No matter where you live, if there are cars on the streets there are government edicts regulating them. The most common of those regulations involve safety mandates, either to promote accident avoidance or their survivability in the event the first don’t work out as expected.
Today we’re interested in what of those safety mandates you think haven’t worked out the way their mandators planned. Do you think the CHSML is now cheesy? Should the side marker lamp be sidelined? What do you say?
Image: VWVortex
Hooniverse Asks: What Mandated Automotive Safety Feature Seems Not To Be Useful?
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57 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: What Mandated Automotive Safety Feature Seems Not To Be Useful?”
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Airbags…not so much when they’re new, I think they do a good job, but later in life when the car is 20 years old and you can’t pass a roadworthiness test because there’s an airbag light. Surely there’s a point when you can’t really trust an airbag to do its job anymore and just deactivating them or taking them out is a pragmatic option? Anyone bothered replacing one?
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Usually when there’s a failure it’s in the SRS module ($$$) or the wiring. If I had a vehicle with Takata airbags, I’d definitely disable them.
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My van was affected by the Takata issue and had its srs inflator replaced in 2012, ten years old. Feels sort of like a bonus when all of this was done before I even owned the car. No danger, all the benefits.
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I’d gotten a letter from Ford last fall about the Takata in my 2005. I’d called the dealer and they acted like they’d never heard of it. Spring, the car hit hard enough to pop the bag. No shrapnel luckily.
The PO of my 2012 got the formal recall notice and sent me the pic to use to get it fixed. It’s next up when I get back from the summer vacation. Until then, it’s parked. I’ve debated using an aftermarket wheel but I’m unsure what lights it would set off without an airbag.
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Tire pressure monitors seem to be right up there with check engine lights on the list of warnings to ignore. If my tire is 0.1 psi low, I’ll add some air eventually. Seems to be in response to the Ford Exploder debacle. Now the manufacturer can say “we told you it was low”.
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What a pain in the ass.
The set of 18″s for the Mustang cost me $240 for the set.
The TPMS I needed was $150 for the 4 sensors and controller. The wheels/tires have been on for a month… no warning. I think something got lost with a tuner?-
When I put the snow tires on the Prius I didn’t put sensors in the wheels. It took 2+ weeks for the light to go on. Some safety feature.
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Completely agree. I have a set of Mini Imolas on my Honda (same backspacing/hub bore/lugnut pattern) without sensors. They are on the original steelies. Unfortunately there is no defeat device on the Honda to rid myself of the annoying TPS light, so I live with it.
Ironic, considering I have drived for almost 30 years without the assistance of a TPMS system. (for the record I am a bit OCD about tire pressure, oil levels etc and check them weekly)
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You know, until I had them on my Trollblazer, I though TPMS were a needless added cost. Now, I like ’em. I can scroll through the menu and get real-time pressure readings at each corner. It doesn’t bother me that my GTO doesn’t have them, so I still wouldn’t call them necessary, but they are kind of cool to have.
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That would be useful. Our Leaf just tells you that a tire is low. You have to check all 4 with a gauge to figure out which one and by how much.
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Dear Hooniverse,
The environmental safety mandates, such as diesel NOx emission limits, are unreasonable. Plus, not being native English speakers, we recently had trouble deciphering the law as you may have heard. Thus, our vote is for emission limits to go the way of the dodo bird.
Sincerely,
Volkswagen-
Dear Volkswagen,
Your management tactics, such as blatant fraud, are unreasonable. Plus, not being from the Thousand Year Reich, we really don’t care about your engineering incompetence in meeting regulations. Thus, our vote is for VAG to go the way of the Dodo bird.
Sincerely,
The EPA.
P.S.: Please fix the lights on every Volkswagen ever sold, as they always seem to have at least one bulb burnt out. Thank you.
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Door-mounted or mouse track seat belts.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SptbcNjYVtw/hqdefault.jpg-
These were a gap measure throughout the early ’90s when DOT initiated the air bag mandate. Car makers could sell cars without air bags if they had “passive restraints” like these mouse track belts. This helped keep costs down on economy cars, giving car companies until (I think) 1997 to have air bags in all cars.
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Yes, I know it was a loophole. Still a stupid idea. On the mousetrack cars, you still had to manually buckle the lap belt, which a number of people didn’t bother to do because they were already wearing the automatic shoulder harness.
