3w ago

EVs have lower lifetime emissions than gas cars: study

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People that feel a chip is somehow smarter and safer than them shouldn't have a license in the first place.
You're either a skilled and aware driver, or you're not.
- I definitely agree there. I've long been for an advocate of increasing the difficulty of getting a license. Public transport will have to significantly improve before that becomes feasible though.
- Ok... Doesn't change the fact that safety equipment that makes the car safer in case of an accident is heavier than not having it.
  
  The basic Newtonian law of inertia makes this very relevant when the vehicle is now half a ton heavier than needed, plus waiting on processing lag through some AI system.
  When you're driving around a huge box of safety equipment, you must not even trust yourself behind the wheel.
  Ain't that just fantastic? We live in a world where people are led to believe that driving around an extra thousand pounds or so of hardware is somehow more energy efficient?
  When exactly did people get so fucking stupid? Lighter vehicles require less energy to drive, and are also much easier and quicker to maneuver around.
  That's just raw science for you. If you take a 2000 pound car and add another 1000 pounds of hardware to it, that's less energy efficient, regardless of the source of energy.
  
  The discussion was about tire wear and now you're bringing up efficiency into the mix.
  Safety equipment is mostly about protecting the people inside the car (but also people outside the car), a motorcycle is much lighter than a car, would you rather get t-boned on a motorcycle than a modern car? Or a Model T instead of a 2025 Ford?
  Brakes are better so braking distances aren't any worse.
  If even Ayrton Senna could make mistakes, I would rather all the idiots on the road have some tools to assist them and make them safer and seeing how you're unable to keep up with your own conversation, I would rather see you having tools to make sure you don't crash if you get distracted.
  
  The heavier the vehicle is, the worse the braking distance will be. That's just raw science, inertia is a thing ya know.
  
  With the same brakes and tires, which have both improved a lot even in the past 20 years.
  https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/performance-trends-mustang-comparison/
  124ft braking distance for a stock 1996 Mustang GT
  2024? 99ft
  https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024-ford-mustang-gt-performance-package-manual-first-test-review/
  
  Okay. Read my other comments, try braking within 15ft distance because some dumbfuck backed out in front of you.
  Still not possible, not even close to possible.
  
  Ok but that wasn't possible with the 80s car either, the difference is that with assist your car might brake before you can react and with safety equipment you might survive the crash.
  Again, go ride a motorcycle if no safety equipment and light weight is so important to you, just be careful because braking distance is even longer because of the small contact patch with the ground!
  
  Yay, safety equipment!
  Sure, let the car automatically slam on brakes, still hit the dude, total out both cars, but yay happy day, the airbag saved my life!
  Or drive like I actually know how to operate a vehicle, quickly turn left, only clip bumpers, and no injuries.
  Hmmm, wonder why I don't want stupid advanced technology in my vehicle?
  
  You realize the safety equipment doesn't prevent you from doing that, right?
  What if it's someone else hitting you, you would rather not have safety equipment? You believe you can compensate for everyone else on the road? And oil patch on the road? A truck blowing a tire as you're passing it?
  Buddy, you can't even keep track of one fucking conversation, you over estimate your capacities. As I said, F1 drivers make mistakes and have accidents, you're not a better driver than they are.
  
  Automatic braking is a thing you know, which if activated for whatever detected reason, most certainly does alter your control of the vehicle.
  I don't want to guess whether I'm in control of the vehicle or some dumb chip is. Fuck, if a bird shits on the sensors your car might stop on a railroad track.
  I want 100% realtime hands on control of any vehicle I drive.
  
  I'm also not an F1 driver, and not quite crazy enough to become one. Hell, I don't even speed, and I always look around and drive as safely as possible.
  Shit, the worst accident I ever had was after my air conditioner went out and my windshield fogged up real quick.
  Do smart cars fix their own A/C, or do they still leave it up to the driver to see through the fogged up windshield?
- Yeah! And real airline pilots fly the whole time by the seat of their pants!
  Sarcasm aside, antilock brakes, traction control, and driver assistance features are fantastic if/when used correctly. Sure the chip may not be smarter than you, but the chip will always be faster than you. In the time it takes your brain to realize that something has gone wrong where the rubber meets the road, your car's computers have already started mitigating the issue. What needs to change is the driver's response to those systems. If they come on, then the driver has gone beyond the driving parameters that the road, weather, and their own skill set will allow, and they need to immediately slow down and reevaluate the conditions.
  
