Is it time to ban LED Headlights

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

OK, just HOW many flippin' hold assists do you kids need on a bloody car, here??!!
Have you got one for when you need to just nip out to the postbox at the side of the road, too?


As does the handbrake... and for more than just a few moments.

Sorry to blow your mind, but, I think you need to read up on them again. I think your struggling to understand and its clouding your thoughts.

Then I apologise for not being able to understand what your wording has failed to explain...

Is English your first language. I couldn't write it any simpler

Given how you mention a clutch, I assume you also have a gear changing control of some kind? Why then do you not have an automatic gear change hold assist, to actually free up this now freed-up hand that is not actually freed up by this device, because you're still using it to take it out of gear as you suggested.....?

How are you changing/engaging gear and releasing the hand brake at the same time. Tip your not Tip, I am in effect

What on EARTH do you need a free foot for, anyway? Tapping along with the radio?
Is it really that much of a hassle and a struggle and a life-threatening issue to just apply a handbrake?
Do you also struggle when you have to indicate and don't have a free hand for that?
Do we need to get Jeremy Kyle out to mediate between you and your vehicle during these difficulties?

Sigh

The only purpose this thing seems to serve is pulling off from the lights ever so slightly faster, which again comes under lowering driver standards and abilities, or as a disability aid for those with impacted or missing limbs that they cannot otherwise co-ordinate like most normal drivers.

Then again, I suppose driving a BMW or Audi should now be listed as an official disability....

Sigh again

Utter tosh.
None of those drivers should be riding the clutch in the first place, but technology cannot replace that.

Yet many many people do.

Well I have already told you.........

Humour me, post it again

But to further that, I have watched people I previously knew to be pretty good drivers and seen their standards lower as more technology like this crept into their cars. It's not age or anything, as their standards jump right back up the instant they drive my 'old' manual car.

Irrelevant, people drive unfamiliar cars with more care.
When I irregularly drive a POS car, I treat it like my life is on the line (as it probably is)

Introducing more tech to do what the driver should be doing doesn't increase driver standards. It actually lowers them, as they start assuming the car will do everything for them... that's actually another excuse I'm hearing more often from people with broken vehicles, too.
Eventually this will just make human drivers obsolete and you can kiss goodbye to your driving licence.

Gibberish but fell free to post some evidence.
tech doesnt have to improve driver skills, most things we do are to reduce time taken, or improve safety.
I am not sure that acting as a luddite is improving driving skills either

Do auto boxes not come with Neutral or Park settings, any more?
Well, it sounds like they come with a dozen different auto-brake mechanisms now, so the lights should still go off after a couple of seconds anyway...

As i said already nothing to do with auto boxes

 

[jpaul]

Introducing more tech to do what the driver should be doing doesn't increase driver standards. It actually lowers them, as they start assuming the car will do everything for them... that's actually another excuse I'm hearing more often from people with broken vehicles, too.
Eventually this will just make human drivers obsolete and you can kiss goodbye to your driving licence.

Gibberish but fell free to post some evidence.
tech doesnt have to improve driver skills, most things we do are to reduce time taken, or improve safety.
I am not sure that acting as a luddite is improving driving skills either

theres some truth - - skill atrophication and assumptions on 'tech' capabilities are big issues

Behavioral Adaptation to Advanced Driver Assistance Systems: A Literature Review.
In this literature review, theories of driver behavioral adaptation (BA) are examined for the
insight they can provide into how drivers will use advanced driver assistance systems
(ADAS). Such systems are designed to support driving tasks formerly managed exclusively
by the drivers themselves. How drivers react to this assistance will depend on the accuracy
of their understanding (or mental model) of the functions and capabilities of a particular
ADAS. Negative BA effects can arise when a driver’s mental model of an ADAS is
incomplete or inaccurate. This may happen when an ADAS has functional limits that are
reached only infrequently, and that are therefore difficult for a driver to notice and
understand. Various ways to address this issue are described in the conclusions.

look up the paper. ..... suddenly you have to drive the car ... Tesla AP crashes have to be an example.
The engineers who have crashed the cars were probably intellectually intrigued, but non-engineers ill-informed that it could kill them.

