My current car has this new-fangled doohickey feature where it automatically warns the driver when the vehicle doesn’t stay in its lane or when it detects a potential frontal collision and over the past couple of weeks of getting used to having driver aids in the form of beeping or even pre-braking when the onboard computer calculates that the chances of a collision are high, I have realized that our roads and drivers must be quantitatively, among the most chaotic in the world.
One feature of the driver assist tech installed in my car is called the lane keep assist, where the car’s front-facing cameras monitors its position on the road using lane markings as a guide, and it generates an alert every time it detects the driver straying from its lane.
Whoever designed this system must have done it for first world and developed countries where drivers are disciplined and traffic rules are basically obeyed. As someone who has been driving in the sort of conditions that we have become used to, I never thought that the way I drive was worthy of being warned every few minutes, but it turns out that Filipino drivers simply cannot stay in their lane.
Lane changes need to be done almost constantly while driving here. There are slow moving vehicles that need to be overtaken, public utility vehicles that constantly stop anywhere they please, motorcycles that weave in and out of traffic can be avoided only by temporarily drifting into the other lane. The lane keep assist warning has been reminding me of the importance of staying in your lane but what it made me realize is that the way we collectively drive as a collectively undisciplined mass means it beeps almost regularly every time I drive.
The only way to prevent the lane assist warnings from activating is if I drive so slowly that I will not need to overtake or avoid anyone because that means I can stay in my lane for an extended period, or I constantly use signal lights every time I have to drift out of the lane to avoid an obstacle in this mother of all obstacle courses that we call our roads.
Another reason my lane assist warning is always beeping is because most drivers do not stay in their lanes but create their own ones wherever they see a gap. This means that even if you are trying to stay in your lane, another vehicle is always nudging you out of it.
Anyway, I tried to turn it off this lane assist feature a few days after it constantly annoyed me by reminding me that I’m driving like a Pinoy, but I turned it on again and have been trying to be an obedient driver these past few weeks. The challenge has been tough, given the driving conditions and attitudes of everyone else, but it has been fun trying to “behave” my driving by reducing the beeps and warnings. It’s actually making me wish everyone else would be constantly reminded to stay in their lane.
Another feature of the car is pre-collision detection and braking, where the car’s cameras and computer try to predict if a collision is possible and then initially generates a warning, and if the driver doesn’t respond appropriately, applies the brakes on its own.
What was interesting to see is that there were many situations that I don’t consider dangerous yet but the car is already beeping madly and even starting to brake. It seems that our roads are just naturally dangerous, where pedestrians suddenly dart in and out of slow moving traffic, or when motorcycles cut in and suddenly brake, as they try to get ahead of everyone else. Maybe I should read the manual and dial down the sensitivity of the settings so the car doesn’t insist on braking so on its own as much as it currently does, or do the same thing as the lane assist and grandma drive my way into a beep-free experience.
My biggest realization from driving a car with driver aids activated is that we live in a world where dangerous driving habits have become normalized and most of us have adapted, unfortunately also becoming dangerous in the process. It must be a terrible experience for newly exposed drivers who strictly follow rules on keeping lanes and safe distances, such as my computer co-driver, that has been beeping almost constantly every day after being exposed to this chaotic environment.
Maybe one day, if more vehicles get driver aids to nag us to compliance, we might become more disciplined and safe drivers. But until then, we will have to hope and pray that our laws, rules and regulations, as applied by its enforcers, can somehow keep us in line, disciplined and relatively safe.*
