The $25k car is going extinct?

And in all this useless things that they put in a car, they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...

https://www.slate.auto/en

There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.

However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.

I agree with having simpler SKUs, but rearview camera is not where to start

Paying for vehicle repair labor is basically a tax. They're making it harder and harder to fix your own car. I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to find headlight assemblies that didn't need to be coded to work correctly. Headlights.

All the outrage about right-to-repair around here, and nobody realizes the frog is almost boiled around repairing cars.

I can see quite a lot in my backup cam that is in a visual blind spot in both of my cars.

There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly. Motivations for this vary.

> There is an old and tired cabal of manufacturers wanting to generate a moat and push prices up high.

Two things can be true at once.

If the US weren't so obsessed with enormous cars with terrible visibility, I think this would be a different conversation.

What does increase safety is better driver training. This has be ubiquitously proven BTW.

Where is the ubiquitously proven support for the assertion that backup cameras don't increase safety?

Which is the work product of the 2000s era of "legislate to make cars better" advocacy.

90s SUVs rolled a lot, so they changed the rules to require them be strong, Strong made them hard to see out of in reverse so they added cameras. Now because both are regulatory required, at substantial cost, you can't even make a small vehicle that doesn't have both.

It's not like the Subarus and Volvo wagons of the 00s were lacking in rollover strength or rear visibility, but now that you have to have the features by law and when all the dust of engineering tradeoffs settles the modern analogues wind up just as bad to see out of as everything else, because why wouldn't you if you're required to have the mitigation technology. No reason for 2020s Subaru shove that stupid steel bar in the pillar (at great expense) to keep it sleek and skinny when they have to have the fat pillar mitigation tech installed by law.

How many times we gonna run laps of this feedback loop before we decide the problem is systemic?

The reason this law exists is because small children (e.g 3ft tall) were getting run over.

Seriously, go put a large suitcase immediately behind your rear bumper and try to see it without a camera. You can't.

I do not agree with your point. I do understand it, don't agree.

I've read several of your replies towards me and I can tell that you either unable or unwilling see my point of view. So there is no point in having a discussion with you.

It isn't unheard of that business will collude with government to "pull the ladder up behind them". I've worked in companies where that has been their stated strategy.

I go to South America a lot to visit family and for business and the cars by and large are much more maneuverable, small and nimble, and you can actually see most things around you.

But then every time I get back on my first car ride I'm greeted with an absolute monstrosity of a vehicle. Even the average sedan feels gargantuan. Due to this people can't realistically see very well behind them. Never mind the fact that most cars the rear windshield isn't even that large anymore, and in some vehicles head checks don't even work well because the columns are right in your view.

I understand some of this is in the name of "safety", but realistically it feels like it trading one safety measure - safety for the people inside the vehicle - at the expense of another - those outside the vehicle.

Typically when you are reversing and there is likely to be something sat behind your vehicle (like a child or a pet). You are parked. You can you know look before you get in the car.

If you have parking sensors it will alert you to something walking behind you anyway.

The point being made is there are way to deal with this without the need for a rear camera.

Yes, I will force you to have automatic emergency breaking in your Model T hotrod. Yes, you will be mad. Yes, the road will be a lot safer. No I don't care about your boomer rage about technology. No you don't want to live with India tier road laws/standards - even if - and especially if - you think you do!

In theory, we could use a dipstick in our fuel tank but most of us prefer an automated gage.

Not being snarky, just pointing out we’re often guilty of picking and choosing rather than applying first principles.

Even consumers voted with their pocketbooks in favor of this towards the end given the failure of the Nissa Versa and the Toyota Yaris in the American and Canadian market.

Also, there's a reason those $15K Toyotas, Suzukis, and Mitsubishis are sold in Thailand and India, and not in Japan - they don't even meet safety standards in their home country (and it's Toyota, Suzuki, and Mitsubishi that essentially sets standards for all of Japan).

Automotive companies like Toyota create different platforms based on the kind of market. All emerging markets use the IMV [0] platform except China, which has it's own separate platform because of China's JV and ToT requirement.

Ofc, HN skews towards gearheads and people who seem to have been born in the 1960s-80s, so it won't have great reception.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_IMV_platform

This is why we have seat belts instead of telling people "you idiot you should have used the brakes!"

You can.

And then the kid/pet moves. They do that.

Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!

The point being made is that many of these things can be mitigated by better driver training or driver aids which are much simpler & cheaper (I am likely to fit parking sensors in my older cars, kits are cheap).

Yes, like a backup camera.

> Also just because there is a camera and a screen doesn't mean people will look!

The number who will is well above zero.

