{"id":2769,"date":"2013-07-01T07:55:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T21:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=2769"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:36:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:36:45","slug":"the-downside-of-driver-convenience-aids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/the-downside-of-driver-convenience-aids\/","title":{"rendered":"The Downside of Driver Convenience Aids"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m constantly amazed at how smart cars are becoming.\u00a0 To put this another way, every year seems to bring a new set of sensors or cameras to make driving easier and\/or safer.\u00a0 Ten years ago, rear parking sensors were the new gadget to improve safety.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no doubt that this has reduced the risk of driveway tragedies where little kids haven\u2019t realised that Mum or Dad are backing the car out and\u2026\u00a0 And it\u2019s probably saved a few bent bumpers or so.\u00a0 Now, of course, rear parking assistance is pretty old hat and nearly every new car has this feature.\u00a0 Now, there are rear cameras, front parking assistance, sensors to the side, sensors that detect a change in your driving style and either cut out the distractions like the phone and the audio if the car \u201cthinks\u201d that things are getting tricky or else flashes and beeps at you to tell you to wake up if it thinks you\u2019re daydreaming or falling asleep (the latter is found in the new Mercedes E-class<\/a> models, for example).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that smart cars make driving safer.\u00a0 However, there is a downside to them.\u00a0 We could easily become dependent on them.\u00a0 Possibly, we could depend on them to the extent that we become less alert drivers or less skilled drivers.\u00a0 Why should we get into the habit of looking out behind us when we back if there\u2019s a beeping sensor to warn us of approaching obstacles?\u00a0 Why should we check to the side if the car has a sensor?\u00a0 This will mean that we stop developing our \u201csituational awareness\u201d.<\/p>\n

Situational awareness is one of the most important factors when it comes to safety systems in the air.\u00a0 Pilots have gadgets that fly the plane for them (autopilot) but even when the autopilot is taking care of things, pilots still have to have good situational awareness and be constantly alter to what\u2019s going on in the air around them.\u00a0 Yes, flying a plane is trickier than driving a car (even though you can get your private pilot\u2019s licence before you can get your car driver\u2019s licence) and there is a third dimension to deal with.\u00a0 But the air is considerably less crowded than the roads and pilots have radios and radars to talk to other pilots coming towards them, and can get told about congestion up ahead by the control towers.\u00a0 Drivers don\u2019t have friendly ACTs (air traffic controllers) keeping a lookout at areas of potential congestion \u2013 a sat-nav package or access to an online webcam that shows congestion is probably the best you can get.\u00a0 Even so, pilots still have to have their situational awareness up to full every time they\u2019re in the cockpit.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the rub: pilots never learn to fly on planes that have autopilot.\u00a0 Instead, they learn on basic little things where you have to do it all yourself.\u00a0 However, people can learn to drive on cars with all the driver convenience gadgets.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you\u2019re a teenager learning to drive in the family car, as most of us do.\u00a0 Earlier, Mum and Dad picked a car that had all the safety features to keep all the kids safe.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to learn how to drive on something that could have front and rear parking sensors and maybe a camera.\u00a0 All well and good. You get your licence, and later, you leave home and you decide to pick up a set of wheels of your very own.\u00a0 The sort of thing you can afford for a first car isn\u2019t going to have all the newest driver aids.\u00a0 We all know what the typical \u201cstudent car\u201d is like.\u00a0 The most you\u2019re likely to have will be power steering, automatic windows and automatic transmission (like the mid-80s BMW 3-series <\/a>we sold a couple of years back to a polytech student).\u00a0 If you\u2019re really lucky, it will have cruise control or even steering wheel-mounted audio controls.\u00a0 But you\u2019re going to have to parallel park and back down driveways all the same\u2026 but you\u2019ve never learned how to do this without electronic assistance.<\/p>\n

So while all the driver convenience aids are very helpful, I have one real concern.\u00a0 Are we going to end up with a generation of drivers who don\u2019t know how to drive without sensors all over the place?\u00a0 Won\u2019t this have us ending up with less skilled drivers on the roads?\u00a0 Will we get drivers who are so used to getting information about their surroundings from the display screen in the dashboard that they don\u2019t look out the window or use the mirrors?\u00a0 Because those awareness aids only work when the ignition is on \u2013 when you\u2019ve turned the engine off and are about to get out of the car, the car won\u2019t tell you about the approaching cyclist you\u2019re about to knock to Kingdom Come with the door.<\/p>\n

My teenage son is months away from being old enough to get his learner\u2019s licence.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to insist that he does at least some of his learning in the old warhorse of a Nissan <\/a>that my husband uses for his contractor work, which has power steering and that\u2019s about it, so he knows how to drive something basic and bog-standard \u2013 a dumb car rather than smart car, so he ends up a smart driver rather than a dumb one.\u00a0 I hope other parents will do the same.<\/p>\n

  http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/blog-listing.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m constantly amazed at how smart cars are becoming.\u00a0 To put this another way, every year seems to bring a new set of sensors or cameras to make driving easier and\/or safer.\u00a0 Ten years ago, rear parking sensors were the new gadget to improve safety.\u00a0 And there\u2019s no doubt that this has reduced the risk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12159,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions\/12159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}