OK, help me figure this one out...
02-19-16, 06:19 PM
#51
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Traffic » The BookI read something about this, I think it was in the book above. It said people don't see what they don't expect to see. Which is one reason why one of the most common car-motorcycle accident scenarios is a car pulling out right in front of a cycle. They are looking for cars and just don't notice. So extrapolating to a quiet rural street, when a driver rarely sees another car on the street, they become conditioned to not see one. I think the accident that killed my brother was the same thing. He drove his car in front of a freight train. I know he wasn't trying to beat the train, that wasn't his style. The tracks were very near to our house, and we crossed them at least twice per day. Only very rarely was there a train. It was complacency and familiarity that got him.
02-19-16, 06:21 PM
#52
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Many collisions and close calls (including many of the scenario’s envisioned by GravelMN above) are caused by too close of following distance, especially at higher speeds. Human drivers routinely tailgate unsafely, auto cars won’t.
“What if the driver in front of me jams on his brakes” is not a concern for me, because my following distance makes it a non-issue... and auto cars will do the same.
“What if the driver in front of me jams on his brakes” is not a concern for me, because my following distance makes it a non-issue... and auto cars will do the same.
02-19-16, 07:14 PM
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I understand what you are saying... but my experience is that those roads tended to be 4-6 lanes wide and motorists making left turns on them "never" look for cyclists... Also motorists entering those sorts of wide fast boulevards tend to focus on the cars they have to merge into, while looking right through cyclists.
02-19-16, 07:25 PM
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Tailgating made safe! Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing an on track demonstration of exactly that.
02-19-16, 07:39 PM
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I actually believe that "just another car" is much easier to overlook... like what happened in the OP's example. Standing out as different and unusual has its benefits.
02-20-16, 08:05 AM
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02-20-16, 08:06 AM
#57
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In some respects I think that actually helps 'bent riders... their vehicle is so strange looking that people just have to look.
02-20-16, 09:11 PM
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You do realize you posted this thread in A&S, right? 
If you consider this idle chatter, why do you continue to reply rather than ignore the comments posted?
In my posts I readily admitted I didn't know the answers to my concerns and questions. I expressed interest in comments about the experiences of individuals who had actually driven any of the cars with autonomous/semi-autonomous features. I also stated that I am neither for, nor against autonomous driving features, I just have some questions about how they handle certain situations and if the technology is actually ready for real world use. In theory there is huge potential for computer assisted functions, not just in driving but in numerous areas of life. One area I am particularly interested in is the research taking place into the application of military exoskeleton technology into civilian adaptive technology in areas such as mobility for the physically impaired or in increasing the work capacity of individuals in industry or emergency services. But, just like autonomous vehicles, this technology is in its infancy and a lot of questions need to be resolved.
I never questioned whether or not the robot transportation industry is or will be a success or failure. I asked about how the current technology performs in some real world situations. If we can come up with any technology that reduces injuries and fatalities, I'm all for it . . . when it has been adequately tested, evaluated and refined so that it does not become the cause of other foreseeable and preventable harm.
Thanks, I'll give it a read. This is more what I was looking for, information that at least attempts to answer some of the questions posed, rather than someone pointing out that they don't know any more about it than I do.
Now you are being absurd. At no point did I ever propose that we abandon autonomous (or any other) technology because there may still be bugs to be worked out.
Modern anti-lock brakes and airbags have helped save numerous lives. Should some of the early versions have had more testing (questions asked) before they were released for public usage? Consider this:
It is the early 1990s and you just bought a new car with the latest safety technology, dual front airbags. You are impressed by industry promises that it will greatly improve the safety of you and your family. You decide to take the family out for a ride to celebrate your purchase. Your 10-year old daughter, adorable and petite, calls "shotgun" to ride next to daddy and you carefully buckle her in. Cruising around the neighborhood somebody pulls out of a diagonal parking space without looking and you can't brake fast enough to avoid hitting him at <20 mph. The next few seconds are a blur as you try to regain your bearings and your breath, after the airbags go off. "Is everyone alright!" you shout. Your wife and son in the back seat are shaken but otherwise unharmed, but the little girl next to you isn't moving, isn't breathing. You later find out that the seatbelt and the car's crumple zones did their jobs in this relatively low-speed accident. It wasn't the collision that killed her. That should have been easily survivable. It was the airbag.