(This critique also applies to your proposed mitigations, yes?)

Oh, well, if it's that easy! Just retrain 1.2 billion people, some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably.

There was a woman who backed over her own kid in the driveway. For some reason, she was not imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter. So instead of not being in prison, she spent the next half decade lobbying congress to make backup cameras mandatory. And it happened. So now everyone's car costs $3k more.

It would have been cheaper to put her imprison than impose a $3k cost per every car sold in America since 2018.

Lots more people need to be imprisoned for manslaughter, and lots of people need their license taken away for "backing crashes".

> A 2012 Harris poll suggests that the public agress with the mandate despite the technology’s costs. NHTSA says adding a backup camera to a car without an existing display screen will cost around $159 to $203 per vehicle, shrinking to between $58 and $88 for vehicles that already use display screens. The Harris poll found that consumers care more about safety features like backup cameras than they do about multimedia systems.

I'm not sure where you're getting your $3k backup cameras from; the camera is a $30 part, and pretty much every new car has a screen in it already.

I would rather live with India tier roads than <wherever you're from> tier opinions.

Well you've just twisted what I said because you are getting angry. So we will leave it there.

> When averaged between the 2 automakers, effects were significantly larger for drivers 70 and older (38% reduction) than for drivers younger than 70 (1% increase); effects were significant for older but not younger drivers.

A big SUV is probably an exacerbating factor, though.

Also, for any kind of car, rear cameras and sensors decrease impacts while parallel parking. I see far fewer damaged bumpers on newer cars these days.

They have been mandating that in most UK countries for decades and it is definitely one of the reasons why roads are safer now.

> Some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably

Your true colours finally show. All the people are too stupid to learn how to do anything. BTW this is called the "Bigotry of low expectations".

>I can put it one that is better than the factory one for a cheaper price

As someone who used to be involved in the car audio competition scene, those days are long gone. Modern sounds systems are great, and tightly integrated into the A/V system.

>the sensor that tells you if you have a flat tire

The sensor will tell you when there's a rapid drop in pressure. You won't notice the flat until you're near driving on the rim.

>the emergency call button (while everyone has a mobile phone these days), automatic regulating seats (pulling a lever is too much difficult), dual zone clima control (it's the same space in the same car, why I would want to set 2 different temperatures?)

Old man yells at great features.

>they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...

Yeah, they provide roadside assistance. Because changing your tire on the side of the road is dangerous (as is driving on the donut).

Plenty of used jalopies out there for you.

All? No. Some? Absolutely. Five minutes on the road demonstrates it.

Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?

> you are getting angry

If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.

$3000 for a backup camera, okay.

   - Gas mileage (pollution)
   - Tire wear (pollution)
   - Handling (safety)

Save perhaps rarely if ever used seating positions (middle rear of the super stripped down V6 Mustang they make like 10 of so they can advertise a starting MSRP or some other comparable niche) I don't think seatbelts are going away anywhere they matter.

Ditto with headlights and tail lights, drivers find them useful. Perhaps we'd see a delete option used by fleet buyers who intend to equip the vehicles with alternative lighting.

I recently pulled out of a business and the "low tire pressure light" turned on right away. "Hmm?" My next stop was 1/4 mile away, and it still felt okay. At the next parking lot I checked all the tires with my gauge and found one was 10psi low. On closer inspection the nail was right on top. Sure enough I'd picked up a little nail. It was a slow leak, and I wouldn't have heard the hiss. If not for the sensor I might not have noticed I'd gotten a flat until I got on the freeway.

PSA: Check your spare's air pressure. Mine was supposed to be 60psi. It had 40psi, which was good enough to get me to the tire store. I checked the spare when I got home - the tire repair crew had bumped it up to 55psi.

My dad was leaving on a trip recently. Because 'spare tire psi' was on my mind I checked his spare - it was only 25psi.

You knew I was referring to other methods mitigation the risk and decided to get a quick jab in at me. That was disingenuous. I don't appreciate it.

> Which is easier, installing them in new vehicles, or making a billion drivers undertake remedial training in basic safety?

Driver awareness can be done through other means than re-training.

> If you say so. I've gotten angry on here, but it takes a lot more than someone who thinks they can see through their bumper.

I never said that and obviously don't believe that. Funny how at the start of this reply you were pretending you weren't engaging in that behaviour. I wouldn't bother replying, you won't get another one.

If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)

Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.

Yes, I do. And I'm wondering why this one doesn't count.

> Driver awareness can be done through other means that re-training.

Such as?

(Ironically, the serious answer to this is "stuff like backup cameras". Which improve driver awareness when backing.)

> I never said that and obviously don't believe that.

