Was watching OPLive last week. Every week they have a segment called "Triple Play" where they have law enforcement send them videos of crazy chases and other interesting experiences.
This last week they had a guy who had completely passed out in his car and was fast asleep at the wheel. A state trooper pulled up alongside it and could see the guy slumped over his wheel. Apparently the car was essentially weaving back and forth between the lane lines because the car had LKAS enabled, effectively keeping the car from driving off the road.
The state trooper followed the car for several miles trying to decide what he should do. He tried several times by running his lights and sirens, honking, etc to no avail. He finally found a safe spot and successfully pitted the car to a stop. During the pit, the man suddenly woke up - for obvious reasons.
They later found out he had been working 22 hours straight and then was driving to his GF's house several hours away for the weekend and was just exhausted and fell asleep at the wheel.
I've never actually tested what happens if you ignore the "steering input required" nags from LKAS. Does it truly keep driving at cruise control speed? I assumed it would eventually slow to a stop.
As for the safety feature. I inherited (literally) a second car that's 10 years older than the primary one. You get used to LKAS. I was driving a long distance in the older one while somewhat overtired and had several rumble strip excursions that would not have happened in the LKAS-equipped car. And for the asleep guy in the parent post, it may have made the difference between still being alive and dead in head-on collision or rollover.
A few cars will go as far as to apply the brakes and pull over. I think a lot just end up disengaging the steering and cruise control while beeping loudly at you a lot.
If the weight of your foot was somehow enough to push the pedal though, you could certainly keep going.
Some lane keeping systems purposefully ping-pong between the lines to prevent you from relying on it by making it somewhat annoying.
If you’re using it the way you’re supposed to and giving real steering input then it helps you stay within the lines. So it’s less effort for you and it helps mitigate large wind gusts and such.
But basically lane keeping is absolutely not meant to steer for you.
> He finally found a safe spot and successfully pitted the car to a stop.
No such thing as a safe spot to PIT someone, ever, let alone while they're asleep at the wheel. This is a great example of why people hate all cops, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would get in front of the car and gradually slow to a stop.
I agree with the recommendation that you yourself replied to: move in front of the vehicle, and gradually slow to a stop, with lights and sirens optional but recommended
I am thrown by the question of "What else should have been done" though, after grandparent made an explicit recommendation
There was a news story here in town a few years back where a private citizen - not cop - brought a ghost car (driver passed out) to a stop by driving up in front of it, making bumper contact and then braking both to a stop. Not recommended! But can be done even without adaptive cruise control.
It's important to make sure we have all the context before making a judgement like this. My rule of thumb is that if I think something is obviously stupid, I'm probably missing something.
Older systems including the older versions of Blue Cruise may not go around you, but you also don’t know if they even have radar cruise control enabled.
If it’s a simple enough system maybe it would just keep going the same speed no matter what until it hit you.
No, it's literally that. It's super dangerous and the practice of performing it in any but very unusual situations is, to put it mildly, hard to justify on any actual public safety grounds. To the extent the maneuver is a "safe" version of making a car crash, it's (relatively) safe for the cop causing the crash.
A certain segment of the public, plus cops themselves (having significant overlap with that segment), love it though, because they enjoy seeing non-compliance met with life-endangering levels of force and can't understand why any of us wouldn't enjoy it unless we want more crime or something.
So a bunch of suspects who weren't, car chase aside, any imminent danger to anyone, and their possibly-unwilling passengers, end up dead or life-alteringly injured... and so do plenty of people who had nothing to do with any of it. Often over what was originally just e.g. property crime.
I would rather a cop risk a runner's life every time than let him continue to flee at speed recklessly for miles on end, usually culminating in crashing into an innocent person or their property. That's not even a question for me. Or would you rather just let criminals run away if they manage to enter a vehicle?
It takes two to tango, and the cop can stop the life-threatening chase at any time, without causing a wreck.
Causing the speeding car to go out of control is also not a great thing for public safety, and does kill and cripple people who are in no way involved in these chases. We have jurisdictions with no-chase rules and it doesn’t seem to cause some hypothesized explosion in crime. It is in-fact ok to not do them, as satisfying as they might feel.
Well, I'd rather they just get pitted. If someone is at the point of fleeing from police in a high speed chase, I want them removed from society, because nobody well adjusted and beneficial does that. Whether that's by arrest or by accidental death, I really don't mind either way. The alternative also emboldens criminals to flee as a first resort and to plan around that possibility.
Fortunately in USA we have many state jurisdictions to choose from so we can each live under the sort of laws that suit us best!
This would be precisely the divide I mentioned above. One is focused on whole-picture outcomes, the other is focused on making sure “bad guys” have a bad time (regardless of how that fits into the larger picture). Folks on either side of this divide tend to think the other is actually, factually nuts.
You are ignoring the big picture outcome of the resultant culture that develops in a society in which criminals can easily flee and not be chased. Culture shifts for the worse in an environment that is less likely to catch, arrest, or prosecute criminals. Trust and norms erode.
The factual outcomes almost don't matter; what matters is perception among the masses. For example, if people largely believe that shoplifting is not prosecuted in a city, and they see shoplifting occur, it is extremely depressing, even if they see the person arrested. It's demoralizing. It also probably leads to more attempts at shoplifting overall. I use this example because it's common enough in a few cities.
High speed chases are rare, so it's not as immediately obvious. But if people see on the news two stories, "man kills woman, cops are there, he flees in car, high speed chase, crashes into innocent bystander killing self and them" versus "man kills woman, cops are there, he flees in car, police arent allowed to chase him so he is currently at large, but they are trying to track him by other means", the latter is far more demoralizing, makes one lose faith in society and the rule of law, makes one less proud of their culture, etc etc. This is a serious effect over time.
At some level, society needs to believe that bad behaviors are punished and that good guys are trying their best to stop bad guys. This is very important to a functioning society. When people stop believing that, culture declines rapidly. Even if the utilitarian outcome is slightly better when not stopping bad guys sometimes (e.g. not prosecuting the previous president even if you could), it's usually not worth the resultant demoralization.
I broadly agree that both are important, but I think the difference lies in the level to which the person feels about the two scenarios you post. Some people are far more upset about the former than the latter (and also consider what happens if you modulate it by the crime committed).
(And of course it's not a strict either/or as well: you can have a rules of engagement for such things. e.g. in the UK the police are not blanket banned from pursuing a fleeing vehicle, but they need to have had appropriate training and do so only in particular circumstances)
This last week they had a guy who had completely passed out in his car and was fast asleep at the wheel. A state trooper pulled up alongside it and could see the guy slumped over his wheel. Apparently the car was essentially weaving back and forth between the lane lines because the car had LKAS enabled, effectively keeping the car from driving off the road.
The state trooper followed the car for several miles trying to decide what he should do. He tried several times by running his lights and sirens, honking, etc to no avail. He finally found a safe spot and successfully pitted the car to a stop. During the pit, the man suddenly woke up - for obvious reasons.
They later found out he had been working 22 hours straight and then was driving to his GF's house several hours away for the weekend and was just exhausted and fell asleep at the wheel.