I didn’t know it was a feature until I nearly got rear ended waiting on a left turn and the car went into rear impact protection mode. (Other driver veered off at the last second). It was quite impressive tbh.

Edit: For the curious:

https://www.volvocars.com/lb/support/manuals/xc90/2018w46/dr...

https://www.volvocars.com/en-th/support/manuals/v60/2017w17/...

You jest but this is what humans and animals do instinctively. When you fall, you try to fall in a way that minimizes damage.

For example, if you trip over something and your hands are occupied so you can't use them to catch yourself, you will instinctively try to roll onto your shoulder instead of faceplanting into the ground.

You see this in freestyle motorcycle and mountain bike riding, and skateboarding etc as well. If you see you aren't going to land the trick, you try to throw the bike or skateboard away from you and land feet first down the ramp. Plenty of videos of pros doing this on youtube.

An AI driver should have those instincts too imo. I’d expect my car to crash in the safest possible way if it can’t not crash.

Like quickly put a dummy in your seat and throw you out?

I'm very lucky, in both cases, I didn't hit anything but the road. Especially not the car.

I still rode MX bike on tracks for a while then eventually quite entirely.

Now I've got a mountain bike and it's scary enough already!

And did you stop riding?

If you still don't hit anything, you can often even walk away, or end up with minor arm/foot injury. Unfortunately I've seen videos of contrary, ie couple riding same bike, hitting car, flying over it, sliding maybe 50m and still hitting curb so hard their bodies jumped quite a bit in the air. Both dead on spot.

As I said, it could entirely have been chance that this worked out for the best. I'm not a rider myself, and my brother is not an expert just a rando like me who has had a fair amount of interesting experiences in his life (how he is still alive today, I'm not quite sure, but luck has to be the biggest factor).

Another completely insane motorcyclist meme is if you are inevitably going to strike an animal in the road, it's better to hit it in a wheelie, that is, with the front wheel raised off the ground. Again: insane.

Survivor bias. The people that it didn't work for don't get to tell you how well it worked.

I'm reminded of a talk at a science fiction convention years ago mostly targeted at writers (and done by a physician) - "Maim 'em Right." Basic message was that when writing injuries, make them realistic. If someone takes a blow to the head that knocks them unconscious for a significant amount of time, they're not resting for a day then getting up and going on to lots of exertion and winning the day. They're suffering from concussion, maybe subdural hematoma/brain bleed, etc.

Also discussion of TBI, including things like shaken baby syndrome - in the skull, the brain has a consistency somewhat more durable than thick jello. Get one of those brain jello molds available around Halloween, make a batch, then instead of unmolding it keep it sealed and give it a good shaking. THEN unmold it and see how much damage there's been.

Getting run over by a car after going down is a bad day.

The real technique, in my opinion (I have been down a few times), is to use the brakes to take off as much speed as possible while, if you can, bringing both the bike and yourself off the roadway and onto a shoulder or median.

And always: legal or not, lane split into stopped traffic so that it's an instinct. More than once the car in front of me has slammed his brakes on and I've split in next to him, only for him to be rear-ended by the car which was behind me.

Much better to be next to a car that is rear-ended than to be behind one.

Which decelerates your face more gently, 14" of air space for it to flop around in or 5" of air followed by 9" of airbag? Engineering tradeoff are everywhere.

You're absolutely right that slowing down slowly is the name of the game. Failing that, evenly spreading the force is the next best thing.

There are only two ways to go down on a motorcycle. High-side or low-side. Pretty sure most people would prefer low-side if they ever had to pick. I had a high-side crash on a bicycle once. Luckily it was a grass field with soft dirt. Had to go home and change my pants after that one.

Whoever is running the teleporter would have to have "collision avoidance" strategies I guess. :-)

If the self-driving tries, and it worsens the impact somehow, bigger lawsuit. If the self-driving fails to do so, bigger lawsuit.

And it might sound "insane" that a best attempt could result in worse liability than no attempt, but unfortunately there is a lot of legal precedent to back up the idea.

PS - Although legislation could make self-driving manufacturers immune from increased liability for these "best effort" systems.

What if the nearest crash test protocol is an absolute "worst case" scenario like the "small overlap test" [0]. Here, getting any additional coverage would improve the outcome, even though it makes it less similar to the most-relevant IIHS test.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZC8Ykl1esE

https://www.mercedesbenzofnatick.com/new-features-mercedes-b...