The big turnoff of lane departure warning tech. https://t.co/wRbfXC0OUF
— IIHS (@IIHS_autosafety) July 14, 2017
Who wants to listen to a repetitive bell going off every time you forget to signal before a lane change, or swerve around a pothole? Nobody, that's who.
Actually, according to the IIHS, about 46 percent of drivers might. That's the percentage of vehicles that had auditory lane-departure warning systems turned on in a recent study. More than half of drivers hate the constant dinging so much, they turn the systems off entirely.
That's a shame, because accidents that involve lane-drift tend to be among the most severe. According to the IIHS, 23 percent of fatal crashes in the U.S. involved unintentional departure from a lane. Lane-departure warnings could save lives.
How do we get people to use this safety feature?
The IIHS may have an answer there, too: Make it less annoying. In the same study, the IIHS found that systems that used tactile warnings, like steering-wheel vibration, were about 8 percent more likely to be turned on than systems with auditory warnings. People were also more likely to use systems that actively steer the vehicle back into the center of the lane, rather than warnings alone.
Ford gets everything right in this department. The lane-keeping system available on new Ford models like the 2017 Fusion, F-150, and Escape use a combination of steering-wheel vibration and active torque steering assistance to keep drivers from drifting.