[HN Gopher] Should we let cars use the road as a projection screen?
___________________________________________________________________
Should we let cars use the road as a projection screen?
Author : clouddrover
Score : 71 points
Date : 2022-09-12 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.autocar.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.autocar.co.uk)
| withinboredom wrote:
| Ah, I thought this was going to be a out entertainment. I
| remember driving late at night, alone for hours to go see my
| parents. The interstate was empty at 2am, so I would toss an iPad
| on the dash with it plugged into my aux port and watch a movie.
| 99% of the time, I'd be looking through the reflected movie on
| the windshield, paying attention to the road. But those scenes
| that are visual-only, I could shift my focus without losing my
| situational awareness to see what was going on and shifting it
| back. Only took a few ms, but I miss those days.
|
| When I explain this to people they freak out. I'm not a big movie
| watcher, I like to listen to them though. So for me, it was just
| nice to see what was happening in those scenes where nobody is
| talking and you have to actually see it (you know, where the bad
| guy sneaks up behind the good guy and the dark music is playing).
| I think most people would probably actually try to watch the
| movie while driving, and kill themselves. Maybe that's why they
| freak out.
|
| I've also seen people reading a book while driving (before
| Teslas) and that. That takes some mad skills that I've never
| gotten even after spending hundreds of thousands of miles on the
| road.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Massively irresponsible.
| paulgb wrote:
| Somewhat related, CitiBike trialed a setup that projected a bike
| symbol ahead of the bike. It wasn't rolled out widely, but I
| remember thinking that it was a good system on the few occasions
| I happened to get one of the pilot bikes.
|
| https://www.6sqft.com/citi-bike-to-add-laserlight-projection...
| quartz wrote:
| If I had to guess, this probably drew a lot of attention to the
| moving symbol projected on the road and away from the actual
| cyclist.
|
| ...now if they could equip the bikes with cameras to issue
| tickets to all the people who park in our bike lanes, THAT
| would be cool.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| The TfL hire bikes in London (Boris Bikes) have this. They
| don't seem great, it's just some faint green laser lines on the
| floor that don't resemble a bike rather than what you see in
| those photos. If anything they're more confusing for other road
| users.
| bena wrote:
| No. The road is a shared space and it should be respected as
| such. We already need to reduce the lumens on headlights. And
| probably take out "hi-beams" altogether. Seriously, I've never
| been in a situation where it's made a difference worth talking
| about. In over 20 years of driving, I can count on one hand the
| number of times I've intentionally turned on my hi-beams. And it
| was mostly to see if it would help. It did not.
| neilalexander wrote:
| > And probably take out "hi-beams" altogether.
|
| This is _complete_ nonsense. I'm going to guess that you are an
| American living somewhere with probably quite wide and straight
| roads.
|
| Here in the UK, high beam headlights are largely essential on a
| lot of dark rural/country roads for a number of reasons --
| uneven road surfaces, soft verges, roaming animals and
| pedestrians in unlit areas, sudden turns or changes of camber.
| When used properly, they are an important safety device and
| they absolutely have a place on a vehicle.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Well, I'm an American that grew up in very rural (out in the
| sticks) part of the country. Not sure if this translates to
| UK/EU, but we have roads known as farm-to-market roads that
| are typically 2-lane (one in each direction) that are
| typically decent quality. In certain areas, the speed limit
| can be 85mph on these roads, but more typically not higher
| than 65mph. These are also typically not well lit if at all,
| so high beams are very important, but typically, drivers are
| definitely overdriving their headlights. These roads are
| usually pretty straight except for when they have to bend
| around what used to be someone's property before claimed for
| the right of way.
|
| Pedestrians are much less of a concern than say deer, cows,
| or other animals.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >This is _complete_ nonsense. I'm going to guess that you are
| an American living somewhere with probably quite wide and
| straight roads.
|
| I'd wager it's more likely he drives hazardously slow so the
| extra couple seconds viewing distance don't help him
| personally or there's always street lighting where he drives.
|
| Edit: based on his commentary elsewhere it's almost certainly
| the former.
