Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

SpaceNut · 2020-10-17 08:30:48

Not sure that no ants will make it to Mars but there is the chance for that little hitch hiker along with many other things no matter how clean we might achive.

The next big thing for the automotive safety is

GW Johnson · 2020-10-17 16:27:13

There are multiple "long poles in the tent" when it comes to automotive safety and accident rates. But the longest one has nothing to do with anybody's technology, whether it be cocooning in crashes, or automated driver systems, or anything else like that.

It is, quite simply, adequate driver training. We do NOT have it. And we all see the evidence of that statement every damned day out on the road.

Driver's Ed is as much a joke of a course as is Business Ethics in business schools. Actually, it's more of a joke.

Instead of one single course designed to (1) acquaint you with operating a car, and (2) be able to pass the driver's written test (which is one hell of a low-ball standard !!!), we need a whole sequence of required-to-pass-and-graduate courses in driver training. And I don't care whether we talk about in-school driver's ed, or the private companies that train teenagers to drive.

This ought to start about 9th or 10th grade, and be required courses in both the fall and spring semesters. What's in the current courses should be in the first semester of the first year. It should continue every damned year of high school to 12th grade spring graduation.

By their senior year, students should have mastered (MASTERED !!!) things including full-slide stops without ABS, high-speed maneuver, extreme heavy traffic, stopping safely after a front tire blowout at high speed when there is no shoulder, full power brake failure, full power steering failure, and driving in reduced traction conditions such as heavy rain or ice. At the very least.

There should be enforced compliance with both the written, and the unwritten, rules of the road. And make no mistake about it, there ARE unwritten rules of the road.

There should be included first aid training, because most often it is other drivers who are at the scene of the latest accident. There should also be training in both the selection and use of fire extinguishers. MANY accidents involve AT LEAST smolder fires, some far more challenging.

And there is NO EXCUSE for a driver's ed graduate not knowing how to safely (SAFELY !!!) change a flat on the side of the road, knowing when and how to check tire pressures, or knowing how to conduct an under-hood fluids check. None of that is taught today, and it wasn't taught in my driver's ed training back in 1964.

THAT'S how you save lives!

And money. It is actually the cheapest safety item that we could do! It is also one of the very most effective safety things we could do.

It is the elephant in the room that everyone ignores. Which is stupidity incarnate.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-10-17 16:35:48)

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-17 17:23:53

For GW Johnson re #296

SearchTerm:DriverTraining

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 78#p173178

While this post is about Driver's Education recommended for Earth, it seems to me that the spirit of the recommendation should carry forward to Mars. The conditions will be different in a number of respects, but the basics you have identified seem (to me at least) well worth remembering when younger generations are coming along.

Habitat safety will (surely) be a basic training regimen, but equipment safety will (surely) come close behind, followed by safety considerations away from the habitat, even if the distance is small.

Your point (in particular) about first aid training seems appropriate for both planets.

(th)

kbd512 · 2020-10-17 22:02:00

GW,

Some of that stuff is pretty advanced to be teaching to someone so young and inexperienced. The driving hazards could be explained and perhaps some sort of simulator used to illustrate just how poorly someone who isn't properly trained will fare, but practicing some of that on a road course would be very dangerous. The most significant hazard I've seen is the general lack of awareness of how dangerous driving truly is, and of course, not paying attention to the road while driving, which is little different than driving while intoxicated in actual practice and results. The use of intoxicating substances or medications prior to driving remains an intractable problem, though we should be teaching young people to take the keys away from their friends if they've been drinking.

I'd say that just about nobody except firefighters or race car drivers are wearing adequate PPE or carrying suitable fire extinguishers in their vehicles. Approaching a burning vehicle is very dangerous. If your vehicle is on fire, then it's time to exit the vehicle and put some distance between yourself and your vehicle. From being an actual firefighter in the Navy, I can tell you that firefighting requires a lot of knowledge, constant practice (we did drills once per day, twice if the XO wasn't happy with the result), and being in good physical condition (the overwhelming majority of people have no clue about how poor their physical condition is, relative to someone who is in the military or other first responder role- and I didn't consider many of the people who I served with to be in particularly good physical condition, but there is no national campaign to teach people the benefits of routine exercise and proper nutrition).

