I used to find few things more pleasing than performing the perfect hill start. For someone who isn’t very coordinated, being able to do different things with my feet and arms all at once to get the combination of revs, clutch biting point and handbrake release perfectly synchronised used to be a source of great joy.
Yet that skill, hard-earned on the clutch of my mother’s Honda Civic, has been taken away from me. Tilt sensors mean even the most basic cars automatically apply the brakes on slopes for a few seconds so you no longer need to coordinate the handbrake for perfect take-offs. And most cars now have an automatic gearbox anyway. One of life’s joys has been cancelled.
That’s a minor exaggeration, perhaps, but there’s a serious point here: the hill start is just one of the many driving skills that is being inexorably stripped from our repertoire. Cars increasingly have electronics to perform many of the tasks we’re taught as learners, because getting the all-important Euro NCAP five-star safety rating demands they do.
It’s impossible to argue that features designed to save lives are a bad thing and I’m not trying to. But with their increasingly nannying technology, our cars seem to be encouraging us to forget some of driving’s fundamental skills, such as anticipating hazards and maintaining a safe distance.
Advanced driver assistance technology isn’t all bad
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) don’t necessarily encourage bad habits. And they’re successful at reducing the severity of crashes, even if that isn’t reflected in significantly fewer accidents because the proportion of cars featuring such systems is still relatively small.
Researchers from the University of Limerick in Ireland and the University of Luxembourg concluded that if all cars featured the most popular ADAS technology (such as autonomous braking), crash frequency in the UK would be reduced by nearly a quarter (23.8 per cent).
Taking tasks away from the driver could be bad for safety
But more safety technology does boost human confidence, which isn’t brilliant for road safety. Psychologist Dr Julie Gandolfi from Driving Research explained: “Looking back to when Mercedes introduced ABS anti-lock brakes, one of the first big studies was around Munich taxi drivers. They thought ABS would stop them crashing so they drove faster and smashed into each other. And that’s what we tend to see when technology like this is introduced.”
In addition, technology taking tasks away from us can encourage us to switch our concentration away from the road, to fiddle with infotainment screens or eat sandwiches. “When drivers are relieved of some tasks, there must be a huge temptation to do other things that take their eyes off the road,” Dr Gandolfi said.
This is backed up by research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium in the US. By monitoring Tesla drivers, it found that when the car’s Autopilot (AP) was engaged, looking at the screen increased by at least 18 per cent.
UK drivers are – thankfully – less easily distracted according to principal ADAS engineer from Thatcham Research Yousif Al-Ani. “We’ve done some research around Ford Mustang Mach-E drivers using BlueCruise hands-free driving in the UK. Every type of user had better ‘eyes on the road’ time when they used that system than with manual driving. We were expecting the opposite.”
Some people don’t understand that tech might be a problem
There are concerns that some drivers rely on their car’s ADAS more than they should. Director of policy and standards at safety charity IAM RoadSmart, Nicholas Lyes, said: “I think there’s a risk people don’t understand the difference between full automation and driver assistance systems. The latter still requires drivers to pay attention to operate cars safely.”
The chief examiner for the Driving Instructors Association, Karen Bransgrove, added: “I specialise in post-test driver training and the people I see generally know of the technology but not what it really does. One of the problems is that every car maker calls their systems something different.”
Yousif Al-Ani explained: “Because they are not product names, the car makers can name them how they want.” Your car’s lane-keeping assist might be mine’s lane departure warning and work slightly differently. Even systems with the same name might vary slightly between different generations of the same car, as the technology improves. No wonder drivers get confused.
It’s not too late to save driving as a life skill
Another problem is that these increasing and occasionally perplexing levels of driver assistance operate completely rationally – all the time. Combine that with us random humans, who do dangerous things like getting distracted, and there’s a recipe for potential disaster.
Dr Gandolfi thinks this makes traditional driving skills more important than ever. She said: “Vehicle technology doesn’t have the human’s evaluative capability or the same immediate responses to situations and that’s a new risk to traffic safety.
“I think driver training needs to take this into account and factor in the new issues that need to be addressed. It’s more important than ever that everyone knows what’s going on around them, what might happen and that they have sharper observations to anticipate what might happen.”
Lyes agreed: “There’s now a mix of vehicles on the road: some have no driver assistance systems, some have some features and some have full ADAS so there is more of a role for traditional skills than ever.
“I also think there should be more emphasis on ADAS in new driver training. We should be careful to explain that these systems are here to help, but the driver still needs to be as alert and aware as they’ve always been.”
Thatcham’s Al-Ani added: “The driving task is changing. We need to keep the skills we already learn but driving will be about more interaction with technology, which should help make driving easier but we will still be in control. In a few years we should include an ADAS assessment in the driving test. We are a long way from the technology doing it all.”
The technology will get less nannying…
Who hasn’t been wound up by cars chiming in with an irritating reprimand at every minor deviation from their perception of perfectly safe driving?
Having experienced some really intrusive lane assist systems, I now switch it off and I’m not alone. Research by consultancy McKinsey has found that 25 to 30 per cent of drivers with basic ADAS such as active cruise control never or seldom use the features.
In a poll of its members, IAM RoadSmart found between a third and half of advanced drivers had used ADAS systems just once or never.
Al-Ani revealed: “Some people definitely turn it off because they’ve got no appetite to be binged and bonged at. And it’s hard to convince people not to turn it off when they’ve experienced the false positive [the system warns they’re going to crash when they’re not].”
Realising this and hoping to reverse it, rule makers such as Euro NCAP are developing their testing to penalise car makers that don’t respond to customer complaints. So, a car maker whose lane assist fights the driver when they ignore its prompting will get a worse Euro NCAP score than one whose system immediately disengages.
“We’re in the middle of a journey of continuous technology improvement,” Al-Ani said. And that makes the fundamental skills of driving arguably more important than ever. As long as our cars let us perform them – which, sadly for me, is no longer the case with hill starts.
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