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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Creating an all-weather driver
gniv wrote 10 hours 25 min ago:
I wish Google would use their learnings from Waymo/Streetview in Maps
navigation. When I drive through a complicated intersection for the
first time it's a bit of guesswork what's the right thing to do. Here
in France at least since space is at a premium there are a lot of weird
intersections that are hard to navigate.
okdood64 wrote 5 hours 43 min ago:
They're a separate company.
zeroq wrote 16 hours 43 min ago:
I remember, back in the day, when first driving assistance systems
rolled out - you know, keep lane, speed assistance according to road
signs, etc. - I thought to myself "I bet you haven't seen our roads".
When I was getting my driver license I had to perform a series of tasks
as part of the process. On of first was driving a 50m narrow curve
forth and back. I had my exam in the middle of winter. The training
yard was fully covered in snow. I was young and didn't knew better, so
I got in the car and begin my test to quickly realize I couldn't see
shit. I tried my best, but next moment I was told I got off the curve -
the examiner knew it by heart - and I failed the test. Back to school
and see you next semester.
A learning experience on so many levels.
Anyway, since then I always come back to that single experience when I
read about self driving vehicles.
voidfunc wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
Heh this must be Europe. In the US the driving test I took involved
taking a right hand turn. Another right. Execute a 3-point and then
drive back the half a mile to the testing center.
potato3732842 wrote 5 hours 10 min ago:
I know, I know, murka bad, but my driving test decades ago had a
left turn out of a driveway, a 3-pt on a road with real traffic,
parallel parking, and an intersection with right on red to return
to the testing center, located in a terrible parking lot (i.e.
designed in accordance with modern standards) that had a ton of
stupid lines that "normal people" cut but you have to follow as
part of the test.
dmd wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
I (1997, upstate NY) didn't even do that much. I got in the car
with the instructor, we drove around the block once. I ran the stop
sign because a truck was parked in front of it. The instructor
didn't notice (I only noticed later).
potato3732842 wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
The instructor was likely grading in accordance with some rules
about "visible" signage or whatever.
zeroq wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
Correct.
You have to pass theory exam - when I was doing it it was 30
questions with four possible answers out of ~500 pool [1] now the
pool is 3700. If I'm not mistaken you could make two mistakes and
still pass the test. The questions are either road diagrams, ie.
intersection with three cars, road signs and/or lights and you have
to tell in which order cars will go or a picture from drivers POV
and a question what you should do in such situation - like three
lanes, car on the middle, the right is a bus lane and the question
is if the driver is allowed to take the left lane.
Once you get that done you can take practical driving test.
It starts on a training yard where you have a series of tasks, like
said driving forth and back on a curve in one sweep motion,
starting a car on a incline without going back or losing your
engine - mind you we're driving manual - parallel parking between
cones [2], etc.
If you ace them instructor will take you for a 30-45 minutes ride
around town. Apart from normal driving he will ask you to few
random tasks like parking in normal conditions.
Any mistake will end the trial with a fail and you have to start
all over again. Three failures and you need to redo your theory
exam.
[1] I have really good memory and when I taking my exam I went
through all questions few times - they are publicly available - and
when I had my exam I only looked at the picture and double checked
if the question ended up with question mark or period as some
images were reused and I knew my answer. I don't think I would be
able to do that again with that 3700 question database lol.
[2] before taking exams you go to a private driving school and my
instructor gave me a cheat code for parallel parking - which is
extremely tight, but also, as pointed by my instructor, government
regulated, so all the cones have to be in very precise spots. Not
only that, but you take the exam in government selected car
(whoever won current bids). So he told me to back up until I saw a
cone lining with door post, then full stop, rotate the steering
wheel by a exact amount of degrees, etc.
