What if you have to drive like a maniac to get your friend to the ER before he bleeds out?

(Yes, a friend of mine told me how he had to do just that. His friend died anyway, but it wasn't because the car quit.)

There are lots of cases where I might need to get the most out of the car.

Or maybe I just want to practice parallel parking. Erratic back and forth driving and turning.

So the car according to some algorithm decides to shut down the car and strand me. The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using, so I have no idea what line to not cross.

None of this and I mean _none_ would trigger it.

Not recommending this or proud/bragging/endorsing this, but I drive fast. Too fast. 100 MPH for me is what most people feel doing 5 over.

I have *never* triggered these alerts unless I was genuinely tired.

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You're talking about a system you don't have the faintest clue about, instead of whipping out irrelevant fantasy situations, ask how it works???

It will *not* react to intentional aggressive movement, it reacts to clearly unintentionally movement that are consistently late and low steering torque.

This is not stuff you can replicate "practicing parallel parking", or driving like you're re-enacting fast and furious!

I expect better of HN, you're jumping from a misleading interpretation to FUD without taking a moment to learn.

> a system you don't have the faintest clue about

Which I explicitly stated:

"The worst part is, I have no idea what criteria that algorithm is using"

> clearly unintentionally movement

How does a machine know I didn't intend it?

You know... when most people have no idea what they're talking about they seek clarity instead of writing 4 paragraphs of fantasy.

But you do you.

These systems don't trigger for "potentially bad" behavior like speeding, they trigger when you drive like an intoxicated or impaired driver.

Intentionally acting like an impaired drive is like intentionally walking like you're drunk... gravity doesn't care if you were pretending to stumble, you're still coming down.

So it doesn't matter if you intended to veer in and out if your in your lane with barely any steering torque being applied... that's how you cause an accident.

If you were dodging obstacles you'd be applying sharper input than a drunk person. You can't "fake" drunk without being a danger to yourself and others.

How does it know you're wandering in and out of your lane?

You can keep trying to go for gotchas... but it's not worth your time or mine.

What do you think is going to happen, ADAS is going to have a tracking error that makes you look like an impaired driver?

These systems are even starting to take in eyesight and

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You're like a person going in front of a judge trying to argue:

"Well the officer heard gunshots and watched me, the only person in the room, run away with a smoking gun as the guy fell..."

"But maybe I didn't shoot him!! Maybe I was shooting out the window and felt like going for a run!!"

You're not really going to fool anyone... if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired. Doesn't matter if it's alcohol, sleep, texting, etc.

Yeah, well, I've been in software for 45 years. Magical algorithms like that always have both bugs and unintended consequences.

"if it drives like it's impaired, it's impaired"

It's just magic I'm supposed to trust.

No thanks.

P.S. I worked on the 757 stabilizer trim design. While I didn't work on the avionics boxes that fitted to it, I know was designed to never allow the software to have the last word. Because software has bugs in it. It always does.

Yes, I know about the 737MAX. There's a switch to turn physically off the stab trim. All the electronics that drive the trim, including MCAS, are upstream of that switch, and that switch rules. Another switch that overrides all the software is the column trim switch. The 3rd crew that experienced MCAS failure that you never hear about used these switches to override MCAS and land safely.

P.P.S. I let my car drift out of the lane if there's no oncoming traffic to give a crazy cyclist / kid on a skateboard more room, or to give that mom with kids more room, or to avoid an icy patch, or to avoid a pothole, or to get my wheels on a drier stretch of pavement to avoid hydroplaning. Heck, if it's safe to do so, I'll move over a full lane to avoid kids.

I've a very soft driving style, because I'm used to cars with very direct steering, and when I get into rentals these systems trigger like crazy with me, they're super annoying.

"Driving like a maniac" to save one person is essentially one possible answer to the trolley problem.

I'm not saying that I condone that particular answer being applied to this particular case, but it's well without the bounds of moral philosophy to say "you should not be able to make this choice".

If the remote kill switch exists, it's going to be hijacked into government having the power to disable your car. It starts innocuously, something that everyone will agree with, like drunk drivers. Next will be drug dealers, who could disagree with that? Then deadbeat parents who owe child support. Then tax-owing deadbeats. Then who knows what other classes of "undesirables".

Proof? It already happened: driver licenses already went through every one of those steps, getting hijacked way beyond the original purpose of denoting that you had the training to drive a car, into government-imposed threats against all sorts of "bad" behavior.

I don't trust any expansion of government power in good faith.

Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

There is literally no reason for automakers to do this, and yes I know now the FUD comes in "well they will cuz reasons! cuz gubbmint!"

But just like the rear view camera... you're imagining that they'll spend significant time and money to do something with no use other than incriminating themselves...

So sure maybe your rear view camera can be rigged to stream to their servers 24/7, some already record and upload incidents anyways right?

But it's a massive jump from the happy path.

This is 100000x easier to do on the car without looping in a remote server and opens them up to 100000000000x more liability if the interface is hacked.

They wouldn't do it.

> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

>> Again, this is just like saying that a camera existing enables the government to hack it, so rear view cameras are part of forming a surveillance state.

>That might be the best example of a straw-man that I've ever seen.

I think that was the point.

Replace "rear view cameras" with "onboard tools to detect and deter/prevent impaired driving" and you have the same straw man.

This right here, that was an ironic comment to read on their part...

Why do you assume these systems are static? It's not a given that the systems available in 2025 will have any resemblance to the ones available today. And in fact they may have mandatory upgrade abilities, so the car you buy may not be the same as the car you have 5 years later.