The door mounted belts were more comfortable to buckle and unbuckle manually, instead of leaving them buckled all the time, plus, if the door was compromised in a collision, the belts were entirely useless. Much safer just to leave everything manual and anchored to the B-pillar.
So the makers of these economy cars (and some models with higher price ranges) spent money to engineer, design tooling, and buy additional parts for cars that would have been safer using the previous technology.
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Not mandatory here, but: turn signals separated from brake lamps. (#confessyourunpopularopinion)
In theory: the driver behind can react a few thousandths of a second faster, because the vehicle ahead is giving a more accurate signal of what its driver is planning to do.
In practice: vehicles so equipped are driven with all their brake lamps burnt out except for one (either the CHMSL or one of the side lamps), and the driver cluelessly continues to drive without repairing it because the turn signals still flash at a normal rate. The situation isn’t rectified until the offending vehicle’s back end is destroyed when the last remaining brake lamp finally fails.-
I try to let people know when their brake lights are out. The only chance I get is when we’re stopped at a light, and hopefully I have time to jump out and tell them.
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I’m not sure when it was introduced, but my 1971 Volvo had one: A signal in the dashboard for a broken light. It would only show when you used the broken light – either flashibg, or when braking, or permanently with the driving lights on. Simple and efficient solution. That’s a bit of low tech that could be mandared even…
https://data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/0/112/8060/56033188/glueh-635076974458268193.jpg-
My ’91 Volvo has the “bulb out” warning light on the dash as well. Problem is, the electrical systems in the Volvos of that era judged a burnt out bulb by a minor drop in voltage rather than a broken filament. I know people who taped over the warning light because it would go on whenever it rained or got really humid.
My Saab, on the other hand, will actually tell me via the SID which bulb has actually burned out and needs replacing, even the fog lights.-
That would be a very easy solution in today’s cars, just making the CAN bus somehow illustrate that information (I have no clue what I’m talking about here).
Anyway, I’m fond of the idea and I have been lucky to only have experienced this system working, even in a 1990 460 once – not known for particular greatness among Volvisti.
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Ah, I recognise that light well: it’s the same one as is currently illuminated on the dashboard of our VW courtesy of having replaced the exterior lamps with LED bulbs. Despite having used CANBUS-compliant bulbs throughout, some seem to be more CANBUS-compliant than others.
What bothers me most is that it’s telling you that a bulb is out, but not which bulb. While it’s not a huge problem to have to get out and look, the BCM presumably has some idea of which circuit is reporting the failure and should therefore be able to pop something up on the display akin to ‘passenger rear brake light’ or similar.-
Your problem is that your VW was built in Mexico, not Canada. Hence it needs a MEXBUS-compliant bulb instead of a CANBUS-compliuant bulb.
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Unless of course your VW was imported from Germany, in which case you need a German built BUS, or GERBILBUS.
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But how would you know if the light that show if a light is broken is broken?
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I could always ask my philosophy professor.
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I’m a fan of the CHMSL as it’s sometimes the ONLY functioning light on these heaps in traffic.
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It’s the only reliable taillight on my wife’s MINI.
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Backup cameras. A mandated waste of cash to save what like 5 people a year at most? The money could be spent better elsewhere. I’m tired of hearing car commercials brag about their standard backup cameras, hoping consumers are too dumb to realize that all cars will require it soon enough…
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They also likely save billions in property damage. I’ve used them for parallel parking in spots I would have otherwise skipped, and for hitching up trailers on the first try.
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I actually got an aftermarket backup camera for my truck. Still need to install it though.
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I’ve heard that the center high-mount stop light works very well at reducing rear-end collisions. The story is that their effectiveness was so conclusive that insurance companies in the early ’80s were offering discounts to anyone willing to retrofit a CHMSL to their car, and perhaps even giving out retrofit kits for free to their clients.
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I acquired a Hella retrofit kit from the eighties, with two lights, at a flea market a couple of years ago. Still lack the interesting car I’d like to mount it in though.
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Did the daytime running lights mandate ever happen? I remember a lot of talk about that in the early ’00s.
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In other countries, Canada has it. It’s kind of a mixed result, it’s easier to see people in the distance for when you have to pass a big semi in an underpowered car, but also some people forget to turn their lights on at night.