| bena wrote:
| I drive to the conditions of the road. If the road is
| potentially hazardous, you should slow down. How is 50mph
| "hazardously slow" when speed limits on these sorts of
| roads are around 55mph?
|
| And I only chose 50 because it is definitely within the
| full stopping distance.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I'm not saying this as someone who drives particularly
| fast. I'm saying this as someone who drives agricultural
| equipment that literally can't go prevailing traffic
| speeds. There becomes a point where you are the hazard,
| not them.
|
| 50 in a 55 is probably fine but "I never feel the need to
| use my high beams despite living somewhere rural" (I'm
| paraphrasing here) raises massive flags for "grandma,
| maybe you need to stop driving at night" type behavior
| and if you don't see this then that is an ever bigger red
| flag.
| bena wrote:
| Like I already said, I picked a speed that completely
| falls within the stopping distance. So people couldn't
| claim they need it because they need to see an extra 200
| feet to make up for the 25 or so in stopping distance.
|
| Also, wouldn't the opposite be true? If I feel fine
| driving with my lows on all the time because I can see
| fine, then my vision is still acceptable. Whereas if one
| needs 50,000 lumen ultra-high intensity high beams to
| travel down a well-lit boulevard, maybe _those people_
| shouldn 't be driving at night.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| In the US, we have the problem with people using ultra bright
| lights and not aiming them correctly, so they're blinding to
| other drivers.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _In over 20 years of driving, I can count on one hand the
| number of times I 've intentionally turned on my hi-beams._
|
| Sounds like you've never lived in a rural area with lots of
| deer and other critters.
| bena wrote:
| In over 20 years of driving, even in rural areas with lots of
| deer and other critters, I can count on one hand the number
| of times I've intentionally turned on my hi-beams.
|
| If your night vision is that bad, the solution isn't to blind
| other drivers by turning the road into the midday sun.
| filesystem wrote:
| You're absolutely in the minority here. Perhaps you have
| extremely above average peripheral vision.
|
| I grew up in a rural area and still visit quite often. Deer
| jump out in front of cars all the time. It is physically
| impossible for me, any of my family members, or anyone I've
| ever known in this town to be able to see the deer off the
| side of the wooded areas without high beams on. High beams
| are not going away.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| This seems so ridiculous, I almost think you're
| deliberately trolling. All one needs to do is drive through
| a dark forest at night, flip on the high beams and
| instantly see another 200 feet ahead of you, giving you
| more time to see deer, fallen trees, etc. It's not about
| bad vision. Even the human with the best eyesight can't see
| in the dark. And to be clear, this is done when there
| aren't other drivers coming toward you.
| bena wrote:
| Low beams give you around 200 feet. Which is within the
| stopping distance of 50mph. If you are in a situation
| where you are concerned about fallen trees, why are you
| driving faster?
|
| To also be clear, way more people are driving with high
| beams or insane lumens just everywhere. My mirrors are
| practically useless at night because there's always some
| idiot with their highs on shining right in them.
|
| The benefits of the few cases where you could use high
| beams are outweighed by all the times they are used
| inappropriately and cause way more issues.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _My mirrors are practically useless at night because
| there 's always some idiot with their highs on shining
| right in them._
|
| You should see an eye doctor about that. My mother had
| the same issue and it turned out to be a serious problem.
| bena wrote:
| The serious problem are the drivers who can't fathom not
| having ultra-high lumen LED headlights switched to high
| at all times. This is not a subjective thing. It only
| takes one jackass, so it's easy to see the difference
| between them and other vehicles.
|
| And it's not like I'm the only one who has noticed this
| problem:
|
| https://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/2018/12/20
| /br...
