also grew up and had my formative driving learning years without the benefit of such aids.