New Feature Suggestion... "Back off warning!"

[Dstrohl]

Since 90% of accidents are caused by people who tailgate and drive way too close to be able to stop safely (source: totally made up by me, but the number must be pretty high), it seems like it would be an interesting, useful, and probably not to hard to do option to have an alert on the dash when you are following someone too close...

v1: Simply based on your speed, the expected stopping distance on a normal dry road with good tires, and the distance to the car ahead, have a little alert show up that says "slow down, following distance too close for safe stopping".

v2: adding in knowledge of the car and whats going on around you, is the road probably wet? (has it rained in the past hour, based on weather service reports), how old are your tires? are you going uphill or downhill?

v3: adding in knowledge of other traffic around you, is the car ahead of you following too closely, is the car behind you following too closely? is there a traffic jam ahead? (based on traffic data) is it a car or truck ahead of you *based on radar / video analysis)

Even if you cant fix the idiot behind you who is tailgating (until we get those built in machine guns I've been wanting for a while), if you have enough room ahead of you when the car ahead does a panic stop, you can decelerate slowly enough to hope he doesn't hit you stop as well before hitting anyone.

I will admit that I sometimes follow too closely when I am not paying enough attention, while I admit that the hardcore drivers out there who like driving at the edge would probably never listen to it anyway, something like this would help highlight it for me, and make me back off when it comes up.

so, thoughts? or am I behind the times and someone has already done this? (I don't have my car yet, but didn't see it in the manual), or just stupid and no one would ever listen to it anyway?

 

[Skotty]

There is no easy fix for this, other than maybe autonomous cars. Here's how the feature could be implemented though. Create a sticker that says "back off, you are following too close". Stick it to your dash. Done! This works because most people are always following too close. This is further aggravated by the fact that if you don't follow too close, people will keep pulling between you and the car in front of you, forcing you to slow down to put extra space, causing others to pass you and pulll in front of you, repeat ad nauseam. It's actually one of the things I hate most about driving.

 

[Dstrohl]

There is no easy fix for this, other than maybe autonomous cars. Here's how the feature could be implemented though. Create a sticker that says "back off, you are following too close". Stick it to your dash. Done!

SEE, I said I thought it was easy!

This works because most people are always following too close. This is further aggravated by the fact that if you don't follow too close, people will keep pulling between you and the car in front of you, forcing you to slow down to put extra space, causing others to pass you and pull in front of you, repeat ad nauseam. It's actually one of the things I hate most about driving.

yeah, true, that comes up in my current traffic aware cruise control (on my Volvo) all the time... how about allowing owners to modify the thresholds a bit with the same following UI that currently exists for the TACC... you can tighten up the following distance alert a little, or lengthen it a bit., or at least an acknowledgement button that says "OK, I get it, now shut up and stop bothering me".

Or how about even easier, have a "shadow mode" for TACC, one that uses the existing algorithms and simply alerts you if you are not using TACC and you are closer than it would be... (of course, you could always turn it off, like the speed alerts)

Even though most people follow too closely, I suspect that increasing this distance by even a little bit would help immensely, especially when you find that you are creeping up on the guy ahead and didn't even know it yourself.

 

[malcolm]

Small notice on the back window:

If you're close enough to read this, you should be using a prophylactic. Drive Safe.

 

[CHG-ON]

Here's one that that I heard from a well known source here that will back them off: If you are going down hill, throw it into reverse. It puts both the reverse lights and brakes lights on. The motor is simply in reverse phase and coasts. Remember, there are no gears. I haven't had the guts to try it.

But what I do do is to lift up on the go pedal repeatedly, which flashes the brakes with regen. It works every time for me, without fail.