You: "However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head."

How do you use those two techniques to see things in the blind spot behind the bumper without its being transparent?

And taking away licenses is acting too late.

So you accept that better driving training would be better.

> If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)

As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they die.

If you implement better driver training. Then newer driver have to do that training. So over the overall minimum standard improves.

A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard. It is a band-aid over a bigger problem.

> Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.

Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.

Oh, certainly! But it needn't be exclusive. (And "teach people better" is a lot harder than running a wire to a $30 camera.)

> As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they.

They drive far, far too long on average. I'd love to see an annual requirement to pass a driving test over 60, but… old people vote.

> A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard.

Sure. It improves the "backing up" bit only.

> Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.

Both are safety mitigations, for different aspects of driving.

I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.

But earlier you were pretending that it was the case. Interesting.

Do you not remember?

> I'm glad I can both survive a rear-end crash and being reversed over by someone driving a Hummer with a six foot high blind spot in the back. I don't have to pick one improvement, which is great.

Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera, but won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law in other vehicles?

I am not sure what to make of this statement.

Hardly. Just that "teach people" is tough, expensive, and time consuming. "Install a $30 device" is not. (In your now flagged last-last-last reply to me, you advocated for PSAs. As we all know, they worked great to stop texting while driving!)

> Are you saying the mandated camera doesn't stop someone from reversing over you or that the hummer doesn't have the camera and the hummer won't kill you because the camera is mandated by law.

I'm saying I'm glad the Hummers now have backup cameras, because they sure as shit can't see me with the windows/mirrors.

I am specifically talking about things that take over control of the vehicle.

I've had lane assist fight me when trying to move lanes. I apparently wasn't turning the wheel enough and it thought I was drifting (I wasn't).

I've had another hire car refuse to move backwards without me putting it into reverse. It had anti-rollback measures. I didn't know what was going on. All my other cars would rollback (I drive manuals). Now I know technically you shouldn't coast backwards but it was maybe a foot.

This remains entirely true. That's part of why it's tough, expensive, and time consuming. People do dumb things. Much of safety is figuring out ways to lessen opportunities to do so, and mitigating damage when they manage it.

See, for example, aviation/medical safety, which take the approach that individuals making mistakes is an indictment of the system that permitted that mistake to occur. We engineer them away, as much as possible, with pretty great success overall.

> I knew that. I thought I deliberately misinterpret the sentence so you would be forced to clarify. You did to me several times in the other thread.

No, I still wanna know how you stop time between checking behind your car and getting in, starting it up, and backing out, so no kid/pet/whatever can run behind it in those 10-15 seconds.

As is waiting on the side of the highway for an hour (possibly in the winter, possibly in the dark) until AAA arrives. Also, allowing you to pay for roadside assistance isn't the same as "providing" it.

It’s required because it’s a safety issue. I think that’s the intent behind almost all mandatory sensors. That’s why the post put “useless” in quotes. I’m highlighting just that it may be required because it’s needed for safety.

However, many motorcycles have ABS as optional equipment and many people (non-stunters) don’t opt in for it. Meaning, many people don’t recognize (or don’t care enough to pay) the safety aspect.

Sure it does. You can tune it to get better performance or fuel economy. (Tbf, you can do the same by fuel mapping your injectors, but it would probably void any warranty).

What you seem to be alluding to is that the automated features give you different performance than what you were expecting and you have little recourse. The same could be said for your fuel injectors.

Fantasy cope, you can't even force emissions testing in most counties.

Oh, wait. That’s what regulators are for :-)

You're telling on yourself here. Use your turn signal and lane assist won't fight you.

Looking up some data, it was about 75% of cars and rising in 2007, so not as high as I expected but still pretty high. There's some circularity but I'd say it's mostly not circular.

A sensor you were paired to disappears. Now a new sensor is showing up, and it sticks with you for an entire hour.

Sounds pretty easy for a computer to figure that puzzle out.

I guess they shouldn't have assumed you were speaking from experience, but I don't think that's a big deal. That's not forcing you to accept any conclusion. If it happens "often" you should have examples and/or data. If you don't then maybe you should reconsider if it actually is "often".

And they directly asked for data that it doesn't increase safety.

That's not unwillingness to see your point of view. If you provide quality evidence, you can win them over.

... Or you could just have the manufacturer spend $30 to embed this into the car's dash.

For similar reasons, your car also comes with a fuel gauge, and doesn't require hand-cranking to start.

If you really want car prices to come down, have the manufacturers fire most of their workers and replace them with robots (I'm not sure if the robots will make for a good consumer base, but that's someone else' problem.)