I've negated all tire blowouts by keeping tires properly inflated and replacing worn tires, although I experienced these in the past before I understood how important proper tire inflation is. Tire inflation pressure should be checked and remediated immediately if not within spec for the tire in question. I inflate our vehicle tires with a simple hand pump that cost a whole $20, IIRC. Along with tools for changing a tire, an air pump, tire pressure gauge, and a rag are tools that every vehicle should have. In general, about $100 worth of tools and test equipment and another $200 worth of PPE would save a lot of lives.

Change the oil regularly on a modern engine and the engine will still be working long after the sheet metal vehicle chassis has rusted away into uselessness. If factory engines were all built like race car engines with billet rotating assemblies, use of alloys designed for ultimate durability rather than lowest possible cost, aerospace coatings on parts subject to corrosion (ion-bonded surface treatments) or excessive wear (micro shot peening), and studs / nuts used instead of weaker bolts, then engine failures would be virtually unheard of at factory power levels. The same standard of quality should apply to the engine accessories. Unfortunately, this would also tend to reduce the availability of replacement parts and significantly increase the cost of the engine, though not without real tangible benefits.

The first aid training would be a very good thing to teach kids in high school, as that's universally applicable to the rest of life. Strangely, as you suggested, doing this stuff would actually save truck loads of money and a lot of human suffering and misery, even if there was some initial cash outlay required to achieve that result. Long term thinking is all but dead in our instant gratification society.

SpaceNut · 2020-10-18 08:15:02

Much like the fixing of the automotive industry topic shows is that we can also make or effect changes to the training and use there in for these when miss used weapons of destruction.

Tire inflation much like other items to watch are covered under maintenance of the vehicle for economic use as much as for keeping the vehicle in safe operating condition.

In the same token designing a vehicle poorly is also a problem for these issues that require a more watchful eye such as the overflow coolant reservoir for a boxer engine design like what I have in the subaru. This is a tell that the thermostat is sticking or that the heads are breaking down due to the antifreeze being used. It also shows that a water pump that does not cause enough coolant flow through the system with no restriction at low rpm is also an indicator of poor design when the heat in the engine can not even make it to the heating core. The boxer engine coolant flow is also a problem since all coolant goes from one side of the engine which then allows the other side to run hotter in temperatures due to that low flow rate.

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-18 08:31:05

Following up on the safety suggestion of maintaining proper tire inflation....

This is an aspect of vehicle design and operation that lends itself to automation ... the first step in that direction (that I have seen so far) is radio transmission of tire pressure in real time. A relative has a late model vehicle with that feature. It translates to a display on the computer screen, and still requires operator intervention to restore correct pressure.

The challenge I see for a vehicle owner/operator who does not have access to automation, is the difficulty of gauging tire pressure by shape of the tire. A minimum level of operator training that seems achievable by the average person is to at least ** look ** at the tires before starting the vehicle, to make sure they are not flat.

For SpaceNut ... thanks for creating this new topic ... it applies to Mars as well as to Earth, and it has to do with socialization of individual members of the population. Right now (in 2020) the United States is demonstrating a remarkable degree of heterogeneity of socialization of members of the population.

Somehow the practices of safe driving seem to be in place for most people most of the time. It is possible that a robust traffic enforcement system is responsible for some of that success, but I think that for the most part, it reflects the desire of the individual drivers to arrive safely at the planned destination.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-18 13:35:04

The issue with the tire inflation issues is that we have four to 5 sending units which are received and indicated by a single indicator on the dash. The receiving unit can have a computer interface code reader as does the obde onboard engine computer named with many acronyms but in sort is a computer with minimal sensor and control interfacing. So its not so easy to tell which of them is at issue with an out of tolerance value. The same is true of the check engine soon indicator as it requires a separate code reader and knowledge of how that code works for the sensor. In some part knowing how the computer program uses that value is also helpful for decoding what the issue could be for the code which is being displayed by the reader.
A simular problem comes into play with the ABS system which employees a sensor to detect wheel rotation for each wheel which any of them can cause a fault code for the ABS system is not operative when the brakes work just fine....

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-18 13:52:45

For SpaceNut re #7

Your post includes details about the operation of an automated, wireless, tire pressure sensing and reporting system.

Since I am unfamiliar with such a system, I'm curious about how the automobile manufacturer has anticipated the problem you've described.

A possibility is to be able to interrogate the reporting subsystem for details on which tire(s) is out of spec, if a generic "low pressure" signal appears on the computer screen.

Do you have any direct experience with that, or (perhaps) are you familiar with a YouTube (or similar) video that might show how automobile owners deal with this?

