Weird Driving Assist Incident

Our 2016 Subaru Forester has some driving assist features, including collision avoidance. If it senses that you are in danger of colliding with something in front of you, depending how dire the situation, it will warn you or even automagically apply the brakes.

The Forester is Beth's car, so I don't get much time behind the wheel, but there have been a couple of occasions where I was in the car and it kicked in, just slightly. In those cases, no actual collision was imminent, it was merely a case of a car pulling into our lane a bit aggressively. Still, it was impressive to see the feature in action.

Last summer we were staying at a cabin in northern Minnesota. It was part of a small "resort", accessed by a very long, winding drive. One fine, very sunny July late morning, I was piloting the entire family out for the day's excursion. Gorgeous, clear weather. Imagine my surprise, as we rounded the final bend in the aforementioned long driveway, when the trusty Forester ground to an abrupt halt!

It wasn't quite as sudden as a collision, nor was there any tell-tale sound of metal crunching. More like hitting a really big pile of sand, in the middle of the road, at 20 mph. Still, I was more than unnerved. I jumped out of the car, and looked in front--no pile of sand. I looked underneath--nothing hanging from the chassis.

As I raised my head in perplexity, it dawned on me...in front of the vehicle was a sharp, heavily shaded  turn. The woods in front of the car, combined with the brightness and angle of the sun, had fooled the driving assist cameras into thinking we were about to run into a proverbial brick wall!

Texting While Driving

Studies also show that it can be difficult for people to ignore the ping of an incoming text or call — for  psychological and physiological reasons. People may fear missing an important call from a friend or boss, or get excited by the prospect of receiving interesting news. Physiologically, researchers say, the lure of mobile devices has addictive properties, in that people feel an adrenaline burst when a call or text comes in and get a rush when they answer.

Those are the key points. I'm not too excited about the TMobile service on its own merits--$4.99 per month is just plain greedy, and I don't think it is the ideal implementation--but as a step toward wider awareness (I posted about that a year ago), it is an important start.

Safer Ground Beef

Thoughts on making ground beef safer:

1. They should not mix it from so many places and so many animals. Couldn't they process 100 cows' worth of ground beef, then sanitize everything before the next batch? I'm sure that would increase costs a little bit, but would it be that much?

2. On that note--Irradition. I have been reading about its benefits since I was a teenager. It has the word "radiate" in it, so people instantly are petrified.

Another Entrant in the Texting-While-Driving Problem

iZup. Name is dumb ("eyes up", get it?), will be interesting to see if this category catches on. Others are ZoomSafer and TextEcution.

Feedback on the Texting While Driving Video

The NYT has an article about "Some Doubts About Scare Tactics on Drivers Who Text". Several key points stand out.

A violent ad must also instruct people on how to change their behavior, otherwise, “to erase the fear quickly, you say, ‘That’s not me,’ ” Professor Tay said. And just because an ad is popular does not mean that viewers will change their driving behavior, he said. One reason that violent ads may not work as well is that teenagers are already well aware that some activities are dangerous, said W. Kip Viscusi, who has studied risk for decades and is a professor at Vanderbilt University.

My son watched it. Although he did not take issue with the implications--texting could easily cause a fatal distraction--he also did not dwell on them. What immediately got his attention was the relatively poor production values--he said "that looks so fake". He was right of course. It was not bad, for a $20,000 budget, and was certainly gory enough, but by today's standards of special effects, it was quite unconvincing. The result, I think, was that a subtle equivalence was quickly set up in his mind--fake effects, so dismiss the whole message.

Cheryl Healton, chief executive of the American Legacy Foundation, a group that specializes in antismoking efforts, suggested that cellphones could show a prompt on their phones, reminding people not to text and drive.

A boring, boilerplate warning--really??. When does it display--every time you re-start your phone? Every time you start a text? I'm afraid this is a hoary chestnet from the classic school of good intentions, but poor results.

Kelly K. Browning, executive director of the advocacy group Impact Teen Drivers in California, has suggested an idea, Star 65 to Stay Alive, to AT&T, in which the company could set up a code of *65 to disable incoming calls and texts, and send automatic response messages like, “I’m driving right now. I’ll get back to you when I’m off the road.”

This has a little bit of merit. But just a little--it takes a lot of motivation and forethought for the user to use it. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of the "Do Not Disturb" feature, and not just for drive-time. But as a major cure for driving while texting, I deem it unlikely to have any significant impact. (There is another product that does something like this, ZoomSafer.) However, if you combined this feature with GPS-based texting de-activation--now you would be talking!