Look at a BYD car factory versus any one ran by the American auto dinosaurs, and that's where you'll find the price delta.

How does this square with your theory that cars are becoming 'more disposable'? They seem to be running longer than ever before.

Unless you really struggle with object permanence, a child somehow ending up in front of you without you seeing them is not a frequent occurrence, compared to one ending up behind you.

But yes, American cars are stupid big and should be smaller.

Repairability becomes somewhat less relevant when reliability is better out-of-the-box.

[1] A decade ago it was 11 years.

I agree. It is also frustrating when people don't recognize or cry foul when their personal beliefs are restated within homotopy equivalence, perhaps (I speculate) because they think it weakens an already weak argument. Perhaps even moreso for those stating the equivalence because there is not argumentative advantage to be gained by expressing said frustration regarding said response.

Or at least it could be. I'm actually feeling indifferent on the topic.

> There are politicians and activists that have been pushing for lower car ownership and they do it openly.

Words are cheap, words and rallys and activist productions moreso, show the policy that impacts national and international production.

Yes you did.

How can I make it clearer that I disagree.

> That is a circular rationale because it’s still pointing to a legally mandated sensor.

It's circular if the legal mandate is why those sensors are installed. If they'd be installed anyway then it's not circular.

Ie there wouldn’t be a legal reason if it weren’t for the safety reason. So pointing to the safety is why it’s a circular argument.

It’s like disagreeing that smoke detectors are because they are legally required in homes because people want them anyway for safety reasons. Both can be true at the same time because they both are related to the same risk mitigation.

In any event, the OP was that some people don’t want those sensors, my point is they aren’t optional.

I love my camera but I've noticed that I tend to look around less, which is bad because a camera doesn't cover everything.

ABS is a no brainer. So is ASR.

TPMS is awesome coz face it, I have never and will never regularly check my tire pressure. Remember how they taught you to check the oil regularly? Who ever did that?

I want real knobs so I don't have to look away from the road and do climate controls and radio by feel on the side. Much safer.

But automatic braking is another one of those two edged swords. I almost had a car behind me crash into me recently because the car in front of me decided to abruptly slow down and turn left. I reacted and went slightly to the right to get around and the car in front of me was turning further away as well. But then the dang emergency breaking system hit the brakes and startled me. For a second I couldn't do anything then I hit the brakes too until a second later I realized it was BS and the car behind me was getting awfully close real fast and I instead hit the gas.

These systems are still quite bad in judging objects that go left-right or opposite. The cruise control slows down immensely for a car on front of me taking an exit for no reason. And on the other hand it reacts way too late if another car suddenly switches into your lane when you're about to overtake them. And that's for different cars from different manufacturers and different model years so I doubt it's a unique experience.

You're confusing me. How about I explain my understanding of what makes things circular.

Generic hypothetical: Regulation requires a part. Cars put the part in because of regulation. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is there from regulation, it's to a strong extent regulation justifying itself, and it's circular.

Does your understanding of circularity differ from that?

Now, consider a variant: Regulation requires a part. But it doesn't matter because cars have that part anyway. Later, people amending the regulations consider something else that requires that part, and they justify it as having negligible cost because that part is already in cars. Because that part is not there from regulation, it's not regulation justifying itself, and it's not circular.

Does that make sense? You could imagine the part is "wheels" for the variant. Regulations that imply wheels are not using circular arguments when they say 'cars have wheels anyway, that's not a cost of this regulation'.

Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it. Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system. It's a little better that it is deterministic, and follows an explicit pairing process.

I thankfully was wearing riding gloves, helmet, and boots; the pavement wore through several layers of the leather, my hands would have been shredded like my knee, or worse.

Solve the problem completely or else admit that it's just for twits who can't parallel park.

How big is the range on one of these?

> Every time a TPMS battery dies in these circumstances, the vehicle shouldn't pair with random TPMS sensors around it.

Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.

Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.

> Especially when we're talking about logic of a regulated safety system.

"Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?

Also, unlike with money and wealth and other metrics where averages aren't very useful, the distribution of car ages does not have a tail of incredible outliers. There aren't a lot of billion-year-old cars driving that average away from the median.

Look, it's entirely possible that 'this time it'll be different', and we'll regress on this metric, but at the moment the data does not support it.

As always with RF propagation, it depends. They're frequently in the 315Mhz band, so should be roughly similar to garage door openers, remote controls, etc.

> Random sensors around it that aren't already paired to their own car.

There's no handshake -- TPMS sensors are generally unencrypted broadcast devices. A car will see a lot of sensors. (and you can set up an antenna and track cars driving down your street) The "pairing" is simply the vehicle remembering which ones is theirs.

