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    Modern Safety Systems That Are Anything But Safe

    1 day ago

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    Richard Hammond - the bloke off Top Gear - recently found himself arguing with his car. Not about directions or radio stations, but about whether his hands were actually on the steering wheel. They were. Both of them. Where they're supposed to be. The car disagreed, issued a warning, then escalated to a full alert. The only way to convince it he was driving properly was to physically shake the wheel, taking his attention away from the road to placate a system that exists, theoretically, to keep him focused on driving. This is what passes for progress. European Union regulations, specifically GSR2, became mandatory in 2022 and dragged every new car sold into compliance with a shopping list of electronic nannies. Drowsiness and distraction warnings, lane keeping assistance, advanced emergency braking, intelligent speed assist that knows the speed limit better than you do, and reversing cameras or sensors. All of it sounds sensible on paper. All of it becomes maddening in practice. The eye monitoring systems are particularly egregious. They track where you're looking, waiting for the moment you take your eyes off the road. Glance right to check a junction. Warning. Look left for a child about to step into traffic. Warning. Check your mirror before changing lanes. Warning. The system has decided that any deviation from staring dead ahead constitutes dangerous distraction, never mind that driving requires constant environmental awareness. You're being told off for doing exactly what good driving demands. Lane keeping assistance has a similar problem. It thinks it knows better. Drift slightly to avoid a pothole and the car pulls you back into line. Move over to give a cyclist space and you're fighting the steering. The system sees the white lines and nothing else, treating every deviation as driver error rather than active decision making. Some cars let you turn it off. Many reset the system to active every time you start the engine, forcing you into a routine of disabling the same features over and over because the car has decided you can't be trusted to remember you wanted them off. Intelligent speed assist sounds useful until you experience it. The car reads speed limit signs, or pulls data from mapping software, and nags you when you exceed the limit. Sometimes it's right. Often it's confused by temporary signs, or roadworks that ended weeks ago, or limits that changed but the database hasn't caught up. You're doing 50 on a national speed limit road and the car is beeping at you because it thinks you're still in the 30 zone you left two miles back. Override it, and it reminds you again 30 seconds later. It never learns. It never stops. The drowsiness detection wants you to take a break, regardless of whether you're actually tired. Long motorway stretches with minimal steering input trigger warnings. Drive smoothly and consistently, the way you're supposed to, and the car interprets it as fatigue. The icon of a coffee cup appears on the dashboard. Patronizing doesn't begin to cover it. Emergency braking systems have saved lives. No argument there. But they've also locked wheels up for plastic bags blowing across the road, shadows that looked like obstacles, and vehicles in adjacent lanes that the system briefly thought were in your path. The surprise of unexpected braking creates its own danger, especially if there's traffic behind you. The irony is crushing. Systems designed to reduce distraction are themselves a constant source of it. You're monitoring the car as much as the road, anticipating which electronic guardian will pipe up next, preparing to dismiss warnings that mean nothing or shake the wheel to prove you're paying attention. The mental load increases. The distraction becomes baked into every journey. None of this was meant maliciously. Regulators wanted safer roads. Engineers built systems to deliver that. But the gap between laboratory testing and real world driving is vast, and what works in a controlled environment becomes insufferable when you're trying to navigate school run traffic while your car shouts at you for checks that are second nature. The technology will improve. Eventually. But right now, millions of drivers are stuck with systems that treat them like children who can't be trusted with sharp objects, and there's no opt out. You bought the car. The regulations came with it. Good luck concentrating on the road when the car is concentrating on you.
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