this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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I will point out that if you (or your camera-only driver assist) can't stop without hitting the car in front of you when they slam on the breaks, then you're driving too close to them... You really shouldn't ever put yourself in a position where the person in front of you could cause you to unavoidably hit them.
That said... Yeah, radar/lidar are far better than camera alone and there's no good reason not to include them in the sensor suite unless you value profits over lives.
And I will point out that if the car in front of you isn't paying attention and rams a stopped car in the middle of the road, you are fucked no matter what.
Not if you have the following distance to stop, but point taken: a crash decelerates you faster than breaks can and typical following distances are assuming breaking distance, not hard sudden halts.
So increase your following distance. It also has the benefit that it makes it easier to see what's ahead of the car in front of you.
There's pretty much no accident that's unavoidable (barring someone else plowing into you) if you drive defensively enough (assuming good traction and good breaks, but obviously you should increase your following or decrease your speed to compensate for that as well)
Maintaining a stopping distance like that is nigh impossible in a dense urban area. You'd be constantly cut off and causing tons of traffic.
Really? I do it pretty frequently without issue...
You definitely do not.
Okay, random Internet person I've never met, you clearly know my driving habits and how things go when I'm commuting better than me.
I know math, so let's do some of that:
The braking distance of a typical sedan at 70mph is 210 feet. Add another 70 feet for a reaction time and you're talking about an entire football field of following distance. And that's assuming you drive a sedan.
There's simply no way you can maintain that in a dense urban environment. Other drivers will cut in front of you like a waterfall. It's nothing to do with what kind of person you are.