[mihemihe]

After living for 15 years in the Middle East and frequently traveling to other countries around the world, including the US, Egypt, Thailand, and more, I trust European traffic and car regulators and their policies 100%. Landing back in my home country in Europe makes me marvel at how fast, yet safe and organized, the traffic is.

So, I am pretty sure this system will be effective in the long run. Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.

[kkfx]

In general norms are reasonable but just for instance my car ADAS today given me two phantom breaks, one for a reasonable reason (I was approaching another car fast enough knowing it will accelerate, but the car can't know that) another for no really reasonable reasons.

So well... I opposite such kind of deployments without a single, easy to locate physical button you can hit to "clear all ADAS pushing here" like an emergency button. Some examples:

- due to a health emergency you purposely want to ignore speed limits, and of course you do not want to waste time digging in car tablet preferences;

- due to a sudden emergency you need to ignore speed limits, like a landslide you see started dropping from above;

- you are actually passing another car and still at safe distance but quickly approaching another car appear in the opposite direction;

These are just few rares and far less rare examples why it's a good reason to pass limits and you have no time to deactivate the adas digging in some touch menus.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Right now, it just seems like a trial, which may require fine-tuning, but fast forward a few years, and everyone will be completely accustomed to it.

I'm quite doubtful about the latter statement:

- I know quite some people (in Germany) who still complain about the mandatory seat belt laws that were introduced in 1976 in Germany for front seats (and since 1984 for back seats if they had seat belts).

- Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU. I know quite a lot of people who still deeply hate the EU for this.

As I feel the current political climate, the hate against the EU in the wider public is insane. Every new such legislation is another kindled fuse for the powder keg of the fury in the public against the EU.

[ben_w]

> Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU

For the sake of anyone confused by this, incandescent lightbulbs, and even then a phase-out — Halogen was 2018 according to Wikipedia, but this news doesn't seem to have reached my local hardware store in Berlin: https://www.obi.de/search/halogen/

Plenty of light bulbs for sale, they're just different than the ones I had as a kid.

[ghusto]

> Every new such legislation is another kindled fuse for the powder keg of the fury in the public against the EU

The _fury_ is an emotional overreaction, but to be fair this is exactly the kind of thing you can add to the ever growing pile of ammo for EU haters.

It has all the typical attributes:

- Well meaning

- Infective

- Good on paper

- Designed by committee

- Solves nothing

I think on balance the EU does more good than harm, but only just.

[benterix]

I couldn't disagree more when it comes to quite a few significant pieces of regulation:

* light bulbs

* unified chargers

* GDPR

* making Apple screw its customers less

[ben_w]

While I value what GDPR is trying to achieve, the response to it by all the people who want to continue to track users instead of providing non-tracking alternatives, does seem to justify the criticism that @ghusto listed.

[talldayo]

It certainly justifies criticism of companies that insist on tracking users. I do not know how you could twist this into "ammo for EU haters" when GDPR's biggest stipulation is forced disclosure. The only people that earnestly complain about GDPR are people that directly benefit from the unknowing exploitation of user data.

[ben_w]

It isn't me doing the twisting here, rather the websites which are performing malicious compliance.

As I said, I value what GDPR is trying to achieve.

[TomK32]

Seat belts work. Use them. Those won't don't use decimate themselves over time. E.g in Austria of the 178 car occupants killed last year 42 didn't wear a seat belt[0]. Those 23% is far above the 8% that did not use a seat belt in observations[1]. Numbers for other countries are similar or worse.

[0] https://www.bmi.gv.at/202/Verkehrsangelegenheiten/unfallstat... [1] https://www.oeamtc.at/presse/oeamtc-erhebung-jeder-13-pkw-in...

[aleph_minus_one]

> Seat belts work. Use them. Those won't don't use decimate themselves over time. E.g in Austria of the 178 car occupants killed last year 42 didn't wear a seat belt[0]. Those 23% is far above the 8% that did not use a seat belt in observations[1]. Numbers for other countries are similar or worse.

Why not let these people decimate themselves?

[TomK32]

Ask your parents, spouse, children, co-workers how they'd feel if you died simply because you were to lazy to do just one simple action before driving off into the sunset. I'm pretty sure they don't want you to join the Derek Kieper club https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/seat-belt-advocate-killed/

[illiac786]

Tempting. But we already have an aging population, let’s try not to get too many reckless young people killed.

Or: a law to reduce the amount of accidental deaths seems like something good for the population in general.

[illiac786]

I know zero people complaining about seat belt, I live in Germany too. I have literally never heard anyone complain about it, ever.

