Why Your Car Needs 'Nanny Tech' Riding Shotgun

Check the comment sections from an article about autonomous cars or driver-assist technology and you'll read things like, "I don't want the car to drive for me," or "People should just learn how to drive." 

I consider myself a good driver. I haven't had a major collision or a moving violation in over a decade, and I've fortunately never been involved in an injury-causing car accident. But after testing more than 50 new vehicles a year, many with driver-assist systems, and having an aftermarket system in one of my own cars, I'm glad that many automobiles these days have "nanny" technology.

Why? A few close calls and the effectiveness of the technology has impressed me—and certainly saved me from damage to my car, my body, and my bank account.

For example, years ago I had an aftermarket system from Mobileye, the primary provider of cameras systems to most automakers, installed in my 2008 Honda CR-V for a test I did while on staff at Edmunds.com. During a drive, I looked down for just a second to change the radio station, when I received a warning from the lane-departure feature. I looked up just in time to see that I was too close to the cement-wall center divider. On another journey, I was also amazed at how the system's camera and software detected lane markings on a snowy road.

But I have to admit that the constant warnings from the rudimentary Mobileye system can become aggravating after a while, and newer active safety systems that take control of the car can become too intrusive. But technology is helping solve these issues as well.

An Amazing Amount of Control
For example, the 2017 Audi Q7 I recently tested is a technology tour de force when it comes to driver assists. In addition to now-common features such as frontal collision warnings and rear cross traffic alerts with automatic braking, our test car also had a Driver Assistance option package that included adaptive cruise control with a "congestion assist" feature. That allowed the Q7 to essentially drive itself on the highway by keeping the car centered in its lane.

Nanny Technology

But the best thing about the Q7's large collection of driver-assist technologies is the remarkable amount of control the driver has over the systems' warnings. Within the menu of the Q7's MMI interface, the driver has the ability to adjust everything from how much the audio is lowered when an alert is triggered to how bright the blind spot monitoring warning lights flash.

And here's another new twist: In addition to LEDs on the exterior mirrors that blink to tell drivers that another vehicle is in their blind spot, a thin strip of ambient lighting on the inside of the front doors that's normally a muted white flashes red to also call attention to a potential hazard.

Nanny Technology

Similarly, Infiniti vehicles like the 2015 Infiniti Q70L 5.6 now provide a single switch to turn off or on all driver-assist warnings, without having to dig into menus to adjust each one.

Here's the thing that the Luddite, mostly car enthusiast commenters don't get: autonomous and driver assists are not either-or propositions. You can choose to use the technology or, in many cases, turn it off. Use it during a long, boring freeway drive or mundane daily commute, but switch it off when driving for pleasure on a back road.

Based on my experience, though, even if you're a great driver, I recommend always having an electronic nanny riding shotgun just to be on the safe side—and silencing it only when necessary or overly annoyed.