No one has eliminated the human element.
The current systems are not 1960’s tech with a bit tacked on.
As i said as far as i can see you cannot buy a new merc with a manual gearbox. At least with the a class c class amg black and maybacks. Nor can you specify one in the optional extras they may do one special order if your in the know and have the right credentials i dunno.
the human element in this case is being able to change gear when i want not when a pile of electronics tell me i can that wont let me use kick down or engine breaking properly.
what has changed in the mot standard then other than a bit of cobblers about emissions and a few other minor things. What has changed in the crash simulation tests are we now going more than 70 mph which is in fact only a head on crash with both vehicles going at 35 mph. ie pretty much town speeds and certainly not nsl speeds
Well yeah, you’re making the instruction that the truck is going to make it’s best guesstimate as to the road conditions and if you’re on a regular route hopefully you’ll remember new roundabouts that the truck doesn’t know about and is happy to attempt at 56mph (always hilarious). Just a case of remembering it’s always your responsibility and you shouldn’t be lying down in the bunk behind 
`til things get even better. 
Please tell me how?
All I have experienced is a switch on the dashboard that can reduce the following distance from 3 to 1. Never less than 1.
Maybe it has changed, but just go one more, so the following distance is zero, and job done.
A nice cab bolted on top of a truly horrible lorry.
But hey ho! 
If the electronics won’t let you select 1st at 100mph isn’t that a good thing?
If the kit prohibits engine braking that is bad. Does it?
New vehicle standards are not the same as test standards.
But if fitted, lots of newer kit must work.
EPS. ABS and EBS must work and it is often illegal to remove them.
Crash test standards change all the time. Very few vehicles from the 60’s would pass any sort of approval today.
In the early 1960’s we (a few) were going much faster than 70mph!
ive managed to find this…
- 1968 – a tyre check
- 1977 – checks of windscreen wipers and washers, indicators, brake lights, horns, exhaust system and condition of the body structure and chassis
- 1991 – checks of the emissions test for petrol engine vehicles, together with checks on the anti-lock braking system, rear wheel bearings, rear wheel steering (where appropriate) and rear seat belts
- 1992 – a stricter tyre tread depth requirement for most vehicles
- 1994 – a check of emissions for diesel engine vehicles
- 2005 – introduction of a computerised administration system for issuing non-secure test certificates, and the creation of the ‘Automated Test Bay’ which differed from traditional testing by installing equipment in the bay to obviate the need for a tester’s assistant during the test
- 2012 – checks of secondary restraint systems, battery and wiring, electronic stability control (ESC), speedometers and steering locks.
i will grant you the changes in 77 and maybe 92 were safety related.
but that is it… the checks you mention are purely to see if the warning bulb is lit. there is no road test so none of those systems can be tested. Only way the speedo is tested is tested is on the drive into the workshop if they look or if they believe the mileage shown is inaccurate.
ill put up a car with solid chassis rails against anything with the highest ncap rating and we will see which one looks like a car at the end.
before the m1 had a speed limit my father bent the speedo needle on his mk2 jag. it was still subject to the same tests as a mini or robin reliant.
you would have to work at it to get the cones to let you put it into first at 100 mph.
your going down a steep hill with the retarder full on and your still gaining speed try changing down a gear in a merc or even to some extent a daf if it means the revs are going over 2000 rpm. or the other way you can see a steep hill and know it wont make it in the current gear so what to drop a cog to keep up momentum which means it will be at the top of the green band by the time it lets you (doesn’t just sit there beeping at you) and actually does it the revs have dropped so much the engine is beginning to knock.
Maybe the ones I drive are too old or basic.
So, tyres, seat belts, batteries steering and emissions are not safety related?
Emissions may not kill people in a spectacular, front page way, but they do kill people.
So, do you want to see more meaningful in depth testing?
Would the motoring public be with you?
After a roll over? I’d bet the monocoque would be better off.
After hitting the run under bar of a truck? You’d have a lovely chassis, but nowt on top of it.
There, you answered your own point.
And I’ll have a wee bet you have never driven a truck with retarder?