And I have contacts with 70+ persons, not just teenagers.

[kkfx]

Not in Germany, but still in the EU, I'm one who complain not against "seat belt" in general but the approved three-points one, because they are DANGEROUS instead of being helpful and automakers know it but do not want to invest in 4-points seat belt and most people do not even know why they are dangerous OR useless...

I do not tell why now, because I'm curious how many guess correctly, if someone ask I'll tell why, and yes there is pre-modern-web research on that topic, buried of course, similar to various researches about seed oils, colza hepatic toxicity in particular, others about plastic films to wrap food and so on.

[illiac786]

Do you mean that the three point belt is less safe than no belt at all? I never heard this, do you have some link to read up on this?

[kkfx]

Yes. You never heard of that because seat belts became mandatory BEFORE the web spread so research on that topic, having much data to compare between those with and without seat belts was simply missed due to automakers interests.

3 point seat belts means much more visceral traumas, witch tend to be more serious and not immediate to spot than orthopedic traumas, also much more chest traumas where broken ribs perforate a lung or they make the heart explode. No seat belts (with tempered and stratified glass) means much more broken legs and arms, NOT much skull damage and NOT much visceral trauma.

Back then (my mother was a young emergency room surgeon) many doctors state that the idea of seat belt is good for 4 point anchoring who can dislocate or fracture your shoulders but no more, and in case of fire/drowning you can exit them without needing to cut them, but automakers oppose that because it means making much more expensive seats while three point seat belts are pretty cheap.

After there was a gazillion of additions to makes the three point seat belts less dangerous, some have tried a small "embedded airbag", some have tried "dynamic deceleration instead of a sudden block, but most of them dramatically fails. Embedded air-bags are simply too slow to open, too easy to misplace, too little absorbent, dynamic decelerators do sglitly better but they are still not dynamic enough and so on.

Another automotive scandal is about day lights on cars, they are pushed "because various studies have proven them to be useful", no one tell than those studies are only a couple and done in the Sweden Lapland in conditions where "day lights" are essentially "position light in late evening" for most other climate. But again they are useful to sell a bit more without any benefit.

There are many others, nothing so "devastating" but enough to understand that academia need to be public and TOTALLY, RELIGIOUSLY SEPARATED form the private sector to avoid the spread of "false commercial science" for some large enough lobbyist interests. Oh BTW you can try to dig the history witch tend to be less biased as the time passes, you'll find for instance some example from Eduard Bernays campaigns https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer like one for the British American Tobacco company where he literally create a scientific journal publishing some real scientific articles from small universities, young PhDs and so on gaining a certain traction thanks to a free distribution models among all doctors. Slowly he insert false, but realistic scientific papers stating how smoking is good for human health and many doctors believe them and recommend smoking as a healthy habit. In few years almost all doctors if interviewed they'll state "smoking is good for health".

[rsynnott]

> Another example: in 2009 light bulbs were banned in the EU. I know quite a lot of people who still deeply hate the EU for this.

Might just be different circles/different attitudes in Ireland vs wherever you are, but I have never met an actual human in real life who is annoyed about the death of incandescent light bulbs. I've seen it from people on the internet, but to be honest mostly from Americans.

[ben_w]

I've met one person in real life (if Cambridge UK counts as "real life" :P) who was vocal about preferring incandescent to energy saving; you will probably be unsurprised to learn that they voted Leave.

[aleph_minus_one]

Indeed: there exist quite some very vocal people who deeply abhor being patronised (e.g. by the EU).

[ben_w]

Patronised?

I could see why people might feel that way about seatbelts (e.g. people feeling "don't tell me I'm a bad driver!"), but I don't see how that feeling could attach to environmental issues like the aggregate emissions from (reducing from 100W to 10W * 2.5h/day * about 1 bulb/person * 400 million people =) 3.75 GW over the continent?

[rsynnott]

Well, I think to some extent, the eurosceptic UK tendency, encouraged by the tabloids, was to seek out things to be offended by (sometimes simply making them up; see bendy bananas.)

Never really heard of this anywhere in Europe _outside_ the UK, tho.

[thebruce87m]

At first the LED replacements were shit, some didn’t turn on immediately, didn’t dim and so on. It’s not that I wanted to go back, but they weren’t a good replacement. I don’t see as many issues now though.

[nxm]

I have to disagree - the mental load to process all the traffic signs + narrow roads + roundabouts makes driving in Europe much more tiring and somewhat error prone.

[piva00]

Statistics don't really lie though, European countries are amongst the safest for road traffic in the world.