LDWS & FCWS Gimmick?

[RCPilot]

I was rather surprised to see LDWS and FCWS listed as an option on my A119. This seems like a horribly bad idea for both the manufacturer and the end user. I can only imagine it being a sales gimmick. I only tried it for a few minutes and then turned it off. It was nighttime when I tried it very briefly. A couple of times the camera beeped when I moved out of my lane. I didn't fly up upon the rear of any car to test the FCWS.

Sporadically the camera would beep and display an arrow image when I changed lanes. To me it was just a distraction. The beep is not loud enough to really catch my attention, specially if a window is open or you have the radio on. What it did do however was introduce lag in my camera effecting the record button. When LDWS was active the record button sometimes required multiple clicks to work. I'm guessing that the added CPU load of LDWS reduced the responsiveness of the button. I didn't test if it impacted anything else.

For someone who works a lot in litigation, seems like a bad idea by VIOFO to have these options on the camera. It would be extremely doubtful it could ever prevent an accident. A person being distracted to look at the camera to figure out what the beeping is about is more likely to cause an accident. So why subject the company to a possible lawsuit when someone does have a serious accident, and names in the lawsuit the cam manufacturer because they allege they relied on their LDWS or FCWS? Not much of a chance that in the end the plaintiff would prevail against the cam company, but the cam company could spend a lot of money in defense costs by being part of the lawsuit. I've seem a lot of more flimsier cases so this is not that far out there.

Leave LDWS and FCWS up to the auto manufactures where it belongs, and focus on what matters on dash cams, and that is image quality, system stability, ease of use, and hardware reliability.

 

[dash riposki]

You mean you don't want to trust your life to a $90 gadget?



I think the generic reasoning behind this stuff showing up on dashcams is it appears to add some value to people who don't know any better. (and the functionality is more or less there or cheap to add.)

 

[Sunny]

There are very few dashcams that have good working driver alert system and A119 is not one.
It's very helpful though on those.

 

[SergeiF]

In my opinion all of the warning systems are gimmicks no matter how well they work. If you require warning systems for your driving, well, maybe you should not get behind the steering wheel?
Lets have a look in the detail about these two warning systems and why they are blame shifting devices at best and distracting at worst:

Lane Departure:
Too many false positives, very hard to get it right. Road marking is unreliable and inconsistent for camera only solution. If you are ever in situation where you wander across lanes, then you made a bad decision well in advance by driving tired. Driving tired is like driving drunk, should not happen in first place. Using a warning system is just a cop-out and will not save you. In real world it would just have way too many false positives (old road marking painted over, road marking disappearing, road marking mis-aligned, pot hole avoidance, cyclist avoidance, parked car avoidance etc.). Besides if you have wandered off the lane so far that the warning system is beeping you are already either swimming in the river or plowing someones paddock. Unlike USA, in New Zealand most of the inter-city highways are single lane each way (not separated), no shoulder sort of deal.

Frontal Collision:
This one is so pointless it is not even funny. Under what circumstances do the engineers expect this system to work? Seriously, when it warns it will be too late, or a false positive. If you need this system to drive, you should not be driving.
For example, normal following distance mandated by New Zealand Road Code in dry is 2 seconds (~56m at 100km/h). Everyone drives here at about closer to 0.5 - 1 second (10-25 meters). Most of these morons cut in front, thus making this thing alert pretty much all the time. So let say you are actually driving at 2 seconds difference, then it will only be useful if it would drop to 0.5seconds (other wise way too many false positives), if you are not concentrating then your reaction time would be at 0.5seconds at best (if you already had your foot on the brake), thus in real accident situation the system will be completely pointless.

How about drivers stop relying on stupid gadgets and be more proactive in their driving?

 

[RCPilot]

Anti collision warnings are pointless unless integrated with the vehicle so the vehicle takes the action. (Except for lane change warning system that lets you know there is a car in your blind spot.) Perception and reaction time is about 1.5 to 2 seconds for most people. By the time you hear and start to process the meaning of the beep the accident has already happened. But I'm guessing that "feature" will sell a few extra units. My main gripe is that if activating the features can have a negative impact on the performance of the cam, those "features" should be deleted or deactivated in 1440P mode as the CPU can't handle the extra load.