Hmm... another relative finds this old forgoten corner of the net called usenet....
Once again it was the car's fault... never the driver's. Well a teenager's family recieved what was it? 60 million... anyway 10s of millions of dollars in a court case against ford because an explorer their teen was riding in flipped over when the teenager at the wheel fell asleep drifted off the road and then yanked the wheel suddenly. It seems you can cash in big time now because cars are supposed to drive themselves not only when the driver is asleep but when the driver gives the vehicle a control input that is essentially an instruction to crash.
Darwin's Been Busy Lately 3724I never blamed the car. I characterized it as crappy because it was. It squeaked and rattled, it was overly large and handled poorly...
I think people need to start learning how to drive instead of blaming the machine which is only doing what it was told to do by the driver with in the bounds of the physical universe. I learned long ago that the wrong response regarding a split-mu (sp?) situation where one side of tires is on a different surface than the other is to steer back suddenly on to a single surface. It's pretty obvious even knowing high school physics why this wouldn't be a good idea. Instead one is to ease off the throttle and then at lower speed gently move back on to the single surface.
Of course lack of driver knowledge doesn't make for emotional calls or profitable lawsuits.