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| Projecting arrows for navigation would be nice, but would this
| work during the day?
| kube-system wrote:
| Why? There are more reliable means of conveying information. Just
| because someone figured out they can do this doesn't mean it is a
| good idea. The road in front of the driver is an area where the
| drivers focus should be solely dedicated to being aware of their
| surroundings. Projecting other symbols only clutters the
| information that the brain has to process. Status indicators work
| better in dedicated spaces to reduce cognitive load.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| I could see projecting information that's useful to other
| drivers and pedestrians.
|
| A rectangle indicating your stopping distance would be useful
| for cars intending to merge in.
|
| A turn signal that is projected forward would tell people
| entering a cross-walk "there is a car trying to turn across
| this, watch out for them and make eye-contact".
|
| A rear-projection rectangle would indicate a car is in reverse
| and may back up without seeing you.
|
| The problem with all of these, and _any other information_ is
| that they really only work at night, so...
| [deleted]
| xani_ wrote:
| Could just broadcast that info to cars around, ADS-B-style,
| then put it on HUD. Probably pretty hard to make it secure
| tho
|
| I'd love to see info "the car in front of me will be taking
| right soon, or exact speed just displayed via HUD on top of
| the car.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| I partially agree. I think this system is useful, but only
| for very simple spatial data. Having the car project a line
| one car length ahead and flashing bars synced with the
| indicators would be a major improvement over a standard
| unagumented view; however once you start trying to be fancy
| with symbols, letters, and numbers I feel any improvement in
| spatial awareness would be canceled out by the extra
| cognitive power needed to parse those symbols combined with
| the extreme clutter created by every other car on the road
| doing the same thing
| caradine wrote:
| Perhaps it should project a yield to pedestrians symbol
| warning the driver that there is a pedestrian in the
| crosswalk
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I was initially very much against the idea, but this comment
| kinda put me in a 'maybe not a bad idea' camp. Naturally, the
| stuff will soon be hacked to project all sorts of other
| things, but that is, for better or worse, standard human
| behavior.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That would be one hell of a projection if it is visible to
| where I'm looking in the road. I'm not looking at the road
| immediately in front of me. I'm looking well ahead just as
| taught while learning to drive.
| kube-system wrote:
| The proper look ahead distance varies based upon speed. When
| performing low speed maneuvers, a driver will need to look at
| the area immediately in front of their vehicle.
| corobo wrote:
| Does anyone know why we don't use audio for this sort of thing?
| Do we? I might have just missed it, not a driver.
|
| I am aware of navigation/GPS of course but I mean for these
| sort of snippets of road info. The only non-GPS audio info I've
| heard is the bleeps in some cars that say there's a speed
| camera coming up.
|
| Car: "40"
|
| Brain: Aight speed limit is 40 now.
|
| Car: "Give way"
|
| Brain: I need to yield at the next junction.
|
| It could even auto-pause if you're applying brakes or
| indicating / turning the wheel to avoid distracting you.
|
| I know (or at least media has told me) that airplanes do use
| audio for this sort of info, wondering why it never made it to
| cars.
|
| E: lol doubt I'll get a response, for some reason this post
| went from #2 to like #50
| LegitShady wrote:
| because no one wants to take liability for an error
| lightedman wrote:
| Many cars are well-proofed against outside noise (like the
| Infiniti I used to drive.)
| aftbit wrote:
| Not quite the same thing, but some cars did talk.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3EuP7vZRSo
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Projecting map info on the road means the driver has to look at
| the map screen less, which increases the focus on the road
| ahead.
| kube-system wrote:
| Assuming that the vehicle has empty road in front of them, at
| night, with sufficient contrast.
|
| Many people drive vehicles during the day, on a road with
| other vehicles, or other competing lighting sources.
|
| What is better is an indication system that works in all
| conditions, rather than requiring the driver to look
| different places under different scenarios.
|
| Indicator lamps placed high upon a dashboard work in 100% of
| driving conditions and also allows the driver to remain
| looking in the correct direction.
|
| The only thing they lack is marketing gee-whiz favor.
| skellera wrote:
| HUDs already exist in cars to do something very similar
| without potentially confusing symbols that others will see.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Use a HUD.
|
| I had a 90s Cadillac that had a FLIR HUD display. It was a
| little gimmicky but pretty cool and better than polluting the
| surroundings.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Why on earth would you project this onto the actual road
| instead of just some HUD for the driver?
|
| This whole thing seems like an absolutely insane idea to me
| from the get-go but the comments in here seem to really like
| the idea. I can't think of anything worse than light-
| projection systems from cars onto the real world for almost
| anything.
|
| The only one I'm onboard with is something more visually
| indicating that a car is backing up. Plenty of vehicles have
| audio cues so a visual one makes sense to me.
|
| But ideas that cars should project a warning to pedestrians
| that a car is going to turn blows my mind. How about you warn
| the operator that they might kill someone?