 

[Rroff]

Gibberish but fell free to post some evidence.
tech doesnt have to improve driver skills, most things we do are to reduce time taken, or improve safety.
I am not sure that acting as a luddite is improving driving skills either

A lot of people just aren't familiar with the limits of technology and expect far more from it than it is actually capable of - having spent many many years doing programming and electronics, etc. mostly as a hobby it is interesting just how far a lot of things are faked up or made to work by repeatable outcome well enough within set limits they appear far more sophisticated but totally fail outside that environment.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Zzzzzz the dross arguments in this thread.

Hold assist is a must have in a car with an electronic handbrake. It's an absolute nightmare to manually activate and disable electronic handbrakes for hill strats. It's possible, but it's a pain. You'll feel this pain if you ever have to do a 3 point turn on a gradient with an electronic handbrake without assists. It's nothing but button pushes and waiting. That or you do fancy footwork and risk rolling into something if its tight.

By the same token auto removal is nice to have as you can just pull away without pushing the electronic handbrake button. It's an experience much closer to a conventional handbrake whereby you feel the bite against the handbrake and then taper it off.

Hill hold isn't exclusively for electronic handbrakes either. Both our 3 series and VW Transporter normal handbrake fleet vehicles have hold assist.

My skills don't suffer attrition just because I use assists. Sometimes I use auto high beam when I'm on a road that suits it. Other assists like blinds spot alerts and autonomous braking don't mean I stop doing blind spot/mirror checks or just let the car emergency brake for me.

Or is everyone ragging on assists driving cars with no ABS, power steering, traction control. Cars with no intermittent setting on the wipers or auto dim rear view mirrors?

 

[jpaul]

My skills don't suffer attrition just because I use assists. Sometimes I use auto high beam when I'm on a road that suits it. Other assists like blinds spot alerts and autonomous braking don't mean I stop doing blind spot/mirror checks or just let the car emergency brake for me.

you may not ... you're +3sigma,
but the other driver who crashes into you may do

 

[cheesyboy]

I ran our b6 passat for about 5 years without any handbrake at all. The damn electronic thing kept getting stuck on or off, and the garage couldn't figure it out, so just made do. Lots of clutch control. To he honest, I continue to mostly drive that way anyway. It's nice to be able to park on a hill with a working handbrake, though, rather than just leaving in gear

 

[Sin_Chase]

you may not ... you're +3sigma,
but the other driver who crashes into you may do

Let's be honest though, electronic handbrake have been around a long time, and I'm not seeing an increase in cars flying through hedgerows on fire at 70 mph as a result.

I'd rather a poor driver be in a vehicle with technology to save their behind than not. At least the rest of us have a fighting chance. Many people simply lack the aptitude to improve or hone their skills anyway, so may as well let tech do it for them.

 

[jpaul]

agree - handbrakes mastered

re-reading earlier mentioned paper - some right gems - God help us

A driver’s development of a flawed mental model can happen in many ways. In some cases,
the driver has no information about the performance envelope of the system.... In other cases, the ADAS/advanced driver assistance systems behaves in an
unexpected fashion that differs from what might be considered a more natural model. For
example, drivers may be surprised by a lane keeping system’s blindness to objects in the
middle of the road, especially when the system seems to be able to “see” lane markings so
well.

.... so he runs down a dog.

... Tesla were having to provide insurance services to their cusomers - no ?

 

[Sin_Chase]

Expecting a lane change assist to also avoid obstacles in the road is just foolish however. And you can bet your behind that the anti litigation Owners Manual will make the limitations of various assistances absolutely and abundantly clear!

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Well the article (above) is talking about advanced driver assistance, so I can understand how that could impact driving if people rely on them rather than using them (as intended) as an addition to good driving. I can see why some people would stop looking before changing lanes if they believed the car would magically stop them if it wasn't safe. No diff to the muppet who was caught in the passenger seat of his car a while back as the car was driving itself.

However I don't think most people would consider things like hold assist as an advanced aid, unless they were driving a 1980s or prior vehicle I suppose

Yet if we believed taskmaster the rise in technology should see a rise in deaths, as people drive worse. Stats show the opposite, and also consider the amount of extra vehicles added annually as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great_Britain

https://www.statista.com/statistics/299972/average-age-of-cars-on-the-road-in-the-united-kingdom/

So more cars, less deaths. Seems something isnt adding up with the the increase in technology worsening driving

Maybe for the majority who get how these things when used correctly allow people to focus more on driving, more than offset those who seem to struggle and get worse because of them.

I guess we should get rid of airbags as well, since they are tech and people must be driving around ready to crash because the airbag will save them right?

