Well, let’s start with many of us don’t need any “assistance” – because we’re able to drive competently without it. It’d be an interesting – a revelatory – thing to see how many of us would choose to pay extra for the “assistance” that’s being effectively forced on us by making it standard. Often well in advance of federal mandates.
For instance, many late-model vehicles already come with automated emergency braking (AEB) which isn’t a federal requirement – yet. It will be, come 2029. So why do some many late-model vehicles already have AEB? Arguably, to get people used to it before they have to get used to it. This is the method used by the Tech Creeps – my term for the people who are using “technology” to systematically take control over everything, not just the brakes (and steering) of vehicles. They envision a future in which “tech” – meaning, those who control the tech – controls everything and so (ipso facto) we control nothing, save perhaps our bodily functions.
No doubt they are working on ways to control that also.
VW has some “assistance” on deck. It includes “assistance” making lane changes. Because – apparently – it is either too challenging to change lanes oneself, which is of a piece with parking “assistance” – or because it takes too much effort to execute the maneuver oneself. Actually, it is neither of those things. It is training people to get used to and even need such things. To obtain their passive acceptance of the inevitability of becoming a passenger in the left seat. It is the only intelligent explanation. After all, a driver who actually needs “assistance” changing lanes is a driver who ought not to be driving. Imagine putting someone in the left seat of an airplane who required “assistance” with taxiing the airplane to te correct runway; would you trust such a clown to get the plane in the air – and safely back on the ground again? Would you get into the plane with such a “pilot”? More to the point, the FAA would never sanction such a “pilot” getting into the left seat.
Pilots are expected to know how to taxi – and of course, to fly.
Yes, of course, there is autopilot and other such but these are not the same things as “technologies” that obviate basic competencies such as changing lanes or parking curbside. (The same goes for older “technologies” such as the hill-holder clutch that obviates the once-necessary basic competence people had to acquire of operating the clutch and gas pedal in syncopation so as to neither stall the car nor roll back into the car behind you when getting going from a dead stop on an incline in a car with a manual transmission.)
Well, VW – and it’s not just VW – asserts the need to “assist” drivers (sic) who are either too inept or too lazy to change lanes themselves. Just turn the adaptive cruise control on and – per the billboards in They Live – got to sleep. And there’s more! “Select vehicles add a rearview camera system capable of detecting pedestrians, while VW offers a subscription data service on the ID. Buzz electric van to boost performance of the vehicle’s ADAS,” says Ward’s Automotive. 
“Boost performance” should be read as increases the aggressiveness of the control exerted. Of a piece is this: “The updated Emergency Assist Plus feature for IQ.Drive can automatically steer the vehicle to the side of the road if it senses a medical emergency with a driver.”
Re-read that – this time carefully.
If the “updated Emergency Assist Plus feature for IQ.Drive can automatically steer the vehicle to the side of the road if it senses a medical emergency with a driver,” it can also automatically steer the vehicle to the side of the road if it “senses” other things – such as disobedient driving, for instance. Or because it got a signal from the Hive Mind to automatically steer the vehicle to the side of the road because there’s an “emergency” – to be defined by those who control the IQ.Drive “assistance.”
By the way, did you catch the way this stuff is marketed as “smart” – as in “IQ” – when in fact the stuff assumes you’re very dumb? They insult as as they seek to control us.
VW’s Geschäftsführer – the company’s vice president of of vehicle safety – says “The protection and peace of mind of our customers is fundamental to all of us at Volkswagen.” It conjures memories of what the senator told Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales. Herr Thomas Zorn – the VP of “safety” at VW – continues: “These improvements to the existing features reflect our ongoing commitment to helping drivers navigate the road with greater confidence through continuous innovation.”
“Greater confidence”? Does anyone buy this? Does anyone feel a lack of confidence insofar as making a lane change themselves? If they do, then why are they driving a car when they clearly have no more business doing that than a non-pilot has sitting in the left seat of an airplane?
God almighty!
Of course, it’s a feedback loop thing. As less and less is expected of drivers, the “need” for more and more “assistance” etiolates. Is it not obvious that the end goal is to “assist” people out of driving entirely? Maybe that would be ok, too – if that’s what people wanted. But that’s the curious thing about all of this. Many not want it and have made this clear to the car companies, by telling their dealership people they’d rather not be “assisted.” And yet, the “assistance” gets more and more aggressively pushed.
Maybe the time is at hand to push back – harder.
. . .
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IMO, I think all this driver “assistance” makes the driver more lazy, not less. Why pay attention to anything when the vehicle will do all the thinking for you? What is “food for thought”, is to realize that one day, as the Boomers, X’ers, and those who know how to drive unassisted will die off, leaving only the younger generation who never knew anything BUT “safe” vehicles, “driving assistance”, etc. How sad that they may never realize how fun driving can actually be….when the busy bodies and the Feds just leave us alone with our “dumb cars”. How ironic, in that the “smarter” the vehicles become, the dumber the driver will be inclined to be.
And Fletcher’s reply to the Senator also applies here, “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s rainin’.”
People keep showing up at the dealer and buying this crap. The marketing people then pat themselves on the back and go dream up more. Competition realizes they are “behind “ and then tries to one-up everyone else. Wash,rinse,repeat.