Before you say I'm being overly dramatic here is an article for you to read https://www.autosafetyexpert.com/Asse...bagdefects.pdf. Please note that this article was not written during the prototyping or even first years after airbags were introduced. It was a call for action in 1998, more than a decade after airbags were introduced on production model cars. In 1991 Congress mandated that all production passenger cars be equipped with dual front airbags by 1998. In the year that the mandate went into effect, children and infants were dying at an alarming rate in motor vehicle collisions where the cause of death was attributed to overly forceful or ill designed airbags rather than to the collisions themselves. It wasn't just infants and toddlers either, any child or petite adult (under 110 pounds was a commonly used figure) or those who were frail, such as the elderly, were at risk. The automotive industry didn't begin an organized and consistent campaign to put all infants and children in the back seat until years after the problem was first identified and significant changes to the design of airbags didn't come for a decade (after a number of class action lawsuits). Here is an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing.
A major airbag problem concerns the continuing epidemic of severe to fatal injuries to infants and young children who are in the right-front passenger seat of a vehicle equipped with a passenger-side airbag. At a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing in September 1996, it was noted that there were 26 documented cases since 1993 in which infants and young children had been killed by passenger-side airbags in collision accidents that they otherwise would have likely survived with either minimal or no injuries. Many of the collisions were at very low speeds, in the 8 to 20 mph range. The tragic epidemic continues at the rate of approximately one additional child fatality per week.
From THE TRAGEDY OF AIRBAG FATALITIES TO CHILDREN AND SHORT DRIVERS, AND HOW TO REDUCE THE HAZARDS
Copyright 1998
by Byron Bloch
Consultant in Auto Safety Design and Vehicle Crashworthiness
Here are excerpts from a September 1999 article by Patrick Bedard in Car and Driver magazine
Life with airbags has turned out very differently from the one promised by Joan Claybrook back in 1977. That's when she told Congress that those friendly balloons in every car would pillow away 40 percent of crash deaths each year.
. . .
Since 1993, 82 students have been murdered in shootings at schools, according to the National School Safety Center. But here's a greater tragedy. During that same period, 99 children have been killed by airbag deployments.
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. We waited way too long to ask the questions and make the changes with airbags. As we introduce this next leap in automotive safety technology to public roadways, lets ask the questions today, not a decade from now. No, the automotive industry cannot be trusted to ask and appropriately respond to all of its own questions. Yes, they have countless experts in R&D, but they also have countless lawyers in the legal department for when they screw up.
If you consider this idle chatter, why do you continue to reply rather than ignore the comments posted?
But it all comes down to this: I don't know and neither do you.
Even if the computer technology for self driving cars is not absolutely error free, but only half the motorists/peds/cyclist die with robot cars verses the number that die now with human drivers... does that make the robot car issue a failure or a success?
BTW here is one site you may want to visit... and pose some of your questions... Where Robot Cars (Robocars) Can Really Take Us
BTW in spite of the early problems... should we now not have anti-lock brakes or airbags?
Modern anti-lock brakes and airbags have helped save numerous lives. Should some of the early versions have had more testing (questions asked) before they were released for public usage? Consider this:
It is the early 1990s and you just bought a new car with the latest safety technology, dual front airbags. You are impressed by industry promises that it will greatly improve the safety of you and your family. You decide to take the family out for a ride to celebrate your purchase. Your 10-year old daughter, adorable and petite, calls "shotgun" to ride next to daddy and you carefully buckle her in. Cruising around the neighborhood somebody pulls out of a diagonal parking space without looking and you can't brake fast enough to avoid hitting him at <20 mph. The next few seconds are a blur as you try to regain your bearings and your breath, after the airbags go off. "Is everyone alright!" you shout. Your wife and son in the back seat are shaken but otherwise unharmed, but the little girl next to you isn't moving, isn't breathing. You later find out that the seatbelt and the car's crumple zones did their jobs in this relatively low-speed accident. It wasn't the collision that killed her. That should have been easily survivable. It was the airbag.