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Cars already have mandatory lighted equipment to warn that
| they are going to turn, but too many operators seem to
| forget how that's supposed to work. I can't imagine how
| drivers are going to figure out how to communicate more
| complicated information if they can't remember how to use a
| little lever.
| lightedman wrote:
| This isnt for the driver of the projecting vehicle, it is
| for everyone else around them.
|
| And as many wrecks I have seen involving idiots invading
| safe stopping distances, this is a good idea, if they could
| make it work well in daytime.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Yeah a block of light in front of the car which overlaps
| with the lane merge projection from grandpa who left his
| blinker on conflicting with someone's navigation
| projection who needs to be in the right lane yesterday
| conflicting with someone's broken projection for
| pedestrians on a stroad sounds like a fucking hellscape.
|
| People can't use blinkers correctly or keep their
| headlights and tailights in working order. I'm sure
| expensive light projections that link with software and a
| onboard computer that was out of date the day it was made
| is going to work splendidly.
|
| >involving idiots invading safe stopping distances
|
| What makes you think this will stop them?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Do you really think those idiots will pay even the
| slightest bit of attention to that stuff?
|
| Personally, this looks like it will just add additional
| visual pollution to an already visually polluted
| landscape.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Why not use a heads-up display on the windscreen? Some
| automakers already do this and it should avoid most of the
| concerns around projecting outside the vehicle.
| MBCook wrote:
| But _other_ drivers can see it as well. It could easily draw
| their attention and thus make them _more_ distracted.
|
| Cars aren't always alone on rural roads at night like the
| pics in the article.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I do not know why we are not just replacing all of those little
| tiny reflectors on freeways with with something standardized
| specifically for use with self driving cars. Seems like it would
| be a hell of a lot more reliable if those not only served as a
| visual indicator for humans but also a direct indicator for self
| driving cars themselves (could also be visual or some form of
| digital technology like a ranged / vehicle version of NFC, etc
| etc).
| LegitShady wrote:
| because your local transportation doesn't have unlimited money
| to replace simple reflectors with something 'standardized' for
| self driving cars that aren't themselves standardized and that
| represent a miniscule percentage of the cars on the road.
|
| its not difficult, its just so expensive and serving a
| basically irrelevant portion of the road using public.
| Zigurd wrote:
| It would be good to let cyclists use the road to project onto it
| the safe margins for passing cyclists, and to photograph the
| plates of cars that do not observe those margins.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Already been done about 10 years ago!
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2012/oct/2...
| Zigurd wrote:
| I've seen that. It looks like it is no longer available.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/SUNMENCO-Cycling-Projector-
| Taillight-...
|
| There's a bunch of clones on Amazon now
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I don't think we should allow half the headlights that are
| currently in circulation. Once we get height and brightness
| levels under control, we can talk about extras.
| anderiv wrote:
| In my experience, factory-installed headlights are rarely
| problematic. The primary offenders here seem to be after-market
| headlight additions. People purchase and install whatever their
| local auto parts store has that is bigger and brighter, and
| rarely take the time to properly align the headlights after the
| upgrade. This results in light being thrown much farther and
| wider than it ought to be.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I hate calling for crackdowns on petty issues from police
| types, but this is one of those areas that I would love to
| see.
| modzu wrote:
| that used to be true, but not anymore. many stock LEDs are
| bonkers bright
| skunkworker wrote:
| Another one is putting bulbs intended for projectors into a
| reflector setup without doing a projector retrofit.
| archi42 wrote:
| Around here essentially all car lights are regulated. This
| mostly helps with people installing such crap.
|
| Though I once discovered the inverse issue at the rear end of
| the car in front of me: Whoever thought a brake light should
| be a faint, red glimmer in completely black-tinted plastic
| (that's impossible to see from a few metres on a cloudy day)
| is either bonkers or pretty smart: I bet people actually
| buying these regularly need new ones.
|
| Especially considering that with many modern cars, standing
| behind them at a traffic light and basking in the red brake
| lights feels like going to an adult club.
|
| (Luckily I have radar with emergency brake assist, so except
| for the sound of me cursing to myself not a lot happened on
| the occasion).
| [deleted]
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > Touchscreens were intended to reduce the level of distraction
|
| Uhm, what???
