Federal Regulators May Update Crash Testing, Possibly Making High-Tech Safety Gear Ma

[AVANTI R5]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would update its crash-testing program, the New Car Assessment Program, by 2020.

That could result in more high-tech safety features becoming standard equipment, along with more measures to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. NHTSA announced the review on Oct. 16.

Consumer advocacy groups said features like automatic emergency braking, lane-departure warning and blind-spot detection should become part of NCAP testing. Automatic emergency braking stops a vehicle if sensors detect a front-end collision is imminent, and if the driver doesn’t respond to alerts quickly enough.

The New Car Assessment Program rates vehicles on a five-star scale. By itself, NCAP isn’t the same as a legal requirement, but if a feature becomes necessary to achieve the highest rating, in effect it becomes mandatory because automakers want to avoid a poor rating.

“This is most welcome news,” said Joan Claybrook, a board member for Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, at a press conference hosted by the group on Oct. 17. “The devil, of course, is in the details.”

Claybrook is a former NHTSA administrator. She helped launch the original NCAP program 40 years ago. “It’s time to act,” she said, “to get NCAP into the 21st century.” She complained that because it hasn’t been updated, the current U.S. NCAP program is “a shell of its former self … easily manipulated by automakers to achieve the highest, five-star rating.”

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group, said roughly 90 percent of vehicles rated for the U.S. market were awarded either four or five stars. That was for model year 2014. “The fact that most of the current fleet achieves 4- or 5-stars does not mean something is wrong with today’s NCAP, but rather, shows vehicle manufacturers’ commitment to safety advancements over time,” the alliance said in 2016, in reaction to an earlier proposal to update NCAP.

At the press conference on Oct. 17, consumer advocates were skeptical whether NHTSA really will get around to updating NCAP, because earlier promises to update NCAP never came to pass. That was true under both Obama and Trump Administrations, Claybrook said.

In the meantime, she said crash-testing programs in other jurisdictions, especially the European Union’s version, EuroNCAP, have gotten ahead of the U.S. program by adding tests for more modern safety systems.

“NCAP needs to keep up with the rest of the world,” said Jack Gillis, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, and another NCAP pioneer. “Essentially, we are testing vehicles the same way we did 40 years ago.”

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[Bansheeboy11]

Meh, i still be driving my 90s deathboxes.

[Masterauto]

awww it's all expensive options on Germans especially BMW charging for a lousy backup camera. Now they want monthly charge for Apple play ? It's insulting enough to keep me buying one of their cars

[Pre]

BS. Force us all to have this bs when the tech is still in infancy. All of us who have spent a lot of money on driver/rider training, HPDE, etc, this is a slap in the face. I don’t want to pay for it.

[littledrummerboy]

I don’t mind. Economies of scale would make it cheap in the long run anyway. I’ve been cutoff and hit enough times by people where emergency braking and blind spot tech would’ve prevented it. Those tech aren’t really in infancy anymore and work pretty darn well.

99% of people don’t have advanced skills and I’m glad if they’re forced to have the tech. Just saving on the hassle of dealing with insurance, the whole claim and repair process, and being marked by them as in-collision even if not at fault ... would pay for itself, tbh. Bring on the tech.

[BeepBoop]

I'd rather we restrict driving to that 1% of people who do have the advanced skills instead of catering to the lowest common denominator like we always seem to. Better for me.

[Pre]

Originally Posted by BeepBoop

I'd rather we restrict driving to that 1% of people who do have the advanced skills instead of catering to the lowest common denominator like we always seem to. Better for me.

How about start arresting these clowns when they cause problems. Repeated behavior, bam, $10,000 fine, a couple nights in jail. I’m all for people driving and surfing at the same time paying for it, instant felony.

The problem is municipalities are letting people do this bad behavior all day, everyday. Start busting the F out of people and watch the culture change. Let’s fill the damn jails to the brim.

[bakadayo]

Originally Posted by Pre

How about start arresting these clowns when they cause problems. Repeated behavior, bam, $10,000 fine, a couple nights in jail. I’m all for people driving and surfing at the same time paying for it, instant felony.

The problem is municipalities are letting people do this bad behavior all day, everyday. Start busting the F out of people and watch the culture change. Let’s fill the damn jails to the brim.

Need to do both:

1. Make getting a license harder in terms of testing
2. Better enforcement of asshattery (I'm also very for making fines based on percentage of income)

[Keshav]

Musk is right. Eventually, it will be illegal to let people drive their own cars.

[dwf137]

Originally Posted by Pre

BS. Force us all to have this bs when the tech is still in infancy. All of us who have spent a lot of money on driver/rider training, HPDE, etc, this is a slap in the face. I don’t want to pay for it.

