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The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

arstechnica.com

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Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#211

Post by ericmay »

uptown wrote: post #191
ericmay wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drink and drive in America because they have no choice. You can’t walk him from a bar, and even if it’s available nobody is paying $40 for an Uber when they can drive their car. If we want to lower drunk driving incidence rates we need people walking to the bar or taking public transit. It requires us to fix our outdated and asinine transit culture. All of the technical solutions in the world can’t solve this…

"People drink and drive in America because they have no choice." They always could choose not to drink if they have no choice but to drive. How is that not a choice?

Because you have the wrong premise. It's not "do I drink or not", it's "I have drank, do I drive or not?"

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#212

Post by blamazon »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #72

Side note - anyone know how to disable the annoying auto high beams on their vehicle? A recent software update appears to automatically toggle high beams (which do turn off when oncoming traffic is detected however it's still annoying). It appears that this is necessary for autopilot to function - so I can't just disable it entirely :/

> It appears that this is necessary for autopilot to function

Seems like the answer is here. Tesla evidently needs unquestioned access to your high beams for their research program in which you are voluntarily participating. You can regain control of your high beams by leaving the program.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#213

Post by Schroedingersat »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #206
mschuster91 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about people in wheelchairs who live in the countryside and prefer to be dropped off at their doorstep? The important thing is to build a system that works for wide masses - even replacing half of individual car transit by rail and bus works wonders for space consumption [1]. The more complex cases - rural people, mostly - can be dealt with later on, e.g. by providing something like a "phone bus" service. Here…

> Saying "no" by default because a system is not entirely perfect at the beginning is a destructive discussion tactic that only serves those in power. Who are these people in power, and what are their goals? I don’t see what this has to do with my comment—I’m not arguing against trains, merely in support of autonomous vehicles, in areas where they might be useful, like far away from cities.

Mining, auto, and energy stocks go vroom vroom. Put tax money in roads and stocks go up. Also when you have a multi trillion dollar military to steal oil for chevron it's a handy way of knowing when the stocks are going to change.

https://investinganswers.com/articles/10-most-popular-stocks...

Then there's good old fashioned malice. Look at who used to live or run businesses where highways are now.

Times are a changing a bit these days. Weirdly a bunch of companies on that list are the ones that would love having a 24/7 video and lidar feed of everyone anywhere near a public space.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#214

Post by ticviking »

bobthepanda wrote: post #132
sgtnoodle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Given that road departments often have a hard time keeping paint fresh I have low hopes of nails faring much better. Some roads get their next resurfacing in timespans measuring decades.

I've found the folks forget just how HUGE the USA is. It might be possible to do this in a few core urban areas, but out in the hinterlands where there's nothing but cropland that feeds the core many roads are maintained only when they condition of the road causes serious damage.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#215

Post by Ajedi32 »

danaris wrote: post #207
qwerty456127 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because the only place for progress in America seemingly is within yet-nonexistent unregulated areas. As soon as something gets regulated in the US it mostly is doomed to lag decades behind the rest of the developed world (because American policymakers apparently are not fond of updating existing laws/rules and the bureaucracy is not flexible enough, often prioritizing the letter of the law). Of course there…

A big part of the problem is our ongoing and increasing legislative gridlock. When one of the two major political parties has as their stated goal preventing the other from getting anything done, and undoing anything they do (leaving aside their open efforts to replace democracy with autocratic fascism), it's very, very difficult to make any meaningful progress.

The funny thing is I actually can't tell which party you're referring to. All of those accusations can and have been leveled against each party by the other. I think that actually says a lot about the real cause of the legislative gridlock you're referring to: when each side insists the other is a bunch of fascists that they simply can't work with, well... they won't work with them, and this is the result.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#216

Post by MerelyMortal »

throwaway019254 wrote: post #13

Can anybody tell me why all my US cars have enormous side-mirror blind spot? And my European cars have none? Are European cars using curved mirrors to prevent this? Edit: I just googled it. That’s exactly what’s happening - EU side mirrors are curved to prevent blind spots.