PS. gun permits are given on similar grounds, plus you are required
to have a regulated gun safe at your premise and it has to be
permanently attached, so given the fact that many of our apartments
are smaller than your garages and most people are renting
significantly reduces access to guns :)
manwe150 wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
Not that much of a cheat code though since that works in most
passenger cars. Just using the rear bumper instead of a cone
zeroq wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZCH9lSNI3I
darth_avocado wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
I was told by a very intelligent man demanding a trillion dollar salary
that you only need vision cameras to have full self driving in all
weather conditions. All of this is apparently unnecessary.
Theodores wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
I don't think either solution is going to be the eventual winner. I
expect the eventual rollout of 5G+ to be the game changer.
Much like how a pilot captain boards a ship to steer it into port,
traffic systems will be able to be a bit more 'hands on' when it
comes to getting traffic through junctions safely, regardless of the
weather. Hence, on the final journey through a city, the city traffic
systems will be directing your car.
For the journey on highways between built up areas, variants of
today's self driving systems will suffice.
jillesvangurp wrote 10 hours 59 min ago:
Lots of people manage to drive in poor visibility without radar,
lidar, etc. If that's safe and normal for people, the principle that
self driving should work with just cameras isn't such a strange one.
I wouldn't call things like radar and lidar unnecessary but in
principle a good AI vision system should be able to operate at the
same level as a human eventually. Of course if you don't have such an
AI just yet, you need a stop gap solution. But I wouldn't bet against
AI getting there eventually. Probably not on Mr. Musk's accelerated
and optimistic schedule though. But give it another five to ten years
and things might look a bit differently.
What Waymo is doing now with much less than perfect AI is of course
completely pragmatic and very impressive. I'm kind of eager to see
them start operating self driving outside a few restricted zones in
the US and for example in European cities. I live in Berlin, so
probably we'll have to wait quite a bit for people to finally let go
of their fax machines though apparently there are some trials with
self driving buses about to kick off here now.
reorder9695 wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
Just vision is a very reductive way of describing how we drive. We
use sound to hear if something else is coming and where from, or if
we're losing traction on the road, or if the road surface has
changed. We can judge acceleration and deceleration in all
directions using our inner ears. We can feel if the car's
performing differently to usual indicating an issue with the car or
different conditions. In addition when we are using our vision, if
it gets obscured (i.e. snow covers the windscreen) we know how to
get it off with wipers, and most importantly we're very adaptable
to new conditions in a way that computers aren't, if we experience
something completely new to us, chances are we'll make a reasonable
in the moment decision.
bluGill wrote 8 hours 49 min ago:
I am one of those who drive in bad weather from time to time. I'm
'good at it' - but I cannot honestly call myself safe. I've been in
the ditch. I've spun a 360 and only didn't hit someone else in the
process because it happened nobody was there.
i grew up where bad weather was common enough that we cosidered it
not worth shutting down for bad weather so we risked driving in it
- but it was always a risk and many do die from taking that risk.
Zanfa wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
> Lots of people manage to drive in poor visibility without radar,
lidar, etc. If that's safe and normal for people, the principle
that self driving should work with just cameras isn't such a
strange one.
No camera system comes close to the capabilities of human eyes,
combined with general intelligence.
loeg wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
It's fine to dislike the guy, but stock options aren't the same thing
as a salary.
Pwntastic wrote 3 hours 9 min ago:
they are when you can open a line of credit against them
tanseydavid wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
The vision-only approach surely seems to be falling behind the
multi-sensor approach.
tom1337 wrote 9 hours 10 min ago:
The vision-only approach isn't even able to trigger the windshield
wipers correctly.
boredatoms wrote 5 hours 7 min ago:
This annoys me so much when it rains. I dont understand how tesla
is still selling any cars outside of arid climates
tom1337 wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Same - living in a region where it gets below 0°C in the
winter and also snows, you really see that those cars were
designed for sunny california. It happened multiple times now
that the trunk or door handles were frozen so hard, that I
couldn't use the car in the morning. Also when opening the
frunk while its partly covered in snow just made it slide into
the frunk...