  That's not always true. I had a situation where a car backed out in front of me, only like 15 feet in front of me. If I (or the car itself) had hit the brakes, the inertia wouldn't have allowed the car to stop in time, and I would have plowed into the side of his vehicle.
  There simply wasn't enough time to bring the vehicle to a complete stop at that moment, but sure enough that's what the automated stuff would have done.
  I responded within less than a tenth of a second by realizing that an impact was inevitable, and I didn't want to slam into the side of the idiot's car, so I did the seemingly counterintuitive thing. I didn't hit the brakes (no point by then), instead I jerked my steering wheel to the left to avoid a side impact.
  Results: Instead of screeching brakes and slamming into the side of his car, I just clipped his back bumper. Much damage avoided, by my own reactions and not relying on some chip that would have just defaulted to brakes that wouldn't have been able to stop the vehicle in time.
  
  So what I'm hearing is, you swerved without checking your mirror and still got into an accident with the other car?
  
  Wrong. Totally wrong.
  The other dude backed out in front of me, he was the one that didn't check his mirrors or even turn his head to just fucking look.
  Try keeping up will ya, I thought I explained fairly well.
  Matter of fact, try re-reading the second sentence of the comment you responded to. I literally said dude backed out in front of me.
  
  I think you need to re-read what you wrote...
  did the seemingly counterintuitive thing. I didn’t hit the brakes (no point by then), instead I jerked my steering wheel to the left to avoid a side impact.
  Results: Instead of screeching brakes and slamming into the side of his car, I just clipped his back bumper.
  
  Yes. If you're going the speed limit of 25mph on a service road, in broad daylight, and some idiot backs out in front of you when you're only about 15 feet away from them, then there's no way in hell that you'll be able to stop the car in time.
  Dude had absolutely no excuse for that either, it was a perfectly clear line of sight, dude just didn't look.
  Why don't you try stopping a car going 25mph within 15 feet of distance? It's not possible in such a short distance.
  It's called inertia, look it up.
  
  Ah, see, you're making a straw man here. I did not say anything about being able to stop the vehicle in time.
  What I did say is that you swerved your car, without checking that the next lane over was clear.
  instead I jerked my steering wheel to the left
  And that you still had an accident.
  I just clipped his back bumper.
  Let me know if you need more clarification on what you wrote.
  
  There wasn't any vehicle in the other lane. There wasn't even any other vehicle on that stretch of road.
  I knew what options I had, and there were only two.
  I could have slammed on brakes, but the car wouldn't have stopped in time. Any attempt of braking on my end would have just given him more time to back out in front of me, which would have led to a side impact and major damages.
  I didn't want to give him any more time to back out further, so I chose a different maneuver, to quickly steer left to avoid a full side impact. I avoided the brakes because I knew they would have actually made that particular exact situation worse.
  So I clipped his bumper, so what? No matter what I did, an impact was inevitable anyways, and it was totally his fault. I just made a really quick decision that avoided significant side impact damages.
  And yes, I made that decision within approximately 1/10th of a second. I don't think a chip would have done that, a chip would have just attempted to stop, yet due to inertia, would have still slammed into the side of his car.
  
  What I'm saying is, the computer can react faster than you can. This is not up for debate, it's a fact, and it's been a fact since the late 70s. Yes, when the car is in an impossible situation, it will get into an accident. Yes, you still need to drive the car. Yes, you mitigated an accident, but you did so at the risk of creating a much worse accident (collision at a high speed, potentially involving other cars in a crash) and implicating yourself as an at-fault party. You got lucky, you may not see it that way, but you did. Sure the other driver fucked up, no argument there. You know what would have helped them though? Cross traffic alert system, and automatic braking to stop them from backing into your lane, hell, it may have triggered on their vehicle and prevented your high(er) speed bumper scrape gambit from being a much worse accident.
  Also, it's sounds like the real piece of safety equipment is you need is a dashcam.
  
  Regarding lag time, let's compare and contrast older vs newer technology.
  Go back to the 1990's and use a computer mouse. The cursor responds in realtime.
  Now compare to modern technology, that same mouse cursor has like a 10 to 20 millisecond or so lag. Hell, even the keyboard and game controllers these days have lag.
  So, you got way faster chips these days, but also a way overcomplicated stack of software causing the lag.
  Old technology used to be instantaneous and respond to the operator/user in realtime.
  These days the computer is bogged down by tracking everything you do, logging every single thing, communicating with servers to see if you were tugging your dude rope when the accident happened, etc..
  TL;DR - Believe it or not, simpler older technology would respond faster, because it was just you and the vehicle directly operating together, not having to communicate with some mass computer server farm to figure out what to do.
  Lag. It's a thing. Ask any gamer how that fucks their games up. Driving a vehicle isn't a game though, but apparently these days it's still prone to lag, because there's just a ridiculous amount of unnecessary technology ticking behind the scenes.
  
  Have you even used a computer or any digital technology lately? Everything is slap full of lag now.
  Sure, once modern chips gather all the data, they are pretty fast to process, but the lag time before the processing starts becomes significant.
  Yeah, a dash cam might have been nice, it sure would have shown much easier than me trying to explain what happened.

125 comments