Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#361

Post by tmnvix » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #226

Etheryte wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a commonly known problem of SUVs, their center of gravity is a lot higher so they're a lot easier to flip over. That's why I'm puzzled by people who buy urban SUVs, that is, jeep-like cars that they never intend to use off-road.

They flip over easier but they are more heavy, which is safer in crashes. In a head to head crash between a car and an SUV, the SUV is significantly safer. I believe SUV's have lower fatalities per mile driven.

> I believe SUV's have lower fatalities per mile driven.

I would be interested to know how this compares with other vehicles if 'fatalities per mile driven' included fatalities that involved non-SUV occupants.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#362

Post by mikeash » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 2:26 AM UTC

GavinMcG wrote: post #356

mikeash wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you thinking I said your comment is a strident claim that requires confrontation to disagree with? I said the opposite: both your comment and the one you originally replied to are conversational and easily amenable to contrary views.

No, the other way I could disagree. I thought the first one was the closed-off claim.

I gathered as much, but I don't see it. With the explicit disclaimer that it's just personal observation, it's about as open as can be to me.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#363

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 3:13 AM UTC

pacificmint wrote: post #355

loeg wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's horribly unsafe to everyone is passenger cars built on truck frames. Have any examples? The vast majority of new SUVs (which the one in this incident appears to be) are unibody rather than body-on-frame ("truck frame" style).

> Have any examples? The vast majority of new SUVs [...] are unibody rather than body-on-frame Apparently there are 18 models of Body-On-Frame SUVs that are being sold in the US in 2016: Cadillac Escalade Cadillac Escalade ESV Chevrolet Suburban Chevrolet Tahoe Ford Expedition GMC Yukon GMC Yukon XL Infiniti QX80 Jeep Wrangler Land Rover LR4 * Lexus GX460 Lexus LX570 Lincoln Navigator Mercedes-Benz G-Class Nissan Arm…

Any idea which of those are "passenger cars built on truck frames?" I am not sure if OP is talking about all body-on-frame SUVs or just a subset.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#364

Post by GavinMcG » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #362

GavinMcG wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the other way I could disagree. I thought the first one was the closed-off claim.

I gathered as much, but I don't see it. With the explicit disclaimer that it's just personal observation, it's about as open as can be to me.

Fair enough. We're making different judgments. And it occurs to me that there might be another important distinction there: I was bringing up a question of value judgment, whereas the commenter I was responding to wasaking a claim about the actual frequency of a phenomenon.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#365

Post by randyrand » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 5:37 AM UTC

kevin42 wrote: post #255

elif wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know your situation, but my experience driving big heavy stuff is that sometimes a yellow light does not provide enough warning to stop 55mph * crazy weight, and you sometimes find yourself with a dilemma of entering an intersection just after a light has changed, or a few seconds after the light has changed.

It sounds to me like the driver shouldn't be going 55mph in the first place, if they can't stop before the yellow light turns red. It's similar to icy roads. If you go the normal speed limit and you slide into another car, it's your fault. The fact that the speed limit was higher than your speed doesn't release the driver from responsibility.

but the problem is you don't know how long an yellow light will be. They are all different. State to state. Town to town. Hour to hour. No standardization.

Chicago was caught making their yellow lights purposely short on some intersections to make more money.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#366

Post by thewhitetulip » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 9:33 AM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #123

zodiakzz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Can someone fill me in.. why does lately every Tesla-related post have a token "PR stunt" comment?

> why does lately every Tesla-related post have a token "PR stunt" comment? Why does every single bit of Tesla "news" make the front page? I see 50 videos a day on Reddit of people miraculously avoiding accidents, never once on HackerNews. This is kind of cool, but I'm going to remain skeptical that it "predicted" the accident. There were other cars that also stopped in time. Did we expect it to bulldoze into the bac…

See the video again, the Tesla car stopped way before the other cars stopped, probably it is because the speed wasn't more. the car at the extreme right stopped _after_ the accident car turned twice, tesla almost stopped in an instant.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#367

Post by rndstr » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 12:56 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #266

empath75 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm driving, I'm usually always thinking about having escape paths. I get nervous if I don't have a shoulder or a clear lane next to me, unless traffic slowed to a near stop.

An understated point. On freeways, each lane tends to develop its own speed, and at 4+ lanes the cognitive load starts to overwhelm me, especially when the relative speed difference between neighboring lanes is very high. At this point anyone in a slow lane may decide to try to pull out into the fast lane, or someone from the faster lanes might try to squeeze in to the queue of waiting cars; meanwhile if you try to u…

I don't own a car but have a license and occasionally drive one. I'm not used to driving on highways with more than two lanes and when I spent a few months in the US I had panic attacks the first few weeks when riding at speed limit and there was no escape path. I had to leave the highway twice to recollect.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#368

Post by jenoer » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #195

peterfisher wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at some point there is going to be cars stopped in the road right? or is every car on the freeway behind the car accident suppose to pull off the road? they clearly said in dutch to wait and see what the traffic behind is doing.

I still think they should have tried to safely move to the shoulder like the other vehicles, although in their position they can keep their hazards on -- and traffic has already jammed behind them so they'll be visible. The best option would be to move and then go back with road flares, but very few people just carry those in their cars.

In the Netherlands road flares are not allowed. Only police or rescue-workers are allowed to use these in only certain situations.

Here, when accidents like these occur, our automated road information system directly displays how fast you may drive there (it has sensors to monitor traffic speed). And, within minutes, a traffic monitoring group will close down the affected roads fully and signal to which lanes people have to switch to by using arrows pointing towards the lane next to it.

The system looks like the following, and is placed on almost every highway here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Amsterda...

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#369

Post by beat » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #330

akamaka wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for sure. I was implying that the other 74% will be avoided by cars with self-driving features, since the parent comment was suggesting that getting driverless trucks was more important.

It's not more important. Automating trucks is easier, and the economics is all on the side of automation. Automating cars will take much longer than trucks.

Exactly. There's a lot more economic impetus to automating trucks. It'll happen faster there than in cars, by a long shot.

Re: Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

#370

Post by notheguyouthink » Thu, Dec 29, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #335

sangnoir wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yeah i try to do that but then other cars just merge in between the space i leave in front of me and force me to be on their tail. Which is perfectly fine - it's safer that way. Not wanting to feel like a 'loser' is understandable - but when it is life and limb that's on the line; I know which side I'd rather be. On the other side is road rage and stupid games of chicken with your life on the line.

How is it safe? You now have almost no distance from the car on your front, and it is almost certainly slower than you.

Well first and foremost, i don't think a safe following distance is "just barely enough for one car to squeeze in in-front of you". If a car merges in front of you and you're suddenly in danger mode, you probably were already following too close.

Secondly, even if you are following a safe distance to the car in front and someone merges, causing a now less than safe distance, it is expected that you'll have to move back to a safe distance.

The only way that could be any different is if you somehow always kept 2-3 "safe distances" in front of you, and that way you were never at an unsafe distance if someone merges in front of you.. but that seems a bit of a slippery slope.

Regarding "how is it safe"... it's a safe following distance... i don't understand how you could even not consider it safe. What you seem to be suggesting is that "it's not safe enough, so i never want to be safe", which just seems a bit asinine. Ie, because if someone merges in front you now feel unsafe, you'd rather feel unsafe all the time by never leaving enough room for someone to merge and always driving at an unsafe distance.. that is just crazy, imo.

It likely is slower, you are correct, but safe driving isn't about shaving off 3 minutes from your morning commute. It's about safety, pure and simple.