between seat and steering wheel

[the_siobhan]

Poll #9933 between seat and steering wheel

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

Modern car safety features (anti-lock breaks, air bags, rear-view cameras) encourage people to be less competent drivers.

View Answers

True
1 (10.0%)

False
6 (60.0%)

Some other option
3 (30.0%)

Comments

[bcholmes]

I'm tempted to say "Some other option" because I think that the response "That's moronic" is closest to what I really believe.

[the_siobhan]

Why?

[erik]

They don't encourage reckless behavior. They make it less lethal.

[the_siobhan]

Maybe for the people on the inside of the car.

[greylock]

I don't think people think about those things.
Personally, I think it is their sense of how good a driver they are that's the problem.

[cincinnatus_c]

Some people, maybe, probably, I dunno; but speaking just for myself, I'm fairly confident I'd be just as incompetent without anti-lock brakes etc.

This of course prompts me to recall someone's suggestion (I don't think it was Axel's, but it's up his alley) on a.g. that the best way to improve people's driving would be to have big metal spikes installed in steering wheels, pointing at drivers' chests.

[the_axel]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was mine.

[cincinnatus_c]

Me neither, but turns out it was Ian Sturrock:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.gothic/msg/7326be10d43fa5fb?dmode=source

[tetsab]

I wonder what would have happened with a 'not enough evidence to comment' option (but luckily that's pretty much covered w/ option #3). :)

I've driven a range of cars with a range of features & I have the same level of need-more-experience suck in all of them (I like how we give the impression we live in a Crap Driver household but that's more out of a sense that neither of us are as good as we could be if we worked at it. If we define non-crap driver as 100% accident-free, which seems like it could be a fair measure of driving ability in the context of this poll, then we're the picture of non-crap).

One other thing that may or may not be relevant is that, uh, Cincinnatus & I both consider all current cars to be likely deathtraps regardless of their safety features.