I'll start this by saying that I mostly agree with you on this topic, and will not engage in an argument about whether or not they should be regulated. I have complaints about the ADAS setup in my R, and would have much rather purchased a car without it. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, and I wanted the car, so whatever. I turn them off most of the time.

However... I feel like saying that ADAS tech is in it's "infancy" is a bit of an exaggeration. Cadillac started development of a collision avoidance system in the 50's. MB was one of the first to the market with various ADAS features in the early 2000's. Blind spot monitoring came out with Volvo in 2005. Adaptive cruise control started in the late 1990's. Backup cameras in the early 2000's. Lane departure in the early 2000's.

For reference, this was the cell phone I had back when many of those technologies came out:


Will things improve over the years? Yes, things always advance. But at some point you need to draw the line and say they're good enough, recognizing that economies of scale will bring down the price and will trigger more advancement.

[mhoward1]

Originally Posted by Pre

BS. Force us all to have this bs when the tech is still in infancy. All of us who have spent a lot of money on driver/rider training, HPDE, etc, this is a slap in the face. I don’t want to pay for it.

make it a special requirement that you can only buy cars without the features with a special license like a CDL/C-Class.

[4S-TURBO]

The ADAS in the Tiguan worked for my wife a few weeks ago. She couldn't react as fast as the system when a car pulled out in front of her on a car lined street with little visibility. She said she would have hit the car had she been in one of our other cars. I was actually T-boned in my Forester 10 years ago in a similar situation. Portland is just getting worse and worse and why so many pedestrians and bikers are hit here.

It's both comforting and unfortunate the computer is better than our processing and reaction. Now the conversation is keep the old analog fun cars or ditch them?

[Pre]

Originally Posted by dwf137

However... I feel like saying that ADAS tech is in it's "infancy" is a bit of an exaggeration.

I say that because they are doing things the drivers don’t want currently. I’ve read of various mfr’s the damn thing braking when the driver did not want it to, and it damn near got them rear ended. So the safety device almost caused an accident. Many people, like yourself, just turning the bs off. What that means is infancy, early days, let’s don’t get too literal or play semantics. IMO, they aren’t ready for prime time yet they are being implemented hand over fist.

And as I’ve stated multiple times on here, I don’t care for them being jacked into the OEM headunit, nullifying the owner from swapping it in the future when they want a new feature, or phone stuff changes, whatever. That’s really lame. Car swappers it’s no big deal but there of some of us that want to keep what we buy for many years as the damn things cost so much these days.

[dwf137]

Originally Posted by Pre

I say that because they are doing things the drivers don’t want currently. I’ve read of various mfr’s the damn thing braking when the driver did not want it to, and it damn near got them rear ended. So the safety device almost caused an accident. Many people, like yourself, just turning the bs off. What that means is infancy, early days, let’s don’t get too literal or play semantics. IMO, they aren’t ready for prime time yet they are being implemented hand over fist.

Fully disagree. Come back when you have first-hand experience driving one of these on the regular. In no way is my annoyance signification that the system is not ready for the road.

The times that the system has applied the brakes that annoyed me are usually when the driver in front of me is getting ready to take a right hand turn. They have a signal on, are slowing down, and getting ready to turn. I eye up the situation and adjust my speed and following distance to best maximize my speed when they finally get out of my way. I usually push the envelope of comfort for most drivers, most of my passengers get anxious when I do it. The radar unit sees someone slowing down in front of me and reacts as though that vehicle is not going to get out of my way. It needs to apply the brakes. It doesn't know that I have a plan to move a little to the left to avoid hitting their rear bumper in the event they take the turn slower than I originally anticipated. It doesn't know that there isn't pending doom on the other side of the car. It sees something stopped that's directly in the way of my car and applies the brakes. It thinks that I'm a derelict driver who isn't actually paying attention. That's the exact way these systems need to behave to actually function appropriately. It annoys me, as a calculating attentive driver, but would have saved a derelict driver and the turning driver from an accident.

Thankfully I have a one-push off button that I've learned to use when I see those situations occurring. Turns off front assist and lets me do what I want.

[Pre]

Originally Posted by dwf137

Fully disagree.

Big surprise there.
Just agree to disagree.

Originally Posted by dwf137

Come back when you have first-hand experience driving one of these on the regular. In no way is my annoyance

I have. Honda’s system. Got a Passport last week for a few days and no thanks.
The “BRAKE” alert got really annoying in traffic. I’ll take poor assumptions for $1000 Alex.