Before you say I'm being overly dramatic here is an article for you to read https://www.autosafetyexpert.com/Asse...bagdefects.pdf. Please note that this article was not written during the prototyping or even first years after airbags were introduced. It was a call for action in 1998, more than a decade after airbags were introduced on production model cars. In 1991 Congress mandated that all production passenger cars be equipped with dual front airbags by 1998. In the year that the mandate went into effect, children and infants were dying at an alarming rate in motor vehicle collisions where the cause of death was attributed to overly forceful or ill designed airbags rather than to the collisions themselves. It wasn't just infants and toddlers either, any child or petite adult (under 110 pounds was a commonly used figure) or those who were frail, such as the elderly, were at risk. The automotive industry didn't begin an organized and consistent campaign to put all infants and children in the back seat until years after the problem was first identified and significant changes to the design of airbags didn't come for a decade (after a number of class action lawsuits). Here is an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing.
A major airbag problem concerns the continuing epidemic of severe to fatal injuries to infants and young children who are in the right-front passenger seat of a vehicle equipped with a passenger-side airbag. At a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearing in September 1996, it was noted that there were 26 documented cases since 1993 in which infants and young children had been killed by passenger-side airbags in collision accidents that they otherwise would have likely survived with either minimal or no injuries. Many of the collisions were at very low speeds, in the 8 to 20 mph range. The tragic epidemic continues at the rate of approximately one additional child fatality per week.
From THE TRAGEDY OF AIRBAG FATALITIES TO CHILDREN AND SHORT DRIVERS, AND HOW TO REDUCE THE HAZARDS
Copyright 1998
by Byron Bloch
Consultant in Auto Safety Design and Vehicle Crashworthiness
Life with airbags has turned out very differently from the one promised by Joan Claybrook back in 1977. That's when she told Congress that those friendly balloons in every car would pillow away 40 percent of crash deaths each year.
. . .
Since 1993, 82 students have been murdered in shootings at schools, according to the National School Safety Center. But here's a greater tragedy. During that same period, 99 children have been killed by airbag deployments.
Last edited by GravelMN; 02-20-16 at 10:13 PM.
02-21-16, 09:09 AM
#59
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https://youtu.be/Xbjdmw8D9-Y Pretty cool, but to be fair, I see human drivers follow this close (or closer!) at speed all the time. It's quite the recipe for multi car pileups. Not me.
02-21-16, 09:23 AM
#60
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You do realize you posted this thread in A&S, right? If you consider this idle chatter, why do you continue to reply rather than ignore the comments posted?
In my posts I readily admitted I didn't know the answers to my concerns and questions. I expressed interest in comments about the experiences of individuals who had actually driven any of the cars with autonomous/semi-autonomous features. I also stated that I am neither for, nor against autonomous driving features, I just have some questions about how they handle certain situations and if the technology is actually ready for real world use. In theory there is huge potential for computer assisted functions, not just in driving but in numerous areas of life. One area I am particularly interested in is the research taking place into the application of military exoskeleton technology into civilian adaptive technology in areas such as mobility for the physically impaired or in increasing the work capacity of individuals in industry or emergency services. But, just like autonomous vehicles, this technology is in its infancy and a lot of questions need to be resolved.
I never questioned whether or not the robot transportation industry is or will be a success or failure. I asked about how the current technology performs in some real world situations. If we can come up with any technology that reduces injuries and fatalities, I'm all for it . . . when it has been adequately tested, evaluated and refined so that it does not become the cause of other foreseeable and preventable harm.
Thanks, I'll give it a read. This is more what I was looking for, information that at least attempts to answer some of the questions posed, rather than someone pointing out that they don't know any more about it than I do.
