131–140 of 290 posts
Scenario: Driving in the countryside at night. Do the adaptive lights let you see off the edges of the road for animals? Kangaroos can be damn near suicidal...
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You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…
Lane following isn't the hard part of self driving cars. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it's a minor detail compared to everything else that also needs to work reliably 99.9999% of the time. Such infrastructure might help make cheaper lane-keep assist as standard options I guess, but at the speeds where it matters for safety, you need significant look-ahead on the trajectory rather than just lateral position error.…
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The fix is to make it so you aren't left stranded in life without a car. Car dependency is just as bad a disease as any. Cars give you the freedom to go anywhere, but take away the freedom to do anything without them.
Hi. I'm a wheelchair user. It's only reasonably recently that the buses here had a restraint system that can lock my chair in place added, before that I needed to hold on to a bar next to me, which destroyed my shoulders. Uber decimated the taxi industry, the pandemic finished them off, and now taxis need to be sent from one town over, and those drivers don't accept my government subsidy card. At my fittest, I could…
And this should make you angry. No one should be reliant on a car. Everyone should have access to a robust public transportation system. Even if that means you personally get a subsidized van to take you where you need to go. Subsidized so it costs the same as a bus ride.
That sounds a bit too long - in 2002 LEDs were just starting to be used in brake lights etc., but not in headlights. Of course, it depends what they mean by "nearly two decades" (I imagine it has to be at least 15 years?) and by "has been around" (in the lab? in prototypes? or in actual cars that you could buy?).
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You're not wrong, the NHTSA should be more proactive on this stuff. But to be fair, drunk drivers kill 28 people a day in this country, or about 10k people per year. 3k people die at signalled intersections every year, or around 8ish per day. While Tesla shouldn't be beta testing their self driving cars on public roads, it's clear that human behavior and existing road design is still vastly worse.
Drunk driving is a legal issue. The entire problem is that it's not treated seriously, and super easy to get out of. Yes, even in fatal accidents. If the US really cared, drunk and distracted driving would have appropriate sentencing. For god knows what reason, we're still not there yet.
As a general example, how many nightlife areas have decent public transportation at bar closing to avoid committing a DUI?
We allow companies like Tesla to jeopardize people's lives while the company beta tests "full self driving" technology, but are scared of allowing proven safe technology like adaptive headlights.
You're not wrong, the NHTSA should be more proactive on this stuff. But to be fair, drunk drivers kill 28 people a day in this country, or about 10k people per year. 3k people die at signalled intersections every year, or around 8ish per day. While Tesla shouldn't be beta testing their self driving cars on public roads, it's clear that human behavior and existing road design is still vastly worse.
Is that true? Those human statistics take every human car and driver into account, not just Teslas. I have never seen data that shows self-driving cars anywhere close to human driving capability. If we replaced every car on the road with "self-driving" Teslas, it would be mayhem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…
Lane following isn't the hard part of self driving cars. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it's a minor detail compared to everything else that also needs to work reliably 99.9999% of the time. Such infrastructure might help make cheaper lane-keep assist as standard options I guess, but at the speeds where it matters for safety, you need significant look-ahead on the trajectory rather than just lateral position error.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drunk driving is a legal issue. The entire problem is that it's not treated seriously, and super easy to get out of. Yes, even in fatal accidents. If the US really cared, drunk and distracted driving would have appropriate sentencing. For god knows what reason, we're still not there yet.
Some judges have taken the opinion that the infrastructure is so car dependent that you can't have a license revoked lest you lose the entire ability to be a self-sufficient member of society. And in parts of the US, that's true. As a general example, how many nightlife areas have decent public transportation at bar closing to avoid committing a DUI?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may find it interesting the NHTSA is pushing for breathalizers in cars starting in 2026. Personally I'm more in favor of smart road like technologies where a highway has a mechanical or physical properties to assist self-driving vehicles stay in line with the road. Mostly because a 100% software solution will likely not work, particularly in the midwest and great lakes states during the wintertime. It need not be…
It's a train. You're inventing trains but much worse and not available to the poor. Just build a train.
What about people in wheelchairs who live in the countryside and prefer to be dropped off at their doorstep? Or someone who can’t drive themself but could use an autonomous car or taxi to go to the hospital in an emergency situation (without waiting a while for the next open train)?
Part of me feels like we need to just make cars much much much more reflective (being careful to not have hard corners or flat surfaces that could create glare during the day). First of all, that would make them much more easily visible at night (which would be great, and is something everyone should want)... but it would also mean that if you are an asshole and use your high beams or otherwise shine a light at a car…
Deliberately dazzling drivers at night may have liability issues.