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AEB imo is an excellent system with great potential to improve safety but it doesn’t absolve drivers from their responsibilities.
Unfortunately most people would rather have a fancier set of alloys on a new car than spec these systems, I attempted to find a used Vw Up,mii,citigo for my daughter and it seemed that almost no one was prepared to pay£250 when new...
whilst the additional driving aids have great potential to improve safety the weakest link is drivers, it’s time drivers had regular training. Health and safety performance in the workplace has improved with the addition of improved/ safer equipment and processes but progress then tends to plateau further progress only tends to develop with behavioural change.
Maybe part of the stats for the XC90 are due to behavioural traits of the drivers?
[i]craigbroadbent wrote:[/i]
Lots of soft bits on cars now for pedestrians, so most people will survive a 30mph contact with the front end, although landing on the road/tree needs a helmet.
Landing on the road/tree as is inevitable if you get hit at 30mph - and I'm not all that convinced how much a helmet will help. Though I'd like to see the evidence that even the first bit is true.
We have 20mph on all roads except the ring road in Cambridge and 100% of drivers complete ignore it. Absolutely no one sticks to 20mph all the time.
It's been well documented by the Police that 20mph limits are unenforceable unless caught by cameras.
It’s been well documented by the Police that 20mph limits are unenforceable unless caught by cameras.
In my student days I got pulled over by a policeman with a radar gun in a 20 zone in Fife and was punished accordingly. It's definitely enforceable.
In this case, the vast majority of XC90’s on the road won’t be equipped with AEB.
Can't comment on the XC90 as I sold mine ages ago, but all XC60s have AEB as standard, even on the poverty-spec models. I don't believe you can even order one without it. Even the cars without radar cruise control and all of the toys have the little camera behind the mirror. I guess that the XC90 is probably the same.
Great cars, BTW. Bugger to get 4 bikes up onto the roof though. You need a bloody step-ladder!
Most significant development since seatbelt is the airbag
Yes, but what about those people that have heart attacks when the airbag goes off, receive facial injuries, or feel more complacent so they become moving time bombs on the road?
Joking, obviously, but to make a point. Automated driving is going to save a staggering amount of lives and we'll look back in a generation and laugh at how we used to drive our own cars in the way we laugh at how someone had to walk in front of early cars waving a red flag.