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That’s my biggest beef with DRL systems that automatically engage the dash lights, as in my Subaru. I’ve been pulled over for no tail lights.
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The most elegant solution I’ve seen so far is to illuminate the hands but not the faces of the dash. A simple control lamp would be enough, though.
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No. Standard on GM cars, you have to turn on any exterior lights in our 2015 Leaf.
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Norway has had it for decades. A problem is that EU regulation doesn’t mandate it. So all of the imports, new and used, as well as a couple of new cars lack it. Then there are these that turn their lights on automatically. This system has become much faster, detecting dark quite quickly, but it’s still a nuisance. Where I live, about a third of the road is in tunnels, you drive in and out of them all the time. I massively prefer if car owners just turn their lights on and it leave it at that.
An upside is that some cars automatically turn of fog lights and turn on regular lights when they detect dark tunnels. A massive improvement over meeting a wall of four lights, possibly even coming uphill towards you with bad and lagging suspension, in a dark tunnel opening with a backdrop of sun blinded landscape behind it…-
As I don’t have any tunnels around (I live in the flat part of Alberta), and with no DRLs on my US model car, leaving the lights on auto seems to work quite well.
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Nope. I was reading the manual in a rental American Nissan Quest (I was really bored…) and it said that DRLs were only on the Canadian models.
My 1990 Taurus SHO has the same note. (It doesn’t have them, as it is an US model.)
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The traction control system in our late model Caravans offers little more than an audible warning that the vehicle does not have traction.
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The one in my IS300 kicks in so hard that it ensures I won’t have any traction problems for the next half a minute, because I won’t have any power.
Has just about killed me a few times in winter.
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Pedestrian safety standards. Seriously, what difference does it make if my blunt-nosed vehicle hits you at the same speed as my pointy-nosed vehicle with pop-up headlamps?
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At 50 mph, maybe not much. At 20 mph, maybe it’s the difference between a broken leg and a severed leg.
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As someone who is sometimes a pedestrian, I place a very high value on my legs.
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I might live on in a horribly crippled state to envy the dead state I would otherwise be in.
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In some vehicles, CHMSL’s are useless. For example, extended top vans: if you are the car directly behind this vehicle, the CHMSL is at least 6′ above your line of sihgt, and visible only to cars further back behind you.
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…and they might benefit greatly from seeing what’s going on further up front. My understanding is that these lights are meant to be seen further back in a line anyway?
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Exactly. I can usually see the the next car in front when they start braking. I can anticipate jumping on the brakes too.
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A-Pillars the size of trees. These are supposed to give your roof the ability to hold three times the weight of the car. For those 10 or so rollover accidents every year in which two similar automobiles end up piled on your upside down one I guess it works.
Too bad for all the pedestrians and bicyclists that get wiped out because the driver can’t see right in front of them (or left in front, either.) Hey! The occupants of the car are safe! F-U everyone else.-
Always thought this was a good idea. Strong but you can still see.
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That looks like a practical, if expensive, compromise. It looks like the internal roll cage that thing has is enough. I’ve often wondered why they don’t just beef up the B-pillar, since that rarely blocks vision (any more than the seats.)
The other component is the demands for low drag coefficients mean your windshield is now sloped so shallowly that your A-pillar runs out over your toes.-
That is such a sharp observation particularly in this case. The B-pillar appears to be sized less than ordinary even in this concept. Around the time it was presented, I took these illustrating photos (I was one of the first to try the then new S40, and had a blast in the V70R, in an event invited by Volvo) – ’77 242 vs ’03 S40:
http://home.arcor.de/ungua/hemsedal/images/023.jpg
http://home.arcor.de/ungua/hemsedal/images/024.jpg
Wow…that’s a long time ago now.-
The Volvo concept seems to have a roll cage in the cabin in lieu of big ol’ B- and C- pillars… those buttresses along side the seats.
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I agree that part of the problem is the aerodynamic shallow rake of the A-pillars. These blind spots are one of the few things I dislike about my 2011 Honda Fit. I always thought that a good solution would be a thin non-structural frame to hold the shallow-sloped windshield and small triangular sideglass pieces in place, behind which would be the more vertical structural A-pillar mounted farther back out of the driver’s line of sight. Google Image “GM dustbuster minivan” for an imperfect example of what I’m getting at.
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