TrainedMonkey wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
He is not wrong, but we demand superhuman performance from our
machines which in this case necessitates superhuman sensory
abilities. Current evidence shows that having non-vision sensors is a
faster way to create a reliable system. I would personally choose to
ride in an autonomous vehicle with Lidars.
CamperBob2 wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
"He is not wrong, but anyway, here's why he's wrong."
He's wrong. Cameras are not enough... but they're certainly cheap
enough.
UltraSane wrote 11 hours 35 min ago:
He is very obviously wrong since Waymo cars drive millions of trips
with 0 drivers while every single robotaxi still has a safety
driver in it at all times.
dbt00 wrote 11 hours 37 min ago:
> He is not wrong, but we demand superhuman performance from our
machines
I have a model 3 with v3 FSD hardware. FSD is an objectively
terrible driver compared to the average human.
ramraj07 wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
And if the US government operated with 10% of the agency or spine
it ought to operate with, the entire feature would be banned and
tesla fined for costing so many lives already. And the cyber
truck wouldn't be coasting the roads with no safety sense
whatsoever.
Gigachad wrote 22 hours 15 min ago:
It seems quite likely that once self driving cars are well
perfected, we will demand more than just human level driving which
is currently horrendously dangerous. If lidar systems can exceed
vision only, we are going to demand it as a baseline standard.
marstall wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
boston: the ultimate test
ghaff wrote 22 hours 41 min ago:
Had to drive someone to the Fenway area the other day. And that was
bad enough in perfectly reasonable weather :-) I'm OK with driving
into the cit(ies) in general but don't regularly go into that area of
town.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 21 min ago:
It's easier in bad weather because the ~10% of stupid people who
traffic normally just kinda flows around slow it to a traffic jam
that's pretty impossible to screw up too badly.
awaymazdacx5 wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
dragnet which is LPRs for fleet vehicles
b0rbb wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
> Upstate New York
I'm guessing they meant _Upstate AND Western New York_.
Glad someone in Waymo saw the potential for testing for extreme snowy
conditions there.
umanwizard wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
Anecdotally I feel like the Upstate vs. Western NY distinction is
mostly only made by people who live there.
When I lived in NYC I used "upstate" to mean anything not in the five
boroughs, Long Island or Westchester, and I don't think this usage is
uncommon.
counters wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
Eh, it's a pretty big distinction weather-wise. Extreme Western New
York and the Tug Hill plateau are all susceptible to somewhat
frequent lake effect snow. Given the right time of year and wind
fetch, you can see narrow convective / lake-effect snow bands from
the Finger Lakes. But broadly speaking the actual annual expected
snow and the phenomenology of the storm systems that produce that
snow are very different over the rest of the state.
boulos wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
Yes. We went to Buffalo, and a few other locations ( [1] and other
reports)
URI [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/15/waymo-to-double-down-on-wi...
tonymet wrote 23 hours 23 min ago:
I hope this improves rigor and common sense around winter driving in
the USA. In Eastern Europe, drivers care more about tires, angility and
driver skill. In the USA , drivers rely on large 4wd vehicles with high
clearance for snow and ice driving. Iâve seen way too many issues
with large clumsy vehicles losing control due to poor tires .
I hope Waymo shares more solutions for winter driving to debunk a lot
of the marketing for winter activity driving in the USA
chermi wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
(citation needed)
chemotaxis wrote 22 hours 45 min ago:
I don't think the cultural difference you're describing here really
exists. Maybe if you mean people from the SF Bay Area who visit
Tahoe. If you go to places with real winters, people know about
winter / studded tires, will often carry chains, and so on.
danielmarkbruce wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
100% this. It's laughable how many times europeans make sweeping
generalizations about the US. There are various places in the US
where it snows rarely and yeah, people (including me) are clueless
when it happens. And then there are people in Buffalo who are more
than capable of handling the snow.
tonymet wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
where i live we get snow for a few weeks a year. still the
discipline is pretty poor with tire choice. Even here people
rely too much on 4wd / AWD and neglect proper tires.
tonymet wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
some truth yes. even where I live with plenty of winter conditions,
less than the midwest, still lots of poor car and tire choices.
