In my car without ACC, I just hit the up/down buttons to adjust the speed for the car in front. Not a big deal when there's a small speed difference, but certainly not as convenient as ACC.
Some percentage of people (probably well into double digits) don't know about the up and down speed adjustment buttons.
I do. They aren't responsive enough and the people in front of me aren't maintaining a consistent speed, so I just switch back to the pedal unless I'm pretty much by myself. I rented a car with adaptive cruise control and really loved it.
> I think what's interesting here is it's likely the first instance where Tesla FSD has been involved in an accident which affected other drivers. In a pileup like this it's basically never the fault of the front car, unless maybe if they are purposely causing the accident for insurance fraud or something. Maybe the driver will get cited for failing to maintain the minimum speed, but legally this isn't much different…
If I brake check someone on the highway, causing an accident, and it’s discovered that that’s what happened, I’d be pretty shocked* if the trailing driver was found responsible. That video looks like a combined lane change and brake check on the part of the Tesla. * and disappointed
In the video, the Tesla comes to a gradual stop and the car behind it didn't change speed at all. The third car was able to stop without hitting the second car and that was arguably more challenging. Second car wasn't paying attention. Maybe it was using cruise control?
I'm still waiting for autonomous-only lanes. For extremely long and boring highways (usually full of trucks), this just seems like the logical conclusion of all self-driving tech to me. Dedicate one lane to self-driving, have the vehicles all on autonomous mode, and have them keep enough distance so their braking performance prevents them from crashing in an unexpected stop. You should be able to literally just sleep…
We have this technology today. It's called trains.
Trains aren't really comparable to autonomous lanes.
An autonomous car can travel on both normal roads, and in an autonomous lane. Roads are everywhere -- there's a road leading up to most people's place of residence.
Trains rely on tracks which are not as common as roads. Trains are also not owned by individuals. Most people do not have a train station outside of their house.
The problem isn't that disengaging the system is difficult. The problem is that deciding whether to disengage is difficult. If you're catching up to a slower car, maybe you should disengage the cruise control. Or maybe you shouldn't. You can't tell. This means that cruise control goes from being something that relieves stress on you to something that causes additional stress.
Every single adaptive cruise control system I've seen allows the driver to set a follow distance that is far too short. For example, on my Subaru, 4 bars is really the minimum "comfortable, relaxing" amount. But if traffic starts to get a little heavy, 3 bars works a little better, but you do have to be more vigilant. If you are down to using 2 bars or a single bar, you had better be hyper vigilant. I can't imagine a…
I only have one car with ACC, it'd be really nice if it had half size adjustments, because N bars is too close, and N + 1 is an engraved invitationn for people to pass me up, but not immediately the car I'm following. But once they do pass that car, the ACC wants to speed up just to slow down again.
I'm still waiting for autonomous-only lanes. For extremely long and boring highways (usually full of trucks), this just seems like the logical conclusion of all self-driving tech to me. Dedicate one lane to self-driving, have the vehicles all on autonomous mode, and have them keep enough distance so their braking performance prevents them from crashing in an unexpected stop. You should be able to literally just sleep…
Makes sense. We have HOV lanes which reward for being good for the environment. Even better is an autonomous lane that rewards not adding latency to the prisoners dilemna, seems the ultimate altruistic move, someone wanting to not impede or slow others.
Isn't the primary motivation of HOV lanes to reduce traffic, not help the environment?
We have this technology today. It's called trains.
It doesn't as trains don't have the convenience of your own car where the stops are. If you had a train you could drive your car onto it would be more equivalent. Also train lines have far less coverage than highways.
Not to mention, with a car you get to decide your own schedule. If I want to take the train where I am, I have to be there at 4:30am or... well, that's it. That's the only time.
I'm still waiting for autonomous-only lanes. For extremely long and boring highways (usually full of trucks), this just seems like the logical conclusion of all self-driving tech to me. Dedicate one lane to self-driving, have the vehicles all on autonomous mode, and have them keep enough distance so their braking performance prevents them from crashing in an unexpected stop. You should be able to literally just sleep…
Let's reward rich people who can afford self-driving electric cars that tend to crash into things when they aren't paying attention by giving them their own highway lane.
Put a high enough toll on it that's a progressive tax. Hell, you could modulate the toll in line with registration fees, which are linked to vehicle cost.
I think the insistence on having data for every possible situation for training purposes is indicative of the problem. Humans only require a small amount of training and can extrapolate this to many situations.
This is really very wrong. Human beings create exactly this kind of accident every day. There is absolutely nothing remotely"non-human" about cutting someone off and stopping in traffic.[1] Just go check /r/idiotsincars for an hour to see much, much worse.
[1] In fact, this is so unlike FSD's behavior that I still think it's more likely that it will turn out not to have been in use at all. The only evidence at hand is one sentence in a police report that the police themselves state was unvalidated. How easy would it be to blame the car as an excuse?
I'm still waiting for autonomous-only lanes. For extremely long and boring highways (usually full of trucks), this just seems like the logical conclusion of all self-driving tech to me. Dedicate one lane to self-driving, have the vehicles all on autonomous mode, and have them keep enough distance so their braking performance prevents them from crashing in an unexpected stop. You should be able to literally just sleep…
I don’t think that would be a solution to the problem in this article. It would just concentrate the distracted drivers into one lane.
It’s also just not realistic. If everyone was that defensive (5+ seconds distance) on such a busy road it would severely lower its capacity, leading to constant traffic jams. Leaving that gap will just mean others taking it.
Saying "driving safely lowers the capacity of roads" is like saying that not jamming pennies in a fuse box lowers the capacity of the wiring.