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I’ll say it: Ditching ABS is horrifically stupid, but mandating backup cameras and backseat alarms is equally stupid in the opposite direction.
E: The article is talking about full-auto emergency braking and not ABS. I never thought I’d say these words, but I’m with Ted Cruz on this one.
Mandating backup cameras is not stupid. There’s a legitimate blind spot that has caused numerous child deaths. It’s okay for a car to cost a little more if it means it’s less likely to kill someone.
No comment on backseat alarms.
Are the backseat alarms smart enough to only alert when there's something back there yet? Otherwise it seems like it's just an annoyance or something that people will start to mentally filter out.
They seem to use weight to determine if a person is in a seat so they will mistake anything considered a significant enough weight as a person. Doesn't keep you from turning the car off or anything just dings and puts an alert up on the screen.
Thanks, the few times I've been in a car with that feature it seemed to just go off no matter what and was super annoying.
Ugh, I hope it's better than the last car I drove, couldn't set groceries on the seat or it'd trigger the seatbelt alarm.
Seatbelt alarm seems to need more weight than the backseat check alarm.
That sounds absolutely ridiculous. What's the point of needing less weight to set off backseat alarms? A gallon of water is only like 4kg and that's enough to set off seatbelt alarms.
Fucked if I know. All I know is groceries haven't set off the seatbelt alarm while car/boosterseats set off the check backset alarm.
If I open the back doors of my car before I get in the driver's seat and drive it then I'll get the notification when I shut the car off.
In my car I haven't figured out what sets it off, it happens all the the with nothing in the backseat.
I appreciate the intent, but at least in my car the false positive rate is so high I could imagine ignoring it
With a backup camera comes a video screen necessarily in view of the driver, contributing to distracted driving at all times the vehicle is not in reverse. How many kids have been killed because of such distractions?
The mandate isn’t that cars have infotainment screens, it’s that they have backup cameras. The choice to use the infotainment screen is the automakers, not the regulators. Early backup cameras had the screen embedded behind the rearview mirror, which was a much safer solution IMO. But cost cutting killed that because it was a second screen.
That could have been the mandate. They could have mandated that be the only allowable screen. It shows what's behind you, and that's it. No distractions tolerated. No pop-up logos or other advertising. No driving controls on that screen. Touch screen disabled while in motion, with all essential functions actuated by physical controls.
But they didn't. They mandated a rearview and monitor, but didn't restrict its use. And that failure has probably caused more injuries and deaths than it has prevented.
Okay so we should do either everything or nothing, no solutions can exist between extremes. Got it 🙄
I see where you’re coming from, but that’s mostly a problem with trucks, vans, and SUVs. Let’s stop incentivizing manufacturers to pump out tanks first, then we can talk.
The increasing digitization of auto manufacturing has led to all sorts of second-order effects, including vastly more difficult repairs (ask your local mechanic if you don’t believe me), massive invasions of consumer privacy (see linked expose), and generally made cars far more brittle.
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/
You’re one step away from advocating for the telescreens from 1984.
Back up cameras are also important for sedans, hatchback, and anything else where you can't see something 24 inches tall right behind the rear bumper. They are a benefit for every enclosed vehicle, just like airbags and abs.
They also put a distracting video monitor in front of the driver 100% of the time, not just the 0.2% while backing. Manufacturers have moved a lot of controls to that screen, rather than leaving them on tactile buttons and switches that could be operated without taking eyes off the road.
How many collisions have been caused by distractions from the these screens?
This isn’t the fault of regulators. They would have done this regardless of backup camera regulation.
Unless they only permitted that screen to show a rear view. They could have prohibited any other use, or prohibited non-tactile controls that required ocular attention while driving. They could have required that touchscreen controls be disabled while driving. But they didn't.
They mandated the distracting screen, and probably killed more people than they saved.
The law doesn’t mandate a touch screen, nor that it be on while driving. And why should it? The goal is to address the blind spot, not to tell automakers how to build head units.
They would have done the screens without the backup cameras.
Not if those distracting screens were prohibited.
They could ban the screens and keep the camera with a small screen that only displays the rear camera when in reverse and nothing else.
And enforcing telescreens into every citizen’s home is critical to ensuring public safety. Without constant monitoring, how can the State prevent sedition and deviancy? If you let people disable their telescreen speakers, how will they stay informed and alert if there’s an emergency?
If you don’t accept your telescreen, you’re neglecting your duty to protect others.
Back up cameras as a requirement does not require an infotainment that steals data, just a camera and a way to display it to the driver. The fact that car companies tied it into other things doesn't make the core requirement comparable to 1984.
For example, at least one car I drove had the backup camera display in the rear view mirror, not the infotainment screen.
Just a screen, camera, sensor, relay, 20ft of wire, nbd right? It's not like that makes stuff more expensive or harder to work on or anything
Same with requirements for cruise control, lights, brakes, and pretty much everything else on the car. Hell, most windshield wipers are probably more complex than just having a camera that displays on a screen when in reverse.
Brakes are obviously essential, cruise control isn't mandatory, lighting doesn't require a single pcb. Wipers can be pretty simple but are already one of the more expensive/annoying things to fix on a car, a mandated screen (and inevitable infotainment system along with it) to make up for lack of visibility over a mandated high beltline is just... not something I want to deal with. And you know the surveillance state's gonna tap the feeds from those millions of cameras and stick us with the bill for the hardware to do it, way too juicy source of data not to
Nonetheless, you’re arguing that the government should force people to install cameras on their private property in the interest of public safety, are you not?
Same vein: Should drivers be required to keep over-the-air software delivery enabled so that manufacturers can distribute safety-critical updates to their cars as fast as possible?
A backup camera doesn't require any kind of connection to anything other than the display for the driver. At the most basic level it is a safety feature like headlights at night and brakes that does not have an inherent connection to anything other than the camera. No recording requirement, not broadcasting, nothing.
You are conflating things that don't have anything to do with that basic concept.
In a vacuum, sure.
In practice, the government has moved from speed cameras (benign monitoring) to ALPRs (pervasive surveillance) without the public blinking. In practice, many auto manufacturers (Telsa, Hyundai, GM brands) have made it a matter of regular policy to ship home audio and video data from drivers’ cars to use for marketing and surveillance.
Backup cameras are a small drop in the bucket compared to other transportation design choices if you’re serious about a Vision* Zero endgame, and in my book, the potential for abuse makes them a liability rather than an asset towards that end.
Put yourself in the shoes of one of the far-too-many Americans that have accidentally killed a child because they could not see them, regardless of whether they were driving an F-250 or a Fiat 500. This is a safety problem we faced and addressed with regulation. This is a good thing. The second-order effects are not the fault of the regulators trying to make cars safer, that falls squarely on the auto companies who would have done that regardless of regulation.
This is where you’re losing me. The second-order effects are within the purview of those regulators and should have been addressed in-hand with the mandate.
Why would the automakers be willing to comply with safety regulation but disregard telemetry regulation?
Because it’s hard enough to get regulation passed, and telemetry is completely unrelated to backup cameras.
From an engineering perspective, tying the backup camera to the CAN (and by extension, telemetry units) dramatically increases the possible modalities of failure.
The two are absolutely connected.
Not just Ted. Legacy auto too. You should see what Chinese EVs have been doing to Euro NCAP lately.
Nope, it’s screaming metal deathtrap or the feature that beeps if someone is detected picking their nose and can only be reset by the vendor.
We need ranked choice voting so badly.