Ads for active safety features making massive idiocy seem OK 8-(

Anyone seen the latest Toyota and Mercedes ads featuring gigantic morons endangering themselves and others, but having their lives saved by auto-braking, auto-lane-hold, etc? Anyone else feel like it's wrong to make these massively idiotic actions seem like acceptable minor mistakes?

That Mercedes-driving businessman nearly ran over a little girl because he wasn't looking where he was going, or at best, has the reactions of a sedated tree sloth.

That couple in the Toyota blandmobile nearly crashed head-on into a semi on a perfectly straight stretch of highway because the dude took his eyes off the road for an extended period of time to fiddle with something on the center console. Hmm you don't suppose he had his cell phone mounted there...?

That Mercedes-driving woman in the "demolition derby" appears to be the only danger in a peaceful community of people who wear helmets and drive beat-up old cars. It's not the fault of the gentle people of Demoderbistan that you can't stay in your lane or react to a car stopped in front of you.

Does anyone else get a terrible sense of dread from the message that these ads are giving? "It's okay to be a dangerous moron who negligently risks the lives of others, if you've got our latest active-safety car!"

Edit: Found the Mercedes "demo derby" ad on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brgxq67Scjw

It's not as one-sided as I remember, let's tally them up.

Trophy Wife's offenses:

• Failed to react to a stopped car (at the end)

• (Implied) she doesn't check her blind spots

• Pulled 3 powerslides

For the Demoderbians:

• Head-on collision between two of them

• one did a corkscrew jump with his car

• another turned into a wall for no apparent reason

So she seems to be single-handedly causing roughly half of the danger and was never put into a dangerous situation at the fault of another driver.

I completely agree, we need to put our efforts into making better drivers not autonomous safety features.

I think for 99% of people on the road driving is a chore that they are faced with between working and checking tweeker and facebook

Didn't I recently see a Mazda add that touted how the car had Facebook integration?!

(edit): found it: " its Aha Radio integration, its ability to read Twitter and Facebook posts and to send replies using the Shout function. " http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/hatchbacks/1306_2014_mazda3_first_look/

I think the best safety feature when the car detects the driver doing something stupid would be to have an arm come out and punch them in the Hootus (or female equivalent).

In reply to aircooled:

Boob

I've been saying it for a couple years. Ever since Mercedes started with their ads with the qactive braking and lane departure warnings I wanted to scream.

Why can't Darwin go back to taking the weakest links? Why must they be allowed to breed the stupid and keep them safe?

I don't want driving to be a dangerous Darwinian struggle for survival, but it's scary how the massive mistakes in these ads are trivialized.

But driving IS a dangerous struggle. You're sitting in a 3000lb (minimum) cocoon of metal, plastic and rubber traveling at 70mph. That is dangerous, both for you and those around you. You shouldn't just poo poo things like that IMO.

On one hand, I agree that driver education is not as important as it should be. It never will be, there are so many other things that are touted as being more dangerous and requiring Government intervention and assistance, etc. The irony is that poor driving is a huge reason so many people are hurt or injured, even with the newer safety standards, yet they just seem like a normal cost of living in a "modern" society.

On the other hand, the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to this technology and the manufacturers are creeping up to the line of autonomous cars without going over that line. The ad agencies always struggle showing technology or skills that they don't understand. So the result is you end up with an upscale version of the "As Seen on TV" commercial where someone does something stupid that appears at first blush to be a problem that needs to be solved. So they present the new whatever to solve the problem.

If the gods are fair the real life morons who do this kind of junk while driving will have lots of prison time for their saved lives to think about the person they killed.

And if they are really fair the car designer who put Facebook in a car will get run over by one of the morons using it while they drive.

maybe it's time to start mandating that instead of airbags, you get a giant bag of broken glass launched at your face and daggers pop out of the dash when you get in an accident..

Easily provided... My mom fell asleep/passed out in her 96 Jeaaag, drifting into the grass between the exit ramp and the interstate. She cut the wheel back to the interstate, but when her left side wheels gripped on the shoulder, it spun her back off the highway under the overpass. The posts of the bridge were round concrete pillars, and the side of the car ran down the first one, crushing in the doors on the passenger side and shooting glass into the car from the door windows and mirrors. As the back end of the car ground to the end of the pillar, the bumper assembly kicked it round like the grappling hook of the batmobile. The front bumper was slammed into the gravel been, setting off the airbags and shooting glass into my Mom's and brother's faces and arms. I'm pretty sure she changed all her medications after that......

D'oh