The following Google snippet does not answer the question:

How does the tire pressure monitoring system work?
Your vehicle's direct TPMS uses a sensor located in the wheels. It measures the air pressure of each tire. If the pressure drops 25 percent below the recommended air pressure, the TPMS will be triggered and you will see the vehicle's warning light on the dashboard.
How Does a Tire Pressure Monitoring System Work? | Belle Tire

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-18 15:50:24

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire-pres … ing_system

https://www.subaru-tpms.com/#:~:text=Su … wn%20below.

Each vehicle that only gives a single lamp will work the same.

tahanson43206 · 2020-10-18 17:20:45

For SpaceNut re #9

Thank you for ** both ** links! The Wikipedia article seems (to me at least) to do a decent job of covering the history of the technology, including governmental participation in Europe and the US.

The Suburu article may have flowed from your having a 2008 Suburu, but (by coincidence) the relative's car is also a Suburu.

I'll write to ask how the tire pressure software works, since I did not see anything about that detail in either article.

My expectation is that if a single warning light comes on, then the vehicle operator should be able to interrogate the system to see which wheel is having a problem.

The Wikipedia article about the difference between direct and indirect readings was detailed enough so that I came away with a reasonable understanding of the difference in the two approaches, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

If I understand the Suburu article correctly, it uses direct sensors mounted in the valve stems.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2020-10-18 17:45:49

The battery operated sensor that is inside each tire send a signal to the cars computer with a value of pressure and location that each has. The computer interrupts that value as in tolerance and sets a code for the location for a readout to happen on the vehicles obde plug by the reader.
My own vehicle has a broken sender as caused by the mechanic when they changed the tires before I got the vehicle. Seems a set of 4 devices to correct for a single units failure....A Subaru unit is supposedly costly so as long I look at them and check them I will not have any problem until I want to put new tires on and the mechanic at that time can change it out.
I can see that a fixed location once you rotate tire location would end up being confusing from the code setting if you can not change the tires location to code information. Some replacements are programmed while others require programming.

GW Johnson · 2020-10-19 09:40:58

Re posts 2 and 4: the fire issue.

The kind of thing I was thinking of was a small fire, not a major event. Years ago my wife had a run-in with 17 deer suddenly darting across in front of her in broad daylight. Number 16 failed to make it. The car was severely damaged, including jamming the doors shut. The power steering fluid (a mineral oil) leaked onto the hot exhaust manifold.

She made it out through a rear door just as another driver stopped to help. He had a fire extinguisher and put out the small fire in the engine compartment. It more more of a smoulder fire than anything bright enough to see easily. We were actually able to repair the car; it served us well for several more years.

That's the sort of thing I had in mind for training driver's ed students to use fire extinguishers. Small stuff like that happens all the time. Untreated, such things often become big fires. And also quite often, the occupants cannot get out because of jammed doors and disabled power windows, plus the lack of a window glass shattering tool.

Window glass shattering tools are another driver's ed training item.

GW

SpaceNut · 2020-10-19 19:53:43

Sounds like we need a fire suppression system with some sort of mechanical trigger since power would most likely not be operative after a crash and even the mechanical might not work. We would need different extinguishers for the types of cars we have now in that fires of metals are different than flammable fuel born types for what would be required to put it out.

I experienced a fire when my transmission cooling line got a hole in it and sprayed the exhaust system just as I crested the hill near home. Thinking it was a blown coolant line I drove to the house just a short way down the road. Got out and popped the hood to see flames, ran to the hatch and pulled out gallons of water to dose the flames by flooding them out. Not knowing at the time why it was on fire until later when I found the transmission fluid was not reading on the stick as to what could have happened after the vehicle had cooled so as to look at the coolant first. At the time I did not know that the transmission fluid was burnable but do now.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2020-10-17 08:30:48

Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#2 2020-10-17 16:27:13

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#3 2020-10-17 17:23:53

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#4 2020-10-17 22:02:00

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#5 2020-10-18 08:15:02

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#6 2020-10-18 08:31:05

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#7 2020-10-18 13:35:04

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#8 2020-10-18 13:52:45

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#9 2020-10-18 15:50:24

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#10 2020-10-18 17:20:45

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#11 2020-10-18 17:45:49

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#12 2020-10-19 09:40:58

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

#13 2020-10-19 19:53:43

Re: Fixing Driver training and safe vehcile use

Board footer