[dwf137]

Originally Posted by Pre

I have. Honda’s system. Got a Passport last week for a few days and no thanks.
The “BRAKE” alert got really annoying in traffic. I’ll take poor assumptions for $1000 Alex.

Actually, no, it's not a poor assumption, it's completely accurate. I said to come back when you have experience driving one REGULARLY. Driving a car for a few days is not the same as driving one every day for 18 months. Something you've made clear when you talk about your Leaf...

[dwf137]

Originally Posted by Pre

Big surprise there.
Just agree to disagree.

The thing is... I don't fully disagree with you. I don't want them in my car. I don't like them. I would much rather they find a way to make it so that you can somehow qualify to purchase a car without the systems... Some special license or something.

Where things differ, and it's likely because you have very limited experience with them, is that these systems are absolutely ready for the public (minus Nissan's flubs), and we'll all be much safer when these are in most cars.

We can't just punish people into compliance. Not only do we not have the police force to create the police-state on the road that would be necessary, but many people don't really respond to consequences. They'll keep doing what they do. If they get caught, they'll lose their license and keep driving. Let's not even get into continuing to fill our jails with minor traffic offenses, because that's just totally ridiculous.

[Pre]

Originally Posted by dwf137

Actually, no, it's not a poor assumption, it's completely accurate. I said to come back when you have experience driving one REGULARLY. Driving a car for a few days is not the same as driving one every day for 18 months. Something you've made clear when you talk about your Leaf...

I tested all the systems for almost a week. So you want me to buy something and own it for 18 months to satisfy you. Great, contact me and I'll let you know where to send a large check so you can pay for the vehicle then. It's a stupid argument. If someone is an adult who has owned many vehicles, they can make a judgement on particular characteristics of an automobile. Whether they like them, or they can't stand them. I've read at length and sampled them. Just did again this morning as I have another Pilot loaner that I'll have for a few days to a week. There will be nothing new to report as the same ADAS bs is installed on this vehicle as well.
It would be nothing to never drive one equipped with the nannies. I drove my new model vehicle, 7 times prior to purchase, every time with these features installed.
The Leaf and range anxiety have nothing to do with this and that's another silly argument with you digging for treasure.

Originally Posted by dwf137

The thing is... I don't fully disagree with you. I don't want them in my car. I don't like them. I would much rather they find a way to make it so that you can somehow qualify to purchase a car without the systems... Some special license or something.

Where things differ, and it's likely because you have very limited experience with them, is that these systems are absolutely ready for the public (minus Nissan's flubs), and we'll all be much safer when these are in most cars.

We can't just punish people into compliance. Not only do we not have the police force to create the police-state on the road that would be necessary, but many people don't really respond to consequences. They'll keep doing what they do. If they get caught, they'll lose their license and keep driving. Let's not even get into continuing to fill our jails with minor traffic offenses, because that's just totally ridiculous.

No, sorry. When they get fined, then ultimately go to jail, they would learn. Some red light esque ticket, sure. But a 4 figure fine, jail, and then felonies handed out, it would put a stop to it. It's what needs to happen. It has gotten so out of hand, that we need legislation. That's what legislation is for. When kids got killed around schools they made school zones, 20 mph. When too many were flinging out of their cars, seatbelts became required, and a ticket-able offense. Now we have distracted smartphone driving that is rampant, a total plague on society, and the same thing needs to occur and does in some places with LE rolling out undercover vehicles and nabbing people. We don't need auto mfr's to save these idiots and enable this behavior even more. Reference Tesla auto-pilot and people sleeping, watching videos/dvd's, etc. Drop the hammer, start arresting people and the behavior would change. The crackers out on the road, the squares, who have never had to go to jail, will learn when they are in holding with crack addicts and such. They'd learn quick. I talk to local LE, and they have told me they'd rather deal with drunks, it's that bad. They've said the wreck calls they go on, are horrible, and again they'd take a drunk over these clowns on their phones. All ADAS is going to do is enable this behavior instead of put a stop to it.

And look, we just don't agree on this, and never will, so just give it up. Disagree all you want, you aren't going to change my mind one iota, and vice versa. Just let it go dude. Find something else or another subject on here to do your thing, and just harp on incessantly like your backup cams. We don't agree, no big deal.

[4S-TURBO]

Perhaps Honda's system sucks. They're not all the same at this point. They will be...when they're mandatory.

[SCRAPPYDO]

The more the car thinks for us, the less we think for ourselves.

Insurance companies want these so they can charge more in premiums as the more systems they put on these cars, the more they drive up cost. We still lose about as many lives per year as we always did. People have stopped using their brains to drive, and instead would rather be entertained. Driving which should constitute your entire attention barely makes the top 5 things you are paying attention to.

