Yeah, I've had an airbag to the face. It definitely feels like a bomb that's for sure.
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Yeah, I've had an airbag to the face. It definitely feels like a bomb that's for sure.
I don't expect perfection, but if there is a problem I expect a recall that corrects it. Riding with explosives is never 100% safe, but I don't know what level of "unsafe" is a reasonable expectation.
I saw a few articles on new requirements in vehicles to detect "impairment" that would go beyond preventing starting but actually take control, pull over, and shut down. I'm all for getting impaired drivers off the roads, but I suspect "drivers" of autonomous-capable vehicles are even more likely to be the ones toked out of their minds while behind the wheel. Why enable poor judgement? If you can't drive, why are you driving?
I knew a guy who drove best while he was drunk. He was only proven wrong when he killed all those people.
My car turns on a "coffee cup" light if I don't stay sufficiently in the center of the lane. Actually, considering that this is a Japanese car, that's probably tea, not coffee, but the idea is the same. I have yet to see it.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
One issue I do have is that the number of icons that can show up are so numerous that the display is too busy. I shouldn't be looking at the instrument panel while driving. The speedometer is nice and big, but everything else is too small to be ideal.
Ammonium nitrate is the source of some of the finer non-combat explosions throughout history. It was the source of the blast that devastated Beirut a few years back, and there was a pretty big blast in Houston, even further back. It's not just for non-combat explosions, though, as it was used for the OK City bombing.
My 2018 Civic just missed most of those driver assistance doodads shipping as standard. Many were available on the higher trimlines then, but I bought "in the middle" of the range. I did get quite a few doodads nonetheless, for example onboard speech recognition for things like music navigation and connected phone operations. It works with no phone or Internet service at all (well aside from the phone operations which need a phone).Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
If I had to dream up a gadget I could use it might be a windshield heads-up display and smart IR imaging that could detect and point out critters in front of me at night. I don't want to hit another deer or even a possum at night.
I'm kind of liking the lane following and dynamic cruise control. It's not self driving, but there are stretches where it could be. I would like to see some IR critter detection. I feel like I saw some work in that direction a decade or more back, but nothing much since then. I'm not sure how much it would help, though. In my experience, deer tend to be moving fast. There seems to be a stereotype of deer standing in the road somewhere out of the range of your headlights, but I always see them moving in fast from the side. One of my cars had a scratch on the rear quarter panel where a deer kicked it. That was a weir one. I doubt any IR display would have shown that deer until it was way too late.
What has me baffled is that my garage door opener now works far better than it did in my old car. It's just one of those push button gadgets that clips to the visor. It doesn't clip all that well in the new car because the visor is thick, but the button works far better.
In my old car, I might have to press the button five times. I might have to back right up to the door. Also, since the switch has three buttons, it sometimes seemed to do nothing until I pressed the wrong button. In all cases, I had to be in the driveway before it would do anything. With the new car, the same switch works as I would expect. I don't have to be in the driveway, and the right button works the first time.
Of course, this suggests some kind of electromagnetic interference of some sort, but what? There just isn't that much difference between two cars in the area above the passenger seat, that seems like it could explain the situation. If it was the new car that was worse, I'd suspect some kind of sensor or motor up there (there's a moonroof....though I don't see how to moon anybody out of it), but it was the old car that had the issue.
Could it be as little as the thicker visor keeping the device further from the metal of the roof? It's quite odd. Not bad, mind you, but quite odd.
Since I hit a deer I always keep a hard eye out now at night, using fog lights since they tend to "spray" illumination to the side better than low beams. I've seen tons of deer alongside the road, and several cases where instead of running away they decide to move right into the road.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Even spotting one deer unlikely to collide amps the senses to watch out for more. Highlighting smaller critters or even possible pedestrians doesn't have any downsides as far as I can tell.
Is passive IR the answer, or something else? I'm not sure what else might work very well (if at all) at a reasonable price.
Less metal overall in the front-upper quarter of the cabin? The portion from the base of the windshield and side windows up over the roof to halfway back? Some sort of sunroof window?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Of course "thick visor" makes some sense.
I've never killed a deer, as far as I know. I rolled one into the ditch out on Orcas Island, but it got up and ran off. Did it run off a ways, then die? Perhaps, but I didn't hit it very hard, so it might well have survived. Certainly no legs were broken. Deer out there are kind of like vermin. You may have a similar situation. In Idaho, we have lots of deer, but also lots of predators. They are more wary. There are times of day when I don't like driving certain areas, but I don't drive in those areas all that much.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
However, I don't encounter the deer on the side of the road around here. I see that on Orcas, but not in Idaho. They stay well back. What we DO have is cows. Free range cattle, which means they can be anywhere. I don't think the survivability of hitting a cow would be all that good for either party. Fortunately, adult cows stay off the road and pay no attention to cars. Calves, on the other hand, freak out when a car comes along. The way they freak out is to run right into the road in front of you, then run down the road at no very great speed (cows aren't fast, and neither are calves) while looking back at you over first one shoulder then the other. It's about the stupidest avoidance technique I've ever seen: Something scary is coming, I'll get in front of it and try to run away in the same direction it is going.
