Mythbuster: does switching off safety aids make you a yob?

Myth: not using safety aids makes you a yob

The General Safety Regulation Part II (GSR2) now applies to all new cars sold in the EU, and by extension Britain. It mandates intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist and automated braking. Some campaigners say that making lane and speed systems turnoffable (sorry, is that a word?) amounts to a hole in the regulations written by carmakers with too much lobbying power who want to sell fast cars to dangerous drivers. That might be partially true, but it’s still a myth to say safe drivers don’t also need to turn them off.

On a B-road coming to a left hand bend you want to move onto the centre markings, both to smooth your line and improve your sightline. Approaching a right hander you want, for the same reasons, to cling to the edge. In these cases lane assist will nudge the wheel the wrong way, so you need to grip hard and fight it. And many cars also set off warning bells, which disquiet your passengers.

Worse on a B-road that gets wider and narrower, the lines appear and disappear. When they appear the system wants to send you suddenly to the hedge. When they disappear into the centre, possibly towards an oncoming vehicle that it thinks you haven’t seen, it invokes the crash warning and braking that’s also mandated.

The campaigners are wrong. The safety system is not in this case promoting safety. But to turn it off you often have to dive deep into a touchscreen menu. At which point the driver distraction warning starts beeping. With good reason.

Intelligent speed assist warns you when you’re over the limit, using a combination of a camera that reads the signs plus map and online data. It can also reset the cruise control. Problem: it often gets it wrong. The other day I drove through some 50mph roadworks on the M4. At Reading the limit went back to 70. As far as Heathrow, 30 miles later, the system was still incorrectly telling me 50, despite the car having satnav, a camera and car-to-X communication. You can see why I turned off the nagging buzzer. On the other hand I’ve sometimes had camera systems read 30 as 80.

Of course I use ISA and lane assist when appropriate, but it’s nonsense to say they shouldn’t be overrideable. And I don’t want fumbling for the override button to be itself distracting and unsafe.