> Also it could wait for you to complete an entire trip or two.

It could. Now add the complication of: spare tires. And also, some but not all vehicles store the positionality of the sensor, so they can tell you which tire is low.

But if you're going to give the system so much hysteresis, you might as well just save the money and use the ABS-sensor based system that other vehicles use. These don't require any additional sensors or programming, but they are slower to react and don't provide pressure readings. The reason automakers use direct sensor systems is to provide a more direct and immediate reading.

> "Safety" in the sense that the little warning light usually gets you to do something about it eventually? Is this data going into anything where the correctness is a big deal?

It is a big enough deal that the reason many cars have them is to comply with the legal requirement that they have them. Before the light (and better cars have textual warnings), you'd have to manually check your tire pressure to identify an underinflated tire, leading to many people driving on them for extended periods of time and experiencing rapid unscheduled failures.

I had a rental Mercedes with a leak in a tire recently... a tire was at something like 15psi but looked visually the same as the other tires. I absolutely do a walk around on all of my rentals and take pictures, but I would have had no clue if it weren't for TPMS. I would have driven it until it failed.

“I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.

Now much of what you bring up is tangential. But one thing I think we think differently about is that each of the premises you laid out starts with regulation. I differ because i see regulation as a response to a prior underlying risk. In other words, the risk exists before the regulation. So I don’t view regulation as a “self-licking ice cream cone”, or excusing for its own sake, but rather a risk mitigation. That’s why an ABS sensor can be used for monitoring pressure: it’s not the sensor that matters but whether the risk os appropriately mitigated.

In this case there's a risk. By my argument applies to regulations that involve risk and it also applies to regulations that don't involve risk.

> “I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have a regulated sensor installed” is a circular argument.

I almost agree, but I think the motivation matters.

"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already to follow regulations" is a circular argument.

"I don’t need regulated sensors installed because I have those sensors already for reasons unrelated to regulations" is not a circular argument. If no regulations existed already, it's not circular. If they did exist but they didn't change your behavior then it's not circular.

Believe it or not, there were a lot of good arguments against seatbelts. And they were genuinely believed. And they were popular. And, they are now well past extinct.

if i am a hardcore environmentalist, i throw regulations at homebuilding to make housebuilding excruciating. homeowner voters are thrilled by the ensuing valuations

see: california

Which are those? Because so far, this conversation has been about TPMS and ABS regulation. I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.

Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist. I believe they exist to mitigate risk. Sometimes they can be poorly executed, and sometimes they can be for a risk you aren’t acutely aware of or one you don’t care about, but that doesn’t mean the risk is non-existent.

Well like I mentioned earlier, there's a regulation that cars have wheels, right? That's not a risk thing.

> I’m beginning to think the discussion is more about dogmatic feelings about regulation than the topic at hand.

No, it's just explaining my logic. Using a more abstract example makes it easier to focus on the logic.

> Again, your argument is based on following regulations for the sake of regulation

No it's not.

> and I don’t agree that’s why regulations exist.

I never said that's why regulations exist.

I never said anything about why regulations exist.

I'm so confused.

I'm just talking about whether a certain kind of rule is circular or not...

It's not a very important point, to be fair. But you seem to think I'm making some wildly different points from what I intend, and I'm not sure why there's such a communication breakdown.

Front visibility is famously poor on SUVs and trucks, and even aside from pedestrians, I suspect there are a lot of small but very expensive bumper taps because you mis-judged the distance to the crap at the back wall of your garage.

Do you blindly assume that regulators are right 100% of the time? If they aren't , then by virtue of regulation being never removed in the long run, you will end up with inflated regulation for which some of it is done for no good reason.

Besides backup cameras have use beyond just making sure a child is not behind you, such as assisting with parking, or seeing if there is oncoming traffic when there is a larger vehicle parked next to you.

There's no reason for the screen other than the camera, therefore the camera is $3k

Is there a particular regulation you would prefer to remove? If you list something specific, let's talk about other alternatives to removing the regulation that could cause better outcomes without reducing supply in that market.

That's just simply not how safety engineering works. Safety features mitigate risk, none of them solve it.

Partial safety mitigation isn't so much how safety engineering works; it's how it ducks out of working due to non-engineering reasons. If any safety issue remains, that means engineering was not done in that regard: the safety engineers were excused from the requirement to design anything for that risk.

It's insane how normalized terrible driving is. I don't even mean following the law at this point. It's much more basic than that and applies to every vehicle in every context. You must drive in such a way to be able to stop in time if the vehicle in front of you decides to apply max braking. This is dictated by the laws of the universe we exist in, not by some rule arbitrarily decided by humans.