Here’s a charming story about a van full of people that got “assisted” to the next world. or so it appears. Watch the video and see.

The van was carrying ten people – soccer fans, apparently – when its driver attempted to pass a big rig and it looks like the Lane Keep Assist (LKAS) corrected him back into the opposing lane of traffic and right into the path of another semi headed the other way – maybe because the driver hadn’t signaled he was moving back into the right lane.

You can see in the video that the van’s left turn signal was still on when the vehicle veered away from the right lane, where it was headed when it looks like the “assistance” stepped in.

Using the turn signal prevents LKAS from “assisting” you while you change lanes or turn off the road. But if you don’t use the turn signal and the system detects the vehicle leaving its travel lane – via the cameras that see where the vehicle is in relation to the painted center divider line – the system will use the electric motor that controls the steering to exert countersteering force. This is supposed to help keep a vehicle from wandering across the painted yellow center divider line on account of a driver not paying attention to his driving. But countersteering force is also applied when the driver is paying attention to his driving and means to change lanes – as to pass a slow-poke – and deliberately steers into the opposing lane to execute the pass but failed to signal first.

If you are not ready for and familiar with this sudden exertion of countersteering force, you may find yourself corrected into a situation such as the one described in the story linked to above.

There are some who say it cannot happen. That the countersteering force exerted is too mild to result in something like that. I can attest that it isn’t.

And can.

I am something of an expert witness – because I have been test driving new vehicles for 30 years and I have test driven models equipped with LKAS made by pretty much every vehicle manufactured over the past decade – which is roughly the period during which LKAS began to be installed in new cars, along with electric-assisted power steering. The latter chiefly for compliance reasons as electric-assist power steering is a way to reduce parasitical drag on an engine and thus slightly decrease fuel consumption and thereby also “emissions.”

I have driven LKAS-equipped vehicles that exerted alarmingly forceful countersteering while I was driving at high speed, sufficient to unsettle my line and potentially destabilize the vehicle. I have italicized high speed because it is an important qualifier. As anyone who drives fast knows, slight steering inputs can have big consequences as vehicle speed increases. No doubt, LKAS is generally programmed for the kind of “safe” and “legal” driving we’re all supposed to pretend is how most of us drive. In fact, most of “speed” regularly and “speed” even more when we pass slow-pokes – because it is the only safe way to pass.

But we’re all supposed to nod our heads in agreement with the instructress when she lectures us that if the car ahead is doing 51 in a 55, then we must not go faster than 55 to pass. If we followed these instructions, we’d rarely be able to pass. Or we’d die trying. – because we’d be in the wrong lane too long. So we drive faster than the speed limit to quickly get around the slow-poke. It’s illegal, of course. But better to risk a ticket than death from a head-on collision.

Anyhow, the point here is that if you are driving at high speed and in the process of maneuvering – as for example, changing lanes at high speed without signaling – the god-damned LKAS absolutely can unsettle your course. It has happened to me, so I know that it can. Just as I also know that a vehicle equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking can brake – hard – for no good reason, possible resulting in the car behind you pile-driving into you. That happened to me a few years ago, when a new car I was test driving suddenly braked – hard – and stopped in the middle of the road. There was nothing in the road.

Maybe the car saw its shadow, groundhog-style.

Some will say: But you should always signal! It is beside the point. Unwanted (and unexpected) countersteering force is far more dangerous than not using a turn signal.

According to news reports, seven of the ten people in that van are dead. Possibly because they were assisted to death. It is impossible to say for sure at this point. But the video seems to show that’s what happened. What’s absolutely for sure is this god-damned “assistance” tech has been embedded in everything – irrespective of the fact that every survey of new car buyers indicates most buyers do not like it and do not want it.

Yet they’re effectively forced to have it – if they want to own a new car.

A number of important questions are begged, the chief one being why would the vehicle manufacturers push a “technology” only a minority of car buyers seems to want? Imagine McDonald’s slyly replacing the hamburger patty in a Quarter Pounder with a veggie patty.

LKAS and all of the other “assistance” tech is something like that.

It isn’t “safety” that sells. It is that “safety” is being pushed.

Where we are being pushed raises a whole ‘nother slew of questions that maybe ought to be answered.

. . .

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