Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

singletrackworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 522 posts

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#11

Post by matte_black »

rayiner wrote: post #9
metaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain your reason(s) for disappointment, and/or posit a sensible alternative for consideration?

Forcing drivers to make left turns just to stay on the same road is a recipe for more car accidents. The proble could be resolved simply by putting up a stop light.

If the goal is to maintain speed through the intersection they could have built a bridge to overlap the other road.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#13

Post by dredmorbius »

matte_black wrote: post #4

Wow, after all these years I finally learned the name of this phenomenon, constant bearing decreasing range. I recall a scene in the movie Sin City where two cars crash and the camera was moving in CBDR to the perpendicular car as it zoomed into the impact site. I thought it was a cool shot. Also I’ve almost hit pedestrians several times when they were obscured by my A pillar. Sometimes I wonder if I would have actua…

My first exposure came from a relation of Werner von Braun witnessing a V2 launch or test. In one of the rare instances where von Braun did care where they come down,[1] he observed that the bearing to the rocket was constant -- that is, its course would bring it directly to his location.

He avoided death by diving into a ditch, if I recall. I think the story was told by Arthur C. Clarke.

I'd later encounter the concept in sailing training.

________________________________

Notes:

1. Allusion: Tom Lehrer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#14

Post by bdamm »

Good write-up about a phenomenon I’d never expect to matter in a car. In aircraft it is the norm for mid-air collisions to occur this way. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706 but there are many others. Aircraft in the US now have autonomous transponders broadcasting their location to each other. The author overlooks this fact since the “pilot training” to avoid this problem actually does not work very well. The pilot training is to take advantage of services that can alert you to other traffic, such as Air Traffic Control.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#15

Post by SamReidHughes »

A vehicle doesn't have to be obscured by the pillar for you not to notice it. If you're both moving at a constant speed, anything on a collision course will have the same bearing and appear relatively motionless. If you look left and right, your eyes might saccade right past the target.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#16

Post by metaphor »

matte_black wrote: post #10
metaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain your reason(s) for disappointment, and/or posit a sensible alternative for consideration?

Did you not read the article? There was no solution except to throw one’s hands in the air and proclaim human error.

Did you not read the parent's remark? My comment was directed towards discussion of article's proposed solution, not resolution.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#17

Post by bdamm »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #8

There's a lot of math in this article about blind spots and car pillars and whatnot, but a Google Maps Street View appears to show the terrain and brush blocking the view on approach [1][2], making all of this math largely moot. That the drivers in question didn't even so much as slow down for this approach is beyond reckless, aside from the other lawbreaking that followed. The 'Give Way' sign is idiotic, put a Stop…

Indeed, a stop sign would solve this, wouldn’t it? Simplist & cheapest solution first. The point about the geometry is that it doesn’t matter at which point the driver can see over the hill and brush; they still won’t see the cyclist.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#18

Post by gklitt »

The conclusion of the article reminds me of the idea behind blameless postmortems for system outages. Human mistakes are inevitable, and it's our responsibility to design resilient systems that acknowledge that simple fact.

While software engineering is an immature discipline in many ways, blameless postmortems seem like a counterexample -- they're a well-known best practice in software that don't seem as common in some other fields.

Re: A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists

#20

Post by matte_black »

metaphor wrote: post #16
matte_black wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read the article? There was no solution except to throw one’s hands in the air and proclaim human error.

Did you not read the parent's remark? My comment was directed towards discussion of article's proposed solution , not resolution .

That’s one way to interpret it, but given the disappointment that was expressed I’d assume it was a reference to “solution” of writing the problem off as human error for which nothing can be done. Until the op clarifies what they meant, both our comments are equally valid or invalid.
Post reply on HN