RWBenz

Hey y’all! My grandparents are looking to purchase a suburban, ever since the 80s they’ve always had one and their 2014 is starting to leak oil and get a little tired. Looking at the new ones, considering they are both mid 70s I wanted to emphasize driver assistance.

They tried super-cruise on a test drive and liked it a lot, though not trusting it on busy interstates.

My question is, as they become less aware and sharp drivers, will these driver assistance features make them lazy and negate their benefit to their safety and everyone else’s, or will the features just be a nice fail-safe when my grandparents aren’t sharp enough?

Just wanted to hear some thoughts and anecdotes y’all make have on this issue

mountainmanjoe

we've already seen numerous crashes involving inattentive (even sleeping!) drivers behind the wheel who put too much faith into these driverless systems.

RWBenz

Makes sense, salesman told us the vehicle will pull over and call OnStar if the driver is unresponsive, is that true? Or are many of these accidents due to a failure while in SuperCruise?

mountainmanjoe

If a person isn't sharp enough to drive safely, then it's time to retire from driving, IMHO.

RWBenz

Agreed, and when they get to that point they will definitely not be on the road anymore. They haven’t had any accidents or near misses I’ve seen, we just want to be prepared for when that stuff does start happening.

Rednucleus

IMO all the "great features" in today's vehicles are responsible for many cases of distracted driving accidents & deaths, I did my best to keep my 85yr old dad in his reliable safe toyota rather than have him "upgrade" to a vehicle with big touch screens. Maybe get their current motor rebuilt is the rest of the car is well cared for; keep them in something they are used to operating.