Because drivers are setting their mirrors incorrectly.

So many people set them so that they can see the side of their own car - that's incorrect! They need to angle it out to the point where they cannot see the side of their car, that way traffic should seemlessly be visible from the rearview mirror to the sideview mirror to the driver or passenger window.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#217

Post by tacticalturtle »

piaste wrote: post #195
lotsofpulp wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People drink and drive in America because they have no choice. You can’t walk him from a bar, and even if it’s available nobody is paying $40 for an Uber when they can drive their car. List of choices: 1. Not drink alcohol 2. Drink less alcohol, and switch to water at least 1 hour before driving. 3. Pay for a driver 4. Live where you can walk to an establishment that serves alcohol 5. Rent a hotel room nearby And so…

6. Sleep in your car I think it's important to add this one because it's free and doesn't even require previous planning, so it's very hard to argue that you couldn't do it instead of driving drunk. (Although keeping a blanket in your trunk makes it a much better experience.)

You definitely will run into legal issues depending on the state.

Some states like California you can only get a DUI if there’s evidence you moved your car, but in other states it’s a lot less clear - and you can be charged with any appearance of intent to drive, like sleeping in the driver’s seat.

Not to mention the possibility of getting a trespassing charge in a private lot overnight.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#218

Post by cdash »

piaste wrote: post #195
lotsofpulp wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People drink and drive in America because they have no choice. You can’t walk him from a bar, and even if it’s available nobody is paying $40 for an Uber when they can drive their car. List of choices: 1. Not drink alcohol 2. Drink less alcohol, and switch to water at least 1 hour before driving. 3. Pay for a driver 4. Live where you can walk to an establishment that serves alcohol 5. Rent a hotel room nearby And so…

6. Sleep in your car I think it's important to add this one because it's free and doesn't even require previous planning, so it's very hard to argue that you couldn't do it instead of driving drunk. (Although keeping a blanket in your trunk makes it a much better experience.)

Which just results in you getting a DUI even though you chose not to drive.

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#219

Post by Retric »

fastball wrote: post #204
Retric wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depnds on how you count. If you consider every ~5 seconds you could have an accident, and a minor or worse accident happens once every 2,000 to 20,000 hours of driving that’s 99.99993% to 99.999993% reliability. On the other hand if you start talking per trio then we aren’t even close to that.

Why in the world would you count in 5 second intervals? If the measure is accidents per hour you don't then divide it by 5s. Reliability with 1 accident per 2k hours would be 99.95%. Reliability for 1 accident per 20k hours is 99.995%.

Five seconds seems roughly how long it would take for really bad choices to cause an accident. In heavy traffic you can cause an accident by steering into a car in under a second. I am sure someone has had two independent accidents in under a minute.

An hour on the other hand is completely arbitrary, why not a day or a minute?

Re: The US will finally allow adaptive beam headlights on new cars

#220

Post by danaris »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #215
danaris wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of the problem is our ongoing and increasing legislative gridlock. When one of the two major political parties has as their stated goal preventing the other from getting anything done, and undoing anything they do (leaving aside their open efforts to replace democracy with autocratic fascism), it's very, very difficult to make any meaningful progress.

The funny thing is I actually can't tell which party you're referring to. All of those accusations can and have been leveled against each party by the other. I think that actually says a lot about the real cause of the legislative gridlock you're referring to: when each side insists the other is a bunch of fascists that they simply can't work with, well... they won't work with them, and this is the result.

Then you haven't been paying attention.

The Democratic Party has advanced actual legislative agendas, tried to govern, and supports democracy.

The Republican Party has openly stated their goal to "make Obama a one-term president", frustrate Democratic legislation simply because it is Democratic legislation, and is actively working to subvert democracy and both prevent and overthrow the results of free and fair elections.

If you genuinely can't tell the difference between these things in 2022, either you have been living under a rock, or you are refusing to see what's objectively clear because it upsets your worldview.

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