[mort96]

There is truly a scourge in the EU of increasingly intrusive "safety features" which I truly believe are making cars less safe.

I've been driving a family member's new Nissan. Nice car for the most part, but it has this "safety" feature (that's on by default and cannot be permanently switched off, thanks to the EU) which watches out for the white stripe on the right-hand side of the road and JERKS THE STEERING WHEEL when it thinks you're "too close".

Where I often drive, there are many narrow roads. No yellow line in the middle of the road. The only way to avoid hitting oncoming traffic is to drive with your wheels on the white stripe when you meet another vehicle. This can be stressful enough in itself, especially when the other vehicle is some huge bus or semi truck. Not exactly the time you want alarms going off AND YOUR STEERING WHEEL TURNING BY ITSELF. I've taken to calling it the car's auto-crash feature. Always gotta remember to disable the auto-crash. Every time I start the car.

I got so annoyed I looked up the relevant directive. Turns out new cars are required to have a lane assist feature. It is required to turn itself on automatically, and it is required to warn the driver using at least 2 out of the 3 methods: sound, visuals, haptic. So the steering wheel jerking isn't even just a bad implementation, it's the law.

Sigh.

[star-glider]

I recently got back from Europe; rented a car. This "feature" is _insanely_ dangerous. Whatever idiot bureaucrat decided that having crappy machine vision software jerk the steering wheel around while you're driving should be sent to an island somewhere.

The damn thing tried to kill me every time we came up on a construction area on the freeway, because it got completely flummoxed by the lane realignment. I couldn't turn it off until we parked the car, and we were on the freeway. Fighting that piece of crap for an hour made for the most exhausting drive of my life.

Far from being mandated, I can't believe that safety regulators allow _anything_ to jerk around the wheel at 60MPH.

[vanviegen]

Or you could look at some of the research, which suggest that this feature may in fact reduce fatalities significantly (I'm finding estimates in the 20 to 25% range). Well done idiot bureaucrat!

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-ou...

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[kalkin]

What the first article actually says:

"Lane departure warning and prevention systems could address as many as 23% of fatal crashes involving passenger vehicles."

That appears to be something like a stat about how many fatal crashes involve unintentionally leaving a lane. It provides approximately zero evidence in favor of specifically mandating haptic feedback from the steering wheel.

[kalkin]

The second article is marginally more on point - 24% fewer crashes for vehicles with lane keeping assist (so my guess at the meaning of the 23% stat may have been wrong). But the 95pct confidence interval is 2-42% and the study acknowledges that its efforts at controlling for confounding factors in the type of cars that have this feature are imperfect. It also took place in the US, so there's certainly no mandate for haptic feedback and I suspect very few cars had it. This is marginally more helpful evidence but not very good, I think--it seems very plausible that audible lane keeping features are helpful and moving your steering wheel (which sounds terrifying) is unhelpful.

As an anecdote, I crashed a car as a teenager thanks in part to panicking (unnecessarily) when a rough highway started moving the car's wheels (which I noticed of course via the steering wheel) without my intending it. Fortunately there were no injuries.

[mort96]

Surely they could've found a better way though than to make the car automatically swerve into oncoming traffic?

I'm 100% on board with the idea that the lane assist feature might, on average, improve safety in many conditions. Maybe enough to be a net win. But I'm absolutely certain that its terrible implementation (in legislation, not just in cars) leads to situations where it reduces safety. When I'm driving on small country-side roads without a center line, no amount of "but it reduces traffic fatalities on highways" will convince me that automatically swerving towards the oncoming semi trailer is safe.

[vanviegen]

> When I'm driving on small country-side roads without a center line

My guess is that people drive these types of roads a lot less often than they swerve on highways. Hence the statistics working out. Steering into oncoming traffic does indeed sound, uhm, suboptimal though. :-/

[amluto]

All the cars I’ve driven with this feature vibrate the wheel when they trigger but don’t try to steer.

[alistairSH]

My Honda Ridgeline (2021, USA spec) has two modes…

Default is “sticker shaker” mode - if it senses lane departure, it shakes the wheel and displays a warning on the dash. On by default, but can be disabled after start-up.

The other mode is “lane-centering” - has to be turned on after start-up, and actively steers car to the center of the lane. Really only makes sense on a highway/interstate - clear lanes, no sharp turns, etc. On dual carriage way, it gets a bit “stupid” when turn lanes appear with a gap or change in lane marking - it thinks the lane got extra wide and tries to center, pulling me half into the turn lane.

But, like I said, it’s 100% optional, so I use it on the highway/interstate, but nothing smaller.

Sounds like the EU mandates “lane centering” all the time that can’t be easily disabled, which is pretty silly (if it behaves anything like the Honda system, whcih is only really designed for true interstate use).