Probably not less metal overall, but maybe. It does make me kind of wish I had experimented more with the old car. Of course, I blamed the problem on the device, not on the car. Now I realize that it was at least partly the car, but I can't say what part or how.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Yeah, deer-scale predators are scarce here. Domestic dog packs would be more likely predators.
But we do have idiots who insist on feeding the deer on an ongoing basis. It causes them to do abnormal things, like forming up in groups close to livestock pasture. We've had this lead to Chronic Wasting Disease and Bovine TB and something else that makes deer act deranged.
There are fines, but enforcement is spotty. It gets so bad local governments often stage clearing hunts to try to thin the herds and eliminate those obviously infected. All of this tends to bring the crazies out, marching with little kids and "Bambi" signs.
On Orcas, I watched a buck push a woman back into her car and start climbing in on top of her. She had been feeding it potato chips, and had run out. The buck wasn't having it. He wasn't big, as none are on that island, but it had some forks.
Had to make a run to a hardware store and then get groceries. Started my return by stopping and getting a small pineapple and black cherry shake made from scratch. Little shop shaped like an ice cream cone.
90 F, so running that A/C set for 75 degrees. Pleasant trip, and the atypical treat was a bonus. Just glad for the large-bore straw so I could get the fruity bits.
Trip meter says I averaged 46.1 miles/gallon. Not bad for a non-hybrid even on a shortest-path route instead of a more hypermiling-friendly route (longer).
Do most cars offer these statistics these days? I can get my MPG since last fill up, since trip meter A or B was reset, last and current trip from key-on to key-off. I never had this before the hybrid I'd bought in 2002.
I realize that EVs will fudge a nonsense figure as well as reporting efficiency by honest measures, and the plug-ins can often be a mixed bag jumbling things up.
I guess I wondered how many straight gas cars offer feedback? I sure notice other drivers doing crap on the road that must destroy their fuel efficiency.
I think virtually every new car has something like that. In my experience, the meters always run high, but that's still pretty good. I haven't seen anything recent that didn't have at least something, even on trucks that get lousy mileage under any circumstance.
My plug in doesn't report what would be useful, but I already covered that. I'm not going to bother calculating true fuel economy. It would be a chore. I'd want to cover a fair amount of distance on gas only, while measuring miles and gallons used (by filling the tank at the end), and I'd want to repeat the calculation a few times to come up with an average. After all, my last car could vary considerably based on the time of year and the type of driving. It really liked 45-55, but not so much at 75-80. The interstate out here is 65 in some places and 80 everywhere else, which isn't going to be great for any car. Of course, the 65 stretch is in Boise, where whether or not you can do 65 depends on a lot of factors out of your control. Hybrids are supposed to be better at stop and go, since stop is pretty nearly off.
To calculate real fuel mileage, I'd have to do several trips of some distance. I don't do a lot of that, but when I do, it's almost entirely interstate travel. I suppose I could use that to figure out the accuracy of the gauge, but since I already know that it doesn't give me the data I want, I don't really care whether the data I don't want is accurate or not.
The one thing I am curious about is how it would handle the NaN issue.
One other interesting point is that, though it makes no particular sense, my electric range has increased since I started using the A/C. Naturally, the A/C can't boost range, as that would violate a law of physics, but I'm not quite sure what is going on. My father speculated that it could be a case that the bearings are smoothing out a bit, but that seems unlikely to result in a 10% efficiency gain. I was thinking it might be that the batteries work better at warmer temperatures, but it wasn't exactly cold for the first few weeks when I had the lower range, and it's not exactly warm now that I'm getting the higher range. Not quite sure what to make of it. The stated range was 42, I was getting about 44, now I'm getting about 52.
Isn't stop and go where the real MPG throttling happens because it takes more gas to get going than it does to maintain a speed?
Well there are always break-in issues I suppose. For the driver as well as the vehicle.
If people have the feedback available though, I'm not sure why I see so much erratic driving that hurts mileage. Stuff like running up to stops, driving slow then fast then slow for no obvious reasons, accelerating hard up inclines, starting from a stop too quickly or slowly.
Perhaps they just haven't spent as much time with this stuff. I pick it up in peripheral vision having had mileage feedback displays for 2 decades.
It really isn't a game of numbers aside from doing well while still driving safely. I don't get goofy like coasting down hills, but I do tend to feather the acceleration when cruise control isn't a safe option. A guy I know can do much better, but he admits he does a lot of dicey things for high MPG.
For the good of the car I'll occasionally do an "Italian Tuneup." There is a stretch of Interstate near me where the limit is 75. I'll hit it during light traffic times and accelerate hard to 75 and hold it on cruise and go about 25 miles, then back. There is a military electronic gear surplus shop I visit, so the trip is not all waste. Amazing stuff to fiddle with, and I got a used compact oscilloscope and some hand tools there. Those trips average more like 37 to 38 MPG though.
Yeah, any congestion and a lot of city driving in general takes a toll. EVs do better there but it still isn't ideal. That's their sweet spot though.Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
My neighbor hood is 15mph but 2 blocks out it is 45 and then to really go anywhere it goes up to 65.
I very rarely go under 40 but there is some stop and go getting to the highway.