 

[Mr.Orb]

So I own a BMW X1 with led headlights and whilst I don't have any issue with the harsh cutoff I probably get flashed about once a week from oncoming vehicles who think I have my full beams on.

It's especially worse when you are coming over a brow of a hill.

I've checked with BMW and the headlights are calibrated correctly.

Don't agree they should be banned, think there needs to be a better solution.

 

[Basher]

Well, it sounds like they come with a dozen different auto-brake mechanisms now, so the lights should still go off after a couple of seconds anyway...

Unfortunately, the auto-hold (on BMW at least) still keeps the brake light illuminated throughout.

 

[200sols]

Hold assist literally just holds the car so you can take your foot off the brake. It doesn’t stop the car rolling back on a hill, as soon as you lift the clutch it disengages unless in neutral in which case stop/start engine engages.

 

[Simon]

Hold assist literally just holds the car so you can take your foot off the brake. It doesn’t stop the car rolling back on a hill, as soon as you lift the clutch it disengages unless in neutral in which case stop/start engine engages.

What exactly is its purpose then if it doesn’t stop you rolling back on a hill?

Both my cars have it and stops you rolling back on a hill. I have no clutch pedal to balance so autos need it to stop rolling back. The M3 has a manual handbrake which also works with auto hold on hill, but you could use the handbrake if you wanted. .the DCT box doesn’t creep either

The evoque has the 9sp ZF which hill start works very well. Especially as the creep helps, but the handbrake is a binary electric one which you cannot modulate. Although you have to be careful when it stop starts on a steep hill...

 

[200sols]

What exactly is its purpose then if it doesn’t stop you rolling back on a hill?

Both my cars have it and stops you rolling back on a hill. I have no clutch pedal to balance so autos need it to stop rolling back. The M3 has a manual handbrake which also works with auto hold on hill, but you could use the handbrake if you wanted. .the DCT box doesn’t creep either

The evoque has the 9sp ZF which hill start works very well. Especially as the creep helps, but the handbrake is a binary electric one which you cannot modulate. Although you have to be careful when it stop starts on a steep hill...

To clarify, if you stop on a hill it will keep the brake engaged allowing you to remove your foot from the pedal but it does not assist with hill starts. This is for manual Audi not auto.

 

[Firestar_3x]

On my CC with DSG the auto hold would not allow the car to roll back even if you set off then stopped moving forward.

On both our Discovery and Evoque the 9sp ZF does as Simon has said, my only gripe is the car will not auto hold itself on any other grade when you come to a stop.

 

[200sols]

That is a different function. On Audi, ‘hold assist’ automatically keeps the brake engaged each time you come to a stop, basically replaces the handbrake function everything is done for you. There is a different function called ‘hill start assist’ which stops you rolling back on a hill.

 

[Firestar_3x]

Interesting that Audi offer a two tier system rather than just selling one.

 

[Simon]

Technically they are the same too surely ?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I don't think they offer 2 tiers, I believe if you have an electronic hand brake you get both as standard. You can turn off hold assist, I dont know why you would, it literally has no need to affect the way you drive. In fact if you didnt know it existed you would not notice it doing anything at all. But once you are used to it you really notice it, its just more logical, and under some circumstances its clearly a benefit.

They are similar but do different things.

Hold assist activates every time you come to a complete stop with the foot brake. Once you stop it activates and means you do not need to apply the hand brake if you want to take your foot off the brake. As soon as you set off it releases.
You can use it in effect for hill starts, but it would not prevent you rolling backwards if you didn't give it enough revs for example. By far its most useful time is on slopes in stop start type situations. Eg your on a slope on a dual and you keep moving a car length or so, as soon as you stop you can release the foot brake pedal. If you hold on this for a sustain period (not sure how long exactly) it activates the hand brake instead. To clarify this is working on the normal brakes (apart from it will switch eventually to the handbrake)

Hill start assist means that after releasing the hand brake it will stop you rolling backwards, in effect the brake is not immediately released. This lasts I think a couple of seconds. Its far from new, loads of cars have had it over a period of time. It can work on a manual handbrake as well, but they tend to be rarer. This is operting the hand brake, not the foot brake.

If i come to a stop on a hill, and manually apply the handbrake I think in effect both systems would be active. I have never checked to be honest as I never use the handbrake now apart from when parking up.