201–210 of 218 posts
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Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, was operating the car, no?
Is BMW operating my car when I turn on cruise control?
This car was engineered by people representing Google with the intent to allow it to operate completely autonomously.
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I'd like to see police start giving tickets for tailgating instead of speeding. Speeding alone is rarely very dangerous, especially on roads with few other cars. On the other hand, tailgating is always extremely dangerous, even when the speeds involved are relatively low.
Tailgaiting is a vague concept though. One person's idea of tailgaiting is another person's idea of maintaining a safe braking distance. If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.
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In California, if you aren't driving 5 mph over the speed limit, the car behind you is going to tailgate the hell out of you. It's ridiculous, I know.
I think it's universal behavior. Driving at speed limits gets you angry looks, below speed limit and people wanna hurt you. All that so they can reach the red light earlier.
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I hate seeing cyclists on the very same road in question (El Camino Real in Mountain View). There is a substantial bike 'boulevard' network of side streets made safer for bicyclists, so it's mostly ignorance that brings people to bike down El Camino. Check out the line of red dots in this accident map: http://www.mv-voice.com/news/2012/09/13/over-200-bike-relate... Considering that cyclists are expressly encouraged t…
There is a substantial bike 'boulevard' network of side streets made safer for bicyclists NOT that is segregated from through traffic (as opposed to Bryant St, in Palo Alto, on which car through-traffic is blocked every couple of blocks. Best route I found parallel to El Camino was Church/Latham to the Palo Alto border, then a slight jog over to the pedestrian/bike bridge behind the shopping center (was Tower Records…
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There is a substantial bike 'boulevard' network of side streets made safer for bicyclists NOT that is segregated from through traffic (as opposed to Bryant St, in Palo Alto, on which car through-traffic is blocked every couple of blocks. Best route I found parallel to El Camino was Church/Latham to the Palo Alto border, then a slight jog over to the pedestrian/bike bridge behind the shopping center (was Tower Records…
Yeah, actually, the bike route network for Mountain View is really terrible in comparison to Palo Alto! But that's a different discussion... I see bicyclists on El Camino in Palo Alto at night without lights all the time!
Right now there's often an unpleasant choice when traveling by bicycle: take stressful main streets or spend 50% more time navigating complicated winding side streets. Making the main streets less stressful and making the side streets more direct should make both choices better.
It'll probably take many years but the local governments are really starting to think about it a lot and there's even some funding appearing.
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I was ticketed for jaywalking in Germany. It’s a €5 fine. Police was hiding in an unmarked car, watching a traffic light in front of a supermarket with the singular purpose of catching jaywalkers. I was crossing the street (definitely not a busy one, more of an access road, mostly to just that supermarket and the old center of town, decidedly not exciting on a weekday at 10pm) while the light was red. The officer was…
Crossing on red is not jaywalking as per the American definition. Jaywalking is crossing the street where there isn't a crosswalk or pedestrian traffic light.
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Yes, it's by (federal) law... specifically Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 500 http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/rulings/lsv/lsv.html Vehicles under 3000lbs and with a max speed of 20-25mph (like golf carts) do not have to meet the safety requirements of passenger vehicles. This wikipedia page sums up the situation pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
Nice circular reasoning there. Google chooses not to meet the safety requirements that are imposed on regular vehicles. Because Google makes this choice you posit that the law is forcing it to limit the speed. I think you have causality backwards here. There are similar laws preventing mopeds and other motor-driven bicycles from entering highways; the laws prevent the vehicle from maintaining highway speeds and there…
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Alphabet's Google, as we say, was operating the car. And corporations are people, my friend.
> And corporations are people Can we have at least one discussion forum where the notion of corporate personhood isn't abused into idiocy like this? Maybe here on a discussion board run by Y Combinator, a company with the mission of helping to create new corporations?
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Tailgaiting is a vague concept though. One person's idea of tailgaiting is another person's idea of maintaining a safe braking distance. If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.
Talgetting is measured in seconds as reaction time + braking distance = ~2s, whether you are on a highway or in a city. There is nothing sujective about it. Most drivers keep just enough room for the reaction time, and it works ok as long a the car ahead doesn't hit an immobile object (e.g. a log, a car, a kangaroo, a wild boar).
[0] 1mph/(9.8m/s2) in seconds, according to Google, assuming friction coefficient of 1
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Without having a gap before you start, how do you plan on stopping in time if the car in front stops suddenly? Which they might do if they see someone running the red light, or a pedestrian thinking there's just enough time to run across.
The needed gap is proportional to your speed. Starting speed from a stop is quite low so the gap needed is low. As you gain speed you expand the gap.