6K# SUvs. even in the midwest lots of huge vehicles. perhaps with
better tires, but still impractical.
ghaff wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
Many large 4wd vehicles are nothing special with respect to ground
clearance which mostly doesn't make much difference for snow/ice
driving on paved roads anyway.
micromacrofoot wrote 23 hours 6 min ago:
It won't, our economy is somewhat reliant on giant vehicles that
people can barely afford to maintain.
randerson wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Manufacturers should fit all-weather tires by default (not
all-seasons) - they are decent in both summer and snow (3PMSF).
The average car owner seems oblivious to the different types of
tires. Most high performance cars come with summer tires. I live in
a wealthy area where I often see new cars in parking lots wearing
summer tires in winter, probably relying on electronic nannies to
mask the lack of grip in normal driving.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
>The average car owner seems oblivious to the different types of
tires
If the benefits were truly as categorical as the internet makes
it out to be then normal people would know about it.
Normal people don't care, because the difference is incremental,
not categorical. An AWD SUV on all-seasons gets you 95% of the
way there with a fraction of the effort, and that's the sweet
spot for normal people.
micromacrofoot wrote 6 hours 46 min ago:
Manufacturers want to get maximum fuel efficiency, as another
mentioned. Even if they do fit all seasons, the problem is that
people run them much longer than they should. This is worse with
higher efficiency EV tires which wear out faster... especially
given the higher torque of electric engines, people accelerate
too quickly.
A full set of tires can easily cost $1k, and we're in a country
where most people barely have $500 saved at any moment.
ryukoposting wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
> Manufacturers should fit all-weather tires by default (not
all-seasons) - they are decent in both summer and snow (3PMSF).
Won't happen. Tires affect fuel economy in EPA testing. Your
commuter car will always come equipped with the hardest
all-season or summer tires the manufacturer can source.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 18 min ago:
>Your commuter car will always come equipped with the hardest
all-season or summer tires the manufacturer can source
And instead of taking a step back and realizing that there are
competing tradeoffs here and that a compromise needs to be made
people will just screech harder about "the side of the tradeoff
I care about is not being pushed hard enough by the .gov".
tonymet wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
i agree. i was impressed that my recent RWD crossover came fit
with All Weather / M+S Rated (light snow conditions) tires
milleramp wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
At the Los Angeles Ciclavia two weeks ago Waymo's were getting stuck at
the car crossings. There were police standing there waving cars
through but the two I saw were not willing to drive through the
intersection.
nradov wrote 22 hours 59 min ago:
Properly responding to informal hand and voice signals from law
enforcement, road workers, and other humans is going to be one of the
toughest technical challenges for autonomous vehicles to solve.
dghlsakjg wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
Quite frankly, many drivers don't do well here either since hand
signs can be very ambiguous. And many times there are contradictory
signals that require interpretation.
Look at Scottie Scheffler's arrest for an extreme case of how very
hard this is to get right.
darth_avocado wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
Stop signs became universal. No reason why machine readable
signals/devices to communicate donât become the norm with law
enforcement and emergency response workers.
grogenaut wrote 16 hours 3 min ago:
if a cop has to have a specific piece of equipment to get the
cars to move then it's always going to be a problem. The cops can
move every other vehicile with a standard issue piece of
equipment, aka their hands, and well yelling at people. If they
have to get some magic QR gloves or placards to get waymos to
move then that's going to be an issue.
nradov wrote 22 hours 26 min ago:
Nah. You're never going to get law enforcement and road workers
to reliably use the same signs. My local city hires the lowest
bidder to do road repairs. You're lucky if those guys are
consistently awake and sober. Autonomous vehicles will have to
operate in the real world, not in some idealized utopia where
everyone consistently follows written rules.