[z3dd]

> Sounds like the EU mandates “lane centering” all the time that can’t be easily disabled

I'm in EU, on my 2023 Civic it's off by default and needs to be enabled after every car start if you wanna use it. Also works pretty well, other than when driving straight into the low sun or in heavy rain at night. The collision warning and road departure warning are on by default, the last one can be disabled until car is restarted.

[mort96]

In fairness, I haven't done much experimentation. It jerks the wheel and that terrifies me. I don't know if it's a jerk back and forth to make the wheel vibrate or if it's a jerk to steer the car to the left, either would probably give me a feeling that the wheel is moving by itself and would probably be scary enough for me to disable.

[nonameiguess]

This entirely tracks to me but hints at a different problem. I suspect if this really does reduce traffic incidents and fatalities in general, it's because a large number of people are driving while tired and drift into adjacent lanes without realizing it and the lane-assist jerks them awake. Problem being this is a blunt force instrument that annoys or even endangers drivers who are not impaired and know what they're doing.

Thankfully, every car I've ever driven that has this feature allows it to be turned off and I have it turned off on my own car, which I drive for maybe ten miles a month in the middle of a Saturday when I'm wide awake.

[cosmic_cheese]

This just goes to show how bad at driving a large number of people on the road are. Driving test standards are way, way too low.

Personally speaking I felt like I somehow accidentally cheated or something when I passed my test. It was too easy. Even now I sometimes question if I should really be trusted with piloting a 4k+ lbs steel box at highway speeds.

[vanviegen]

I thing most people are bad drivers some of the time. It only takes a moment of being distracted/tired/angry/whatever to cause an accident.

[pessimizer]

Your snarky comeback here is "suggest[s] that [it] may" and you couldn't find the links to support even that.

[vanviegen]

I agree that my comment was a bit snarky. Thing is, I'm getting tired of people dismissing 'bureaucrats' that easily. I know little about road safety legislation, but I know enough about the EU to state that they commonly have very smart subject matter experts work on legislation. Does that mean things always turn out perfect? Far from it. But 'idiot bureaucrat' is way too cynical for my taste.

[kristjank]

EU has a huge revolving door problem, especially in automotive, which is a major industry in its (now declining) economic champions.

They might have people with credentials working for it, but the implementation described falls into the category of "some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe it." To an external observer, incompetence and malice are hardly distinguishable, especially when there is a huge economic incentive for both the automakers and legislators to be evil.

It's safety profiteering, squeezing millions in the name of saving lives.

[strawhatguy]

The motivation of a bureaucrat isn’t the effectiveness of the policies they produce, but instead the political ramifications of those policies.

The safety minded “take no risks” at all approach has been if not popular, tolerated because it’s hard to argue against safety, even if the safety gains are dubious, and expensive. And so they keep their jobs.

Fast forward a few decades of this, and now nothing much new can be developed.

But of course the bureaucrats are “smart” so they’re never to blame.

Frankly they deserve the ire they get for being part of the problem. When is the last time they got rid of an ineffective rule in the EU?

[bavell]

The genius bureaucrat probably did as much research as you did and came to the same conclusion.

[subsistence234]

now you're thinking like a bureaucrat!

[giantrobot]

Never. Take. Away. Control. Authority.

The only way that system could be more dangerous is if the air bags were replaced by Claymore mines.

[saltcured]

Based on the recall patterns, I think that's a free upgrade that self-installs to every older car eventually.

[ithkuil]

I was very annoyed about this feature when I first read about it. I don't have it in my car.

But then I rented a Kia which had it. The nudge was very gentle and balanced and it felt pretty much like if the road had a groove or incline. Now, I'm used to driving in places with very bad roads so the feeling was very natural and my instinct was to overcome the steering wheel resistance with a gentle pressure just as you'd do when driving on roads that present those features.

But my eyes were telling me something different: the road was well paved and flat, so I realized it must be this smart feature. I was pleased at the Kia engineers for calibrating the physical response to be not surprising.

My main concern is that you can get used to this feature. The feature is not perfect and doesn't recognize the ends of the lane in many cases so you quickly learn that you can't trust it. But as technology gets better and better the risk of ending up relying on something that can fail occasionally is a serious one

[dsego]

Same on my Skoda, it gently nudges me back into my lane if I'm not paying attention.

[magicalhippo]

My Renault Megane is a bit inbetween I think. You definitely notice it trying to get you where it wants.

But if you're holding the steering wheel normally, ie not just with two fingers, you're easily able to keep it steady.

Another feature I think is suboptimal is the auto emergency breaking. It gets confused when there is strong shadows from an overpass or similar, or winding roads with wide vehicles like campers in opposite lanes, and stomps on the breaks. However when it works it can be a positive...

[SuzukiBrian]

It's true, mine has that as well. While I can't turn off the default mode, it is thankfully only visuals and sound. It does however also have the assisted suicide mode, where it will either jerk the wheel or prevent the wheel from turning. Thankfully that can be turned off permanently.

I still find it crazy that these are supposed to be safety features.