1992 – a stricter tyre tread depth requirement for most vehicles
steering has been part of the mot since its inception what is mentioned in my post is steering locks which have nothing to do with road safety. in fact you would want them not to operate while the vehicle is in motion. Same as emission checks have nothing to do with road safety no one has affixiated from following a car with too high a co level
who said anything about more stringent testing. there is no testing in any meaningful way. most manufacturers recommend replacing the srs system in its entirety every 7 years. I am willing to bet not many people do yet it is not a mot failure, just a box ticking exercise with no meaningful check.
be sensible any vehicle that hit the under-run bar at those sorts of speeds wouldn’t have much left. I was also comparing like for like… if you want to take it to extremes we can try a chieftain tank against the under-run bar
modern suv’s tip over at the drop of a hat they are top heavy with narrow chassis. To tip over a pre 90’s car you had to work at it. I would even go to say the reason most rolled over was down to geography rather than the lack of stability
i haven’t answered my own question i have stated putting it in first at 100 mph is neigh on impossible.
its what merc call the thing so shrug
not the video i was looking for but its the same as the merc and daf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1gY3AM73A
I didn’t know this was a thing until I read the post here, so I had a try today.
I would describe it more as press and hold the - button for adjusting the acc space, and it disables it. Didn’t seem to matter what number it was on at the time.
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Thanks, I’ll give it a try.
To be fair early type Unitary body vehicles were made with a lot of redundancy in panel strength.You really wouldn’t want to hit an Austin Westminster or Jag XJ or Zodiac Mk3 or Triumph 2000/2.5 head on with just about anything less than a loaded Leyland WF tipper.
I’ve never understood heel and toe in the case of rev matching the downshifts on a manual box.Firstly it’s the flawed idea of trying match the engine speed against a constantly reducing road speed.IE there’s no actual road speed to actually match the revs to because the road speed is falling off a cliff during the downshift.
Also it’s laughably dependent on brake pedal position and sensitivity which is why it was rarely if ever used to rev match engine speed with a constant mesh truck and especially with air brakes.
There’s a much finer and more satisfying art in seperating the braking and rev matching operations.Including at very high approach speeds.
Let’s just leave it there.
Fly by wire throttle pedals have been around for many years my 2004 MG ZTT had fly by wire throttle. In fact just about every vehicle since EFI is likely fly by wire as most did away with carbs and a physical cable linkage.
The pedal had a potentiometer in it, it also had 2 tracks one as a redundant backup in case the main track fails. If the pedal fails on both tracks or the pot it defaults to no input. It send a voltage between 0 and 5 volts from memory to the ECU to signal the fuel delivery as to the voltage sent by the pedal. So if the pedal fails the ECU will.get 0 volts and nothing will happen.
I found all that out diagnosing a ZT that a guy from a forum has trouble with. It started and would not rev at all. He had it recovered by the RAC or AA or whoever it was, they diagnosed it as a cruise control problem causing it. After lots of checking and hea scratching we swapped my accelerator pedal into his car and sure enough it finally revved up as normal so a new pedal was the order of the day, nothing at all to do with the cruise control which also worked fine with my pedal, even put his pedal into my car to make sure ajd exact same fault mine now would not rev at all.
The pint being that anything with electronics will usually send a voltage to the ECU, that then detects that small voltage and then signals something else to do a command whether that be fuel injectors or whatever. 0 volts will always do nothing rather than doing something.
Could something like that fail and give out 5 volts constantly? I doubt it personally it would be designed to be fail safe.
Not saying it isn’t possible but I find it all hard to believe.
Wiring in cars is very complex these days though since the invention of can bus, k line etc etc, there are less wires these days and most signals are sent via a twisted pair then each ECU de mux’es those signals which are all sent together down the same wires and reads only the signals It needs from all the data.
It is a rather complex system and can be why you get loads of error codes when only one thing Is causing it, because it causes havoc on the network. But again in my experience any issues on the can line things default to not working and error codes, I’d say it is very rare if not impossible for it to default to something like accelerate without any change or defaulting to no action.