Animats wrote 16 hours 50 min ago:
Most of those problems can be handled by moving very slowly and
carefully, and allowing lots of safe distance around anything
that looks like an emergency. That seems to be Waymo's default.
They understand some traffic cop hand signals. But most human
drivers won't get those, either. There's not much in the
Vehicle Code about that.
CALTRANS uses trucks with big flashing arrows and portable
collision barriers on the back to protect road workers ahead.
They make no attempt to make ordinary drivers do anything more
complex than stop or change lanes.
The people from Pepe's Towing in LA post videos of large
vehicle accident recoveries, and they often talk about road
worker coordination problems. They have to coordinate with
CALTRANS, the California Highway Patrol, local cops, fire
departments, HAZMAT services, railroads, terminal and port
operators, and the drivers involved. The pros who clean up such
messes seem to know each other, at least by reputation, but the
drivers are often clueless. Pepe's has two questions for
drivers - how heavy is your load, and what are you carrying?
The answers they get run about 80% "duh". Those are the drivers
who roll over semis on freeway ramps.
When autonomous trucking gets going, that kind of coordination
will be necessary. But not for passenger cars.
darth_avocado wrote 22 hours 16 min ago:
Waymo already operates in the real world, including
construction sites with non standard operating parameters. You
can always add on to what the âreal worldâ looks like,
because real world isnât static like you rightly pointed out.
navi0 wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Authorization and authentication will be the main challenge to
solve here: who is authorized to issue those signals to the
automated driver, and how are they authenticated so that
malicious actors arenât able to hijack the automated driver.
darth_avocado wrote 22 hours 12 min ago:
Firemen have access keys to various things. You could have a
Waymo device for the same that similarly facilitates an
override. Or at the very least provides a line with a manual
operator that can override on the Waymo side.
mr_toad wrote 18 hours 0 min ago:
As far as I know the driverless operators already have manual
operators that can be contacted by emergency services. In
some cases there seem to be human communication failures on
top of the driverless failures.
strbean wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
We haven't exactly solved that issue for human drivers. People
impersonate police in order to commit crimes.
How much more problematic is it with autonomous vehicles? I
could see action here just because it is a threat to the
property of large corporations, though.
dbt00 wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
People exercise coordination ability like this all the time.
I got stuck getting out of shoreline after a large concert
with abnormal parking conditions, and when we didn't move for
30 minutes I got out of the car and directed traffic so both
lots could empty equally. Took another 45 minutes for my
family to catch up to me, which was good because that's when
someone in a safety vest showed up and told me to stop.
daft_pink wrote 1 day ago:
iâm really curious at what point it decides that it shouldnât be
driving.
dingnuts wrote 23 hours 26 min ago:
when the remote operator watching five feeds notices it's doing
something dangerous
url00 wrote 1 day ago:
Exactly. I picture a dystopia where the car refuses to attempt escape
from a storm because of the liability factor.
precommunicator wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
I see no issue with that as long as you can override and drive
manually.
dingnuts wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
I picture one where it locks the doors and drives you right to the
ICE center as soon as the facial recognition cameras realize who
you are
even better if this is the only way to get around. no transport for
whoever the Trump admin decides is insufficiently loyal!
y'all need to get more creative with your dystopias
mr_toad wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
> no transport for whoever the Trump admin decides is
insufficiently loyal
Or you could get a pardon for drunk driving if you vote MAGA.
strbean wrote 22 hours 24 min ago:
> as soon as the facial recognition cameras realize who you are
Based on their current approach, it'll be much simpler than
facial recognition.
brookst wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds preferable to a dystopia where AI driven cars are getting
into wrecks because theyâre overconfident in their abilities.
chemotaxis wrote 22 hours 38 min ago:
The thing about winter driving is that it's just inherently a
crapshoot. Sometimes, on a nice morning commute, you hit black
ice going downhill and that's that. It doesn't matter that you
were going slow, you're still gonna slide and hit something.