Now you are being absurd. At no point did I ever propose that we abandon autonomous (or any other) technology because there may still be bugs to be worked out.
Modern anti-lock brakes and airbags have helped save numerous lives. Should some of the early versions have had more testing (questions asked) before they were released for public usage? Consider this:
It is the early 1990s and you just bought a new car with the latest safety technology, dual front airbags. You are impressed by industry promises that it will greatly improve the safety of you and your family. You decide to take the family out for a ride to celebrate your purchase. Your 10-year old daughter, adorable and petite, calls "shotgun" to ride next to daddy and you carefully buckle her in. Cruising around the neighborhood somebody pulls out of a diagonal parking space without looking and you can't brake fast enough to avoid hitting him at <20 mph. The next few seconds are a blur as you try to regain your bearings and your breath, after the airbags go off. "Is everyone alright!" you shout. Your wife and son in the back seat are shaken but otherwise unharmed, but the little girl next to you isn't moving, isn't breathing. You later find out that the seatbelt and the car's crumple zones did their jobs in this relatively low-speed accident. It wasn't the collision that killed her. That should have been easily survivable. It was the airbag.
Before you say I'm being overly dramatic here is an article for you to read https://www.autosafetyexpert.com/Asse...bagdefects.pdf. Please note that this article was not written during the prototyping or even first years after airbags were introduced. It was a call for action in 1998, more than a decade after airbags were introduced on production model cars. In 1991 Congress mandated that all production passenger cars be equipped with dual front airbags by 1998. In the year that the mandate went into effect, children and infants were dying at an alarming rate in motor vehicle collisions where the cause of death was attributed to overly forceful or ill designed airbags rather than to the collisions themselves. It wasn't just infants and toddlers either, any child or petite adult (under 110 pounds was a commonly used figure) or those who were frail, such as the elderly, were at risk. The automotive industry didn't begin an organized and consistent campaign to put all infants and children in the back seat until years after the problem was first identified and significant changes to the design of airbags didn't come for a decade (after a number of class action lawsuits). Here is an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing.
Here are excerpts from a September 1999 article by Patrick Bedard in Car and Driver magazine
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. We waited way too long to ask the questions and make the changes with airbags. As we introduce this next leap in automotive safety technology to public roadways, lets ask the questions today, not a decade from now. No, the automotive industry cannot be trusted to ask and appropriately respond to all of its own questions. Yes, they have countless experts in R&D, but they also have countless lawyers in the legal department for when they screw up.
If you consider this idle chatter, why do you continue to reply rather than ignore the comments posted?In my posts I readily admitted I didn't know the answers to my concerns and questions. I expressed interest in comments about the experiences of individuals who had actually driven any of the cars with autonomous/semi-autonomous features. I also stated that I am neither for, nor against autonomous driving features, I just have some questions about how they handle certain situations and if the technology is actually ready for real world use. In theory there is huge potential for computer assisted functions, not just in driving but in numerous areas of life. One area I am particularly interested in is the research taking place into the application of military exoskeleton technology into civilian adaptive technology in areas such as mobility for the physically impaired or in increasing the work capacity of individuals in industry or emergency services. But, just like autonomous vehicles, this technology is in its infancy and a lot of questions need to be resolved.
I never questioned whether or not the robot transportation industry is or will be a success or failure. I asked about how the current technology performs in some real world situations. If we can come up with any technology that reduces injuries and fatalities, I'm all for it . . . when it has been adequately tested, evaluated and refined so that it does not become the cause of other foreseeable and preventable harm.
Thanks, I'll give it a read. This is more what I was looking for, information that at least attempts to answer some of the questions posed, rather than someone pointing out that they don't know any more about it than I do.
Now you are being absurd. At no point did I ever propose that we abandon autonomous (or any other) technology because there may still be bugs to be worked out.