[aembleton]

In Hyundais this can be disabled by long pressing on the lane keep assist button on the steering wheel. Its the one with a couple of white lines and a steering wheel between them.

You might be able to do similar in the Nissan.

Of course, you have to do this every time you start the car thanks to EU and UK law.

[mort96]

In the Nissan, you can customize all of these things and the car stores your configuration, you just have to press two buttons on the steering wheel every time you start the car to load it. And with those custom config loaded, I find the car really nice to drive. We (I and the family member) have gone through all the safety feature options and made a config which we like. Which mostly means just turning off a bunch of stuff, including the auto-crash and the obnoxious beeping which tells you you're going above (what the car thinks, sometimes incorrectly, is) the speed limit.

Doesn't help when you haven't driven the car in a while so you forget to push those buttons and the car reminds you by automatically turning the wheel towards oncoming traffic :(

[wcoenen]

> and JERKS THE STEERING WHEEL

Everybody who first encounters this feature (including me) seems to have the same reaction.

However, if you give yourself some time to get used to it, you'll probably realize that it doesn't actually "jerk the steering wheel" with any significant force.

It's more like a gentle nudge, similar to the effect of highway rutting. If you are properly holding the steering wheel, it will not actually affect the steering direction.

[strbean]

Does the directive specify that haptic warning must mean a steering wheel jerk? Seems like carmakers have 2 alternatives:

1) use sound + visuals

2) use any other form of haptic feedback. Vibrate the steering wheel. Vibrate the driver's seat. Anything but jerking the steering wheel.

[mort96]

Realistically, car makers are going to find the cheapest way to comply. Adding motors for vibrating the driver's seat costs money. Ditto with adding vibration motors to the steering wheel. Using the motors you already have in the steering mechanism is just software.

So there's a clear incentive to involve the motors which control steering, which is inherently going to feel terrifying.

[dsego]

Lane assist works perfectly fine on my Skoda (or I have learned to live with it). Basically it doesn't do anything under 50km/h and then above that it will mostly lightly shake the steering wheel if you drive on the line, and it will steer only in extremes to keep me in my lane, eg. driving fast and crossing a double white line or something, which saved me a few time when I was distracted. Also, sometimes I use my blinker when I think it will engage, eg. road works and I need to cross the solid center line into the oncoming lane.

[heeton]

I've test-driven 2 cars in the last 2 years (because I'm environmentally interested in swapping my diesel for an EV), but each time has put me off that entire brand. First was Tesla, I can't stand the full iPad console with no physical controls. (And Elon... but that's a side thread).

Then, Volvo, with blue lights filling the cabin and these types of safety features.

Each time I've come away thinking what a shit-show the car was, and how that seems to be the opinion of the entire company line.

I'm still driving my 15 year old diesel with manual controls and dim orange status lights at night. I just want a simple EV with aircon and speakers with media controls by the steering wheel. Minimal extra bullshit.

[mort96]

I'm driving an 11 year old diesel, the main annoyance I have is that its rear proximity sensors pick up on the trailer hitch (which is detachable, but I prefer to have it attached -- besides, it's probably rusted in place or something now after 11 years). So I always have to disable proximity sensors when backing up. An awkward design, but not really a big issue in practice. You get used to it.

I'm not looking forward to getting a fancy new car with government-mandated always-on systems which try to steer the car into oncoming traffic. The insanity is genuinely unfathomable to me. It is, without exaggeration, a fuck-up of such proportions that it's making me question the whole idea of the EU, as a Norwegian whose position on the EU has historically been that Norway should join it.

Although I suppose being outside of the EU isn't exactly saving Norway from its harebrained legislation.

[kjkjadksj]

You won’t get it. The tickytacky safety bs is lobbied by car companies who can now sell you more systems on margin. Hold onto your current car for dear life. They won’t ever make them like that again.

[alpaca128]

A relative's Tesla totalled itself because of that feature. It suddenly auto-steered to the side, right beside a concrete barrier. The barrier won.

[reorder9695]

A family member of mine's car has that, I've had similar experiences where (living in a rural area) I've been driving down a 2 lane road with no one else about, seen a puddle or pothole, not wanted to hit it, tried to put the car a bit over the line for that reason and got shoved back by the bloody car thinking it knew better than me.

[monster_truck]

I love when you're trying to navigate through some zig zag construction bullshit and the lane assist keeps fighting you to eat some cones/barrels. It's also fantastic when the lines on the highway are wobbly and it starts trying to drive like a drunk person. All because of people who can't help but use their phones while driving...

E: A 2022 subaru I rented for a long drive was by far the least worst of anything I've driven. I go out of my way to try something new every time I get to rent a car

[KerrAvon]

I had a 2019 Subaru that was pretty smooth at lanekeeping. A lot of obnoxious beeping, though.

[strawhatguy]

No matter the supposed safety benefit, the driver should be in control of the car, and it’s notifications, permanently disabling them.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

> a lane assist feature

More like Bike Overtake Prevention System. Unbelievable.