I doubt the tech will be immune to that. So it's up to how they
manage the fallout from the crashes they end up getting into.
UltraSane wrote 32 min ago:
It might be able to recover from a spin with superhuman skill.
LogicHound wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
I've been driving in January on a warm (at least in the sun)
sunny day and as I went over the top of a large valley and down
the other size been hit with heavy snow, same with Fog. You
can't even really look at weather reports either.
simulator5g wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
Crashing after hitting black ice on a hill is a skill issue.
Its like skiing, or ice skating, you still have control even
though the handling is very different.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 56 min ago:
It's not really though, unless you're willing to just lie and
redefine "unwilling to move at absurdly slow speed for
conditions so the pavement can be meticulously inspected" as
a skill issue and even then you won't always be able to spot
it.
Zanfa wrote 12 hours 23 min ago:
Only if you have studded winter tires that are in good
condition. Throw in a sprinkling of powder and there's
nothing even a professional WRC driver could do.
Another personal favorite is driving on ice with a tiny layer
of sun melted water so you can also hydroplane.
LogicHound wrote 2 hours 29 min ago:
I've hydroplaned on the motorway many times. It is a big
scary but as long as you don't touch the brakes and
continue straight you are ok.
I've driven FWD cars in heavy snow and it isn't that bad.
You just have to go half the speed you normally would.
loeg wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
It depends on the hill. Sometimes you should just avoid the
hill.
Winter tires also go a long way.
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote 1 day ago:
Humans are horrible at this I wonder what the limit is. I've always
thought that I can tailor my speed to conditions but not everyone on
the road slows down.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 28 min ago:
I hate this sort of take. Humans aren't horrible, on average,
they're about average. Your opinion is just a statement of "my
judgement is decently far from the fat part of the bell curve" but
dressed up in "and I know better" type snobbery.
rangestransform wrote 19 hours 53 min ago:
The limit is much higher than human performance given enough low
latency compute. [1] is probably the limit, the actual issue is
being able to do that while also avoiding colliding with other road
users. The challenges of state estimation and control should be the
same.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MWib6bnnT8
amluto wrote 23 hours 53 min ago:
Humans have one advantage over autonomous cars in ice: they can
pull over and put on chains. Cars canât do that (yet).
(Iâd love to see a serious winter vehicle that can deploy
traction devices by itself, perhaps while rolling at very low
speed. Off the top of my head, it seems like it might be easier to
put them on then to take them off.)
nradov wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Chains are usually not the best option. Dedicated snow tires are
better than chains for most light vehicles when there's snow and
ice on the road. For fleet vehicles you would think they could
install the proper tires at the depot based on the date or
weather forecast.
tzs wrote 19 hours 46 min ago:
Chains shine for the case where there generally isn't snow and
ice where you spend most of your time, or where you
occasionally visit, but there is between those places.
I actually had chains when I lived in the Los Angeles area,
which is probably the last place most people would expect
someone to have chains or snow tires.
I occasionally had to take I-5 to Central California or the Bay
Area in winter, and in a typical winter there are maybe 1-5
days where you aren't allowed through Tejon Pass on just
ordinary tires.
There are three cases, depending on the severity of the
weather. From least to most severe the requirements are:
⢠If you have snow tires on at least two drive wheels you
don't need chains. Otherwise you need chains.
⢠If you have a 4WD/AWD vehicle with snow tires on all wheels
you don't need chains. Otherwise you need chains.
⢠You need chains.
beaviskhan wrote 23 hours 38 min ago:
Automatic snow chains are a thing, often seen on emergency
vehicles even outside of the normal snow band. Ex: [1] No idea if
they're compatible with Jaguars or whatever Waymo is rolling
these days, but my guess is that Waymo could make the economics
work.