Modern anti-lock brakes and airbags have helped save numerous lives. Should some of the early versions have had more testing (questions asked) before they were released for public usage? Consider this:
It is the early 1990s and you just bought a new car with the latest safety technology, dual front airbags. You are impressed by industry promises that it will greatly improve the safety of you and your family. You decide to take the family out for a ride to celebrate your purchase. Your 10-year old daughter, adorable and petite, calls "shotgun" to ride next to daddy and you carefully buckle her in. Cruising around the neighborhood somebody pulls out of a diagonal parking space without looking and you can't brake fast enough to avoid hitting him at <20 mph. The next few seconds are a blur as you try to regain your bearings and your breath, after the airbags go off. "Is everyone alright!" you shout. Your wife and son in the back seat are shaken but otherwise unharmed, but the little girl next to you isn't moving, isn't breathing. You later find out that the seatbelt and the car's crumple zones did their jobs in this relatively low-speed accident. It wasn't the collision that killed her. That should have been easily survivable. It was the airbag.
Before you say I'm being overly dramatic here is an article for you to read https://www.autosafetyexpert.com/Asse...bagdefects.pdf. Please note that this article was not written during the prototyping or even first years after airbags were introduced. It was a call for action in 1998, more than a decade after airbags were introduced on production model cars. In 1991 Congress mandated that all production passenger cars be equipped with dual front airbags by 1998. In the year that the mandate went into effect, children and infants were dying at an alarming rate in motor vehicle collisions where the cause of death was attributed to overly forceful or ill designed airbags rather than to the collisions themselves. It wasn't just infants and toddlers either, any child or petite adult (under 110 pounds was a commonly used figure) or those who were frail, such as the elderly, were at risk. The automotive industry didn't begin an organized and consistent campaign to put all infants and children in the back seat until years after the problem was first identified and significant changes to the design of airbags didn't come for a decade (after a number of class action lawsuits). Here is an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing.
Here are excerpts from a September 1999 article by Patrick Bedard in Car and Driver magazine
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it. We waited way too long to ask the questions and make the changes with airbags. As we introduce this next leap in automotive safety technology to public roadways, lets ask the questions today, not a decade from now. No, the automotive industry cannot be trusted to ask and appropriately respond to all of its own questions. Yes, they have countless experts in R&D, but they also have countless lawyers in the legal department for when they screw up.
Bear in mind that this thread was originally regarding how motorists can collide with one another in what should otherwise be very safe situations... and I posed the issue that if this is happening to drivers, it can easily also happen to cyclists... that is why this thread is in A&S.
Robot cars should not make the same mistakes. Yes indeed we should learn from history... and test robot cars thoroughly. There, this issue with regard to robot cars is finished. Everything else regarding robot cars belongs in a different thread and is indeed speculation... thus should be in Foo. Although I suppose a discussion on robot cars as related to cyclists should be in A&S, but again that would be about robot cars, not people behaving like zombies and then driving right into very visible other cars at low speeds... which IS the subject of this thread.
02-21-16, 05:02 PM
#61
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(It's a bike that has had the handlebars and fork reverse in the head tube, hence the upside-down name, followed by welding an elongated seat-tube onto what was formerly the bottom of the bottom bracket and an extended stem onto the handlebars. The pedals end up about three feet off the ground and the seat is about six feet up.)
02-21-16, 05:13 PM
#62
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Yes, it happens, it's human nature and not limited to driving. When people do routine things in a familiar environment they are often on auto pilot, and not as alert to their surroundings. That's why the majority of incidents happen close to home.
We all do it, and I question the veracity of anyone who claims to do otherwise or be surprised by it.
We all do it, and I question the veracity of anyone who claims to do otherwise or be surprised by it.
This ridiculous post should instead be a run-on sentence titled 'I witnessed two unrelated and random acts in a short time period and couldn't wait to inform everyone on A&S of my impending death by motorist because that is the only possible outcome of what I think I saw'
Last edited by bakes1; 02-21-16 at 05:25 PM.
02-24-16, 12:33 AM
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I think what you observed is a result of target fixation.