The smarter cars get, the dumber drivers will become. The people sleeping in Teslas just validates my point.

[Pre]

Originally Posted by 4S-TURBO

Perhaps Honda's system sucks. They're not all the same at this point. They will be...when they're mandatory.

They are all pretty similar. Lane keep assist, blind spot monitoring, adaptive cruise, collision mitigation braking, etc, etc. Subaru's ranks above.

One manu's system may be a little better than others (I have sampled many of them via test drives and read owner feedback) but most of them do the same thing. The "brake" warning kept coming up this morning and it's annoying AF. I was in bumper to bumper traffic where you can't keep much of a gap because some Dallas A hole will just jam in there cutting any sort of small gap of safety (to nail the brakes) out so you have to keep it tight. Open up the gap so the ADAS isn't going nuts will just increase % of getting into a fender bender as these people don't care and will jam in, any gap they can, trying to merge lanes in an attempt to get to their destination quicker. It was on a tollway where a tornado touched down Sunday night so construction/clean up had various lanes closed to repair tornado and wind damage.

All ADAS will do is enable this poor behavior forward. All the marketing the manus do is to sell new vehicles, period. Wrecks still occur at the level they did before ADAS. It's because of inattentive driving. I'm hyperaware when driving/riding because motorcycling in general taught me that. SIPDE, always, 100% of the time. It's why I haven't been in a wreck in 15 years sans a small fender bender in bumper to bumper when someone hit me from behind at 5 mph. I saw it coming, was on a 1 lane overpass so I had no where to go. Swerving minimized the damage but didn't prevent it. And I will say playing on the phone is almost 50% of the drivers I see here now. I'm always scanning so when I see it I can slow down, speed up, or change lanes to get them away from me. I see swerving every day, no moving from green lights, it's rampant. I see it on the highway, with people driving 80mph in the fast lane. I see it in commercial vehicles. Crazy LE can't or hasn't arrested people for this bs. And I'm damn glad my truck doesn't have this bs installed. Can't wait to get it back from accessories installation.

[Stretch18]

Originally Posted by SCRAPPYDO

We still lose about as many lives per year as we always did.

I mean, that's not true at all. Deaths per year are down about 25% from where they were in the 90's. And WAY down when you consider that there are many more cars on the road...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_...n_U.S._by_year

[SCRAPPYDO]

you seem to be right. I recall reading a study that contradicted that wiki about 3 years ago. I recall it because I was shocked that the deaths had not gone down at all even with all the airbags and safety equipment.

Just to jog my memory, I recall you could see shifts in the years seatbelts were made mandatory and the year ABS was made mandatory... But after that for the most part, it remained static.

I will try to find that.

Until I find it, assume I was wrong.

[dwf137]

Originally Posted by Pre

I tested all the systems for almost a week. So you want me to buy something and own it for 18 months to satisfy you. Great, contact me and I'll let you know where to send a large check so you can pay for the vehicle then. It's a stupid argument. If someone is an adult who has owned many vehicles, they can make a judgement on particular characteristics of an automobile. Whether they like them, or they can't stand them. I've read at length and sampled them. Just did again this morning as I have another Pilot loaner that I'll have for a few days to a week. There will be nothing new to report as the same ADAS bs is installed on this vehicle as well.
It would be nothing to never drive one equipped with the nannies. I drove my new model vehicle, 7 times prior to purchase, every time with these features installed.
The Leaf and range anxiety have nothing to do with this and that's another silly argument with you digging for treasure.

First, you say that you drove one for a few days, now you've driven them all of them for almost a week? Which is it? Your story keeps changing.

Not digging for treasure bro, just pointing out your own hypocritical discussion points. Just because we're talking about ADAS vs EV doesn't change the fact that you need to really live with something before fully understanding it... Yes, you can make an initial judgement, but living with something is the way that you really understand what it means... like EV. Borrow one for a week. Think about range because that's all you know. Give it back. complain about range anxiety. Instead, as you suggest, living with something for a longer period of time lets you learn the system. Get over your initial misconceptions.

Originally Posted by Pre

And look, we just don't agree on this, and never will, so just give it up. Disagree all you want, you aren't going to change my mind one iota, and vice versa. Just let it go dude. Find something else or another subject on here to do your thing, and just harp on incessantly like your backup cams. We don't agree, no big deal.

Sorry, but just like you come in here to complain about these systems, I'm here to say that they're not as bad as you make them out to be. Life in an echo chamber is pretty boring... I'm merely responding to you. If you want to end the argument, be the big boy and stop responding to me.

[4S-TURBO]

People cried about backup cams and idiot drivers incapable of using mirrors. ADAS is that.