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/yus43b...
rented_mule wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
All the school buses near where I live (Sierra Nevada mountains
in California) have these - it's cool to watch them lower and
start spinning.
But chains aren't enough in some common situations around here
that locals, including school bus drivers, know well. When we
get a good size snow storm (multiple feet) and the sun comes
out a day or two later, thick ice forms on the sections of road
that the sun hits - snow melt runs across the road during the
day and freezes at night, getting thicker and smoother each
day. When that happens on our steeper inclines, chains on
AWD/4WD vehicles are not enough to get up those inclines or to
stop on the way down them. Locals know where those spots are
and take other routes in those situations. It's hard for me to
imagine autonomous vehicles having such local information in
remote areas like this anytime soon.
ghaff wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Outside of some specific areas, how many people do you think
carry chains with them?
loeg wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
They're required for traveling over mountain passes in the
winter where I live, so I have them. But I have 3PMSF-rated
tires and those are what I'd rather use 99% of the time.
tstrimple wrote 23 hours 13 min ago:
It's pretty much limited to areas with both snow and lots of
elevation changes like in the mountainous areas. Having lived
most of my life in the midwest now, no one here uses chains
except maybe some of the private snow plow operators driving
their trucks around at 4AM. Most people won't use dedicated
winter tires either. We tend to rock all seasons all year
round. Ice and snow on mostly flat roads are just something you
get used to dealing with.
ghaff wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
As someone who has lived in New England most of my adult life
I've never owned either chains or dedicated snow tires. I do
try to be relatively conservative in terms of driving in
winter. But I haven't invested in special equipment.
hangonhn wrote 1 day ago:
It's really interesting because that's something they definitely
don't teach you when you first learn to drive. Growing up in
Florida, I learned to pull over and turn on emergency blinkers if
the rain gets bad enough. The reason I know to do this is because I
saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty
wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would
have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most
of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others. Or maybe I
would have learned eventually after a few close calls with
skidding. Or maybe I would have never learned until it's too late.
I wonder if the different responses to averse conditions you've
observed is a function of the different experiences we've had as
drivers. You might be a more experienced driver than some of those
around you.
XenophileJKO wrote 23 hours 7 min ago:
It's funny because when I lived in Texas, we just turn on
windshield wipers on full blast, put the hazard lights on and
drive around at 15mph. (This would have to be an epic downpour
though.)
The only time people stopped was when it was hailing.. and then
they would hide under bridges if they could.
tonyedgecombe wrote 11 hours 47 min ago:
I remember driving past Charles de Gaulle Airport when it
rained so hard we couldn't see past the end of the bonnet
(hood). Everybody just stopped until it passed.
antisthenes wrote 23 hours 15 min ago:
> The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do
this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's
tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been
smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us
learn a lot by observing the behavior of others.
Did you ever hydroplane in a car, even ever so slightly? That
experience teaches you to slow down or stop and wait for the rain
to be over pretty quickly.
candiddevmike wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
Hazard lights are almost never used by folks when driving, when
you really should turn them on anytime the conditions are forcing
you to not go the speed limit, IMO. The other lizard brains will
see blinky lights and hopefully put down their phones so they
don't rear end you.
potato3732842 wrote 4 hours 26 min ago:
People mostly only turn on their hazards when they're a hazard
to other traffic (which is the whole point, IMO) Even if
you're the slow guy on the road your speed still probably
doesn't warrant this hence why you mostly only see it when
people are going a speed of zero.
ghaff wrote 22 hours 46 min ago:
I would hope the other folks would recognize that conditions
are such that you're slowing down rather than have a bunch of
arbitrary blinking lights on the road.
ghaff wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
And pulling off through a patch of heavy rain is one thing. There
are a lot of issues with pulling off in heavy snow unless you can
really navigate off the highway to a safe location. Sometimes
there aren't great solutions.
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