> keep enough distance, pay attention and this is never an issue

That isn’t how safety regulations work. Driving is a cooperative affair and giving more information about your intend to the drivers around you is a good thing.

I mean if all it took was “keep distance and pay attention” why bother with turn signals?

And as a side note: “self driving” cars still haven’t completely figured out the right algorithm for turn signals. I watch enough “AI Driver” on YouTube to see him call out how Tesla’s turn signaling is sometimes pretty erratic. It is probably a pretty hard problem when you think about it.

Showing brake lights is much easier. Got a deceleration over a certain value? Well, show them lights!

> I mean if all it took was “keep distance and pay attention” why bother with turn signals?

Have you met BMW drivers? /s

You should be practicing defensive driving whenever you drive. It's what's taught nowadays and has been for a long while.

You should expect others to be driving at their worst. No turn signals, broken tail lights, erratic lane change, abrupt braking or acceleration, the whole shebang. Expecting the worst is the best way to ensure your own safety on the road.

I laughed at the mention of BMW drivers because it's so spot on. I agree that defensive driving is always the way to go, but at a certain point you need information. TC essentially goes from 100km/h to stopped in less than 15 seconds without any obvious visual indication. That's coming to the point where there's almost no defensive driving possible and a deadly highway collision becomes more likely than not.

It's the same in any situation. Always assume people will do completely insane things and prepare accordingly, but that doesn't mean we should make things more dangerous for no good reason. For all the truth that more chaotic roads make for more attentive drivers, they also still make for more accidents.

Yes. But the point is more information is good. You can be the most observant most defensively best trained driver, and more predictable information is still good.

I don't understand the motivation of arguing an objectively provably demonstrably good thing, because some other thing is also good :-).

Sure, more information is good, but you shouldn't expect that information. People don't use DRLs and turn signals all the time. Lights break. Electrical connections degrade. Old cars almost never keep up with advancements in signaling technology.

All the signals in the world wouldn't help people deal with someone that refuses to use their indicators or doesn't maintain their old car, and that is the expectation you should have when driving: the worst possible drivers around you all the time.

You can deal with practically any situation as long as you're keeping your distance and staying observant. Regardless what the people around you are or are not doing.

Agreed. Fully.

And yet precisely none of that, to me at least, is persuasive reason to NOT put the most effective possible light and information on cars coming out of the factory :-)

(And don't even get me started on red vs amber rear turning signals ;)

There are two different problems.

One is educating drivers to be better. Drive more predictably, drive more defensively, drive safer in adverse conditions, etc.

The other is designing the driving experience as a system to deal with humans. Systems that don't anticipate human faults are brittle and, frankly, shitty. Just like you can't expect 100% of users to be phish resistant, you can _not_ expect perfection from drivers, and you _must_ build in compensations to deal with it. That means well designed roads, good brakes lights, and even brake lights that account for one-pedal driving.

Well yes, but engine breaking is a lot weaker then regen braking can be, so there really needs to be break lights id deceleration is more than one would reasonably expect engine breaking to achieve

Really depends on the car. There are cars with very little inertia, if you let go of the gas pedal quickly they will get quite jerky. In those, you really have to depress the clutch before completely letting go of the accelerator.

What kind of a car is that? I have 1.6l hyndai ix20 and I can let off gas at any time with zero issues....

Keep enoug distance to be safe and someone will just change a lane to be in front of you, removing any safe distance you decided to keep

Then slow down a bit and make more space. Traffic flows better when people have room to change lanes.

That's my complaint, if I do someone just fills that space because their lane is going 2cm/minute slower than mine

Then slow down a bit and make more space. There's no trophy at the end.

Which causes next car to get in front. Still no space, nor more safety, and also triggering morons to do extra maneuvers and potentially fuck up more.

Do you lack ability to think about the results of the actions ?

> keep enough distance, pay attention and this is never an issue

If this was helpful, far fewer crashes would happen on roads today. People are imperfect. They're distracted, they have slow reaction times, they have poor vision, and they drive in poor weather.

As the video states, regulations should definitely be altered to require car manufacturers to show brake lights no matter how deceleration occurs. It's just one additional way to prevent collisions.

Many people (perhaps the majority around here) don't keep nearly enough distance, so I wouldn't say that this "isn't helpful" so much as this "isn't happening".

But yeah, the car in the video also has a terrible flaw that should be fixed.