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

Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

research.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 577 posts

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#141

Post by ErroneousBosh »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #90
ChuckMcM wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I'm thinking of a very Shenzen kind of gizmo for your car that projects a bright red laser "keep out" box on the road in front of your car which is adjusted in size for your current speed.

We have something like that in eu with road markings. Both for clear weather and fog/rain. They mark some of the lines differently, and tell you how many lines you should have between you and the car in front. I think they were first trialed and then printed in several places.

There's a couple of bits of motorway in England with that, I'm pretty sure the M6 and the M1. There are white chevrons painted on the road and you keep two of them between you and the car in front.

Also "Keep Two Chevrons Apart" is going to be the name of my specialist Citroën breaker's yard.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#142

Post by rationalist »

bluGill wrote: post #134
daringrain32781 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently driving a friend and hit a mile-long backup at a freeway exit. At some point in the lineup, a car abruptly cut in front of me to merge into the line. The friend asked "why'd you let them in" - but I didn't let them in on purpose, I was just maintaining a reasonable following distance which people seem to interpret as "hey cut in here for free"

It is called the zipper merge. You were in the wrong for waiting in the stophed lane and the other person right for passing all you thinking you are better.

I'm pretty sure the other person is not talking about a 2-to-1 lane merge.

Calling that person an idiot for your misunderstanding is not cool.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#143

Post by chad_oliver »

mschuster91 wrote: post #74
rogerrogerr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Though for an insurer, it’s the same thing - whether you’re risky because you’re a bad driver or because you drive on poorly constructed roads or around other poor drivers is inconsequential to them)

Yeah well fuck insurers. We are supposed to get spied upon by our cars with their blackboxes, by our insurers, by Google, by national security services of various countries... and what do we get in return? Dinged for other people's bad behavior which we cannot reasonably control. Either you follow the car in front of you very closely and get hard braking events, or other people switch lanes in front of you and in the…

Credit scores are universally hated but they make it possible to offer lower interest rates to more people. Without credit scores, fewer people would have access to credit.

Similarly, people often don't like it when insurers track and score their driving. However, this allows insurers to offer lower insurance fees to more people by _not_ offering lower insurance fees (or instead charging higher fees) to people that are driving in a risky manner. This does of course assume a competitive market for insurance but I think in most countries that's a reasonable assumption.

There's nothing fairer than user-pays, especially when users can choose to pay less by changing their behavior.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#144

Post by delichon »

I'd love to have a danger heat map displayed on a HUD while driving. Say a default green banner that goes red near a hot spot or even animates near a current hazard. Mostly it could use these same stats, but then be strident if anything unpredictable is detected nearby.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#145

Post by gwbas1c »

mountain_peak wrote: post #46
presidentender wrote: post #20

I got one of those dongles from my insurance company that plugged into the ODB2 port and reported my driving habits. I was a bad driver. It would frequently beep at me to let me know that I had braked too hard. I was mystified. "What should I have done differently," I'd think, as I raged at the objective machine that judged me so. The next time my brother came to visit, he called mom. "Oh, and presidentender is a goo…

Maintaining a safe following distance is incredibly challenging on busy freeways where hard braking is often 'required'. Most people have likely found themselves in this situation: vehicle changes lanes in front of you; you slow down to maintain a safe following distance, another car sees a gap and changes lanes in front of you. Repeat for your entire commute. Incredibly frustrating, and I've driven all over North Am…

I'm one of the faster drivers and I maintain a safe distance. (I usually have the most distance in rush hour.) It's very easy with adaptive cruise control or the other self-driving technologies that are on the market.

The only people who cut too close to me are driving recklessly.

That being said: If you're in the mode where people are constantly changing lanes in front of you, think a bit about how you're driving: On the freeway you're supposed to stay to the right except to pass, and you're expected to keep up with the flow of traffic. Are you going slow in the left lane? Are you driving too slow? Are you camping in the right lane by a busy interchange?

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#146

Post by infecto »

mhb wrote: post #110
infecto wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used one of these apps before? They capture a lot more than emergency stops, what I would classify as the above normal brake effort but not hard braking. Im sure the data exist to set the cutoff but its a lot more than “jam your foot on the pedal braking”. It’s still out of the norm braking for my style of driver but from what I see on the road, people drive aggressively like this. Especially in the US.

What are these apps or devices? Where can I get one?

They are provided by your auto insurance company. A potential privacy nightmare, they track your movement. They also can get you a much lower rate.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#147

Post by mlyle »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #131
sagarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think highway driving requires hard braking, you're a bad driver.

Yes. If people are constantly moving into your appropriate head way this is doubtless annoying but the correct response is allow yourself to decelerate slowly to re-open that space again, repeat as many times as necessary, even if it means a bunch of agros end up in front of you. Better for them to be in front where you can see them, than behind or to the side, were you can't.

Yah. There's something that feels unjust about it -- the perception that the people cutting are getting something over on you -- that causes us to want to behave badly.

But even if 2 dozen people go around you and creep into that following space, you've been cost like 45 seconds at worst. Better not to play the game.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#148

Post by unbalancedevh »

drewda wrote: post #3

What is the actual use of this? This research team used Google's first-party location data to identify San Jose's Interstate 880/US 101 interchange as a site with statistically extreme amounts of hard braking by Android Auto users. But you don't need machine learning to know that... San Jose Mercury News readers voted that exact location as the worst interchange in the entire Bay Area in a 2018 reader poll [1] It's n…

> What is the actual use of this?

From the article:

"Our analysis of road segments in California and Virginia revealed that the number of segments with observed HBEs was 18 times greater than those with reported crashes. While crash data is notoriously sparse — requiring years to observe a single event on some local roads — HBEs provide a continuous stream of data, effectively filling the gaps in the safety map."

So we don't have to wait until an accident actually occurs before we can identify unsafe roads and improve them.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#149

Post by radlad »

marcosdumay wrote: post #117
radlad wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign. Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I…

If there's no extra exit lane, the right choice is to slow down traffic on the highway. What will happen if there's some oil spill or brake failure at the point you think you should break hard?

The exit ramp is not sufficiently short as to be unable to stop safely, even with my old 2001 Toyota Corolla. It is however sufficiently short that you cannot stop without recording a 'hard brake' on the Progressive Snapshot device.

Obviously the calculus changes at rush hour when the exit ramp (and highway) begin to back up. And in those cases, yes, of course the correct answer is to slow down before the ramp, even if it means impeding traffic. (Or take the next exit.)

Just for fun, there's also a very short entrance ramp onto a 65mph highway in this city, which requires you to accelerate uphill from a stop sign with a very limited runway (~200 ft.) This entrance has been responsible for far more accidents and crashes than the exit I initially described.

Re: Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk

#150

Post by benlivengood »

I'm really curious what their data looks like at the various racetracks and circuits. Fun fact; most raceways have accurate street-level indicators (including that they are one-way, but sadly they are not the best racing line) on most online maps, and my car did complain to me in its weekly report about a lot of hard turns, quick acceleration, and hard braking with helpful pins on e.g. Laguna Seca or Thunderhill corners.

In theory, the most dangerous turns would probably have higher variance on hard braking data.

Post reply on HN