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yeah nothing is more annoying than touch screen inputs while
| driving. Even my porsche has an obvious input lag and the touch
| screen is rather low quality. German cars aren't particularly
| great when it comes to electronics let alone touch screens.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Even without input lag, having to look at a screen to press a
| button is much more distracting than a physical button that
| can be found without looking.
| michaelwww wrote:
| Next up: Allowing drivers to virtually driver their car with VR
| glasses while actually driving their car. Just think, we could
| eliminate billboards by making them virtual! I'm sure this would
| be totally safe.
| rigonkulous wrote:
| We already do. The headlights are a projection, the brake lights
| project, the whole car is _literally designed_ to make
| transformative projections across the landscape.
|
| Resistance to the idea is just curmudgeonly churlishness.
|
| As a motorbike rider, I can say that if you can see my rays of
| light, you can avoid me, and that - after all - is the ultimate
| goal of any horizontal translation.
|
| Yes please, I want this.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I don't understand how they call a head-up display a premium
| feature and then continue to describe matrix-led-projection
| headlights that are only on the high end models of premium German
| brands.
|
| Head-up displays are available in a relatively mid-range BMW 3
| series from over 10 years ago. It's an option you have to pay
| for, but so will these lights be.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah heads up displays have to be at least an order of
| magnitude cheaper to produce, if not more.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Yes and no. I believe this technology is an extension of
| selective darkening headlights.
|
| Essentially, a camera system can detect surrounding vehicles
| and selectively darken the lighting around them. It means you
| could effectively always run your high-beams since the
| vehicles around you won't be blinded.
| elf25 wrote:
| '79 Lincoln TownCar did that with a single photocell,
| worked about 80% of the time. The tech is there and it's
| not expensive and I'd say could easily be improved with
| multiple low cost sensors.
| kube-system wrote:
| The selective dimming they're referring to is variable in
| beam pattern, rather than the boolean high/low beam
| pattern of traditional vehicles.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's a much better use of this technology, because it
| actually exhibits better performance than the technology it
| replaces.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Depends on the system. The older ones that are still most
| common are just screens facing up in the dash that reflect
| off the windshield. They are also nearly 100% blocked during
| the day for anyone wearing polarized sunglasses, which limits
| their usefulness. Newer HUDs use lasers and work with
| polarized glasses, but of course they are a more complicated,
| expensive technology.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not saying HUDs are great, I'm saying they're
| relatively simple compared to this tech.
| hendrikrassmann wrote:
| 1.3 million micro-mirrors per headlight :D God forbids we
| (Germany) just build good cars that get you from A to B.
| jerf wrote:
| That may sound weird, but it's actually off-the-shelf tech
| for a couple of decades now:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Light_Processing It's
| already the most common projector technology, not something
| new they're developing just for this.
|
| 1.3 million mirrors is actually low-resolution by modern
| standards.
| woobar wrote:
| DLP TV mirror chip from 15-20 years ago had 2M mirrors.[1]
|
| [1] https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dlp1.htm
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Head-up displays are available in a relatively mid-range BMW 3
| series from over 10 years ago._
|
| Heads-up displays were available in cars at least as far back
| as the 1990's. Perhaps earlier.
|
| These days, you can get an app for your smartphone that doe the
| same thing. You just velcro the phone to your dashboard under
| the windshield and the backwards HUD is reflected in the glass.
| firasd wrote:
| Seems as far as an ambient computing approach, heads-up displays
| (or in the future, google-glass type interfaces) make more sense
| cause you can update the visuals easily
|
| If you're just projecting onto surfaces seems like it will be
| slow and complicated to figure out what to project where
|
| Plus I'm not sure it's even the best approach for the user. Like
| the Terminator in the movies had little bits of info overlayed on
| what he saw in his visual signals .. if this info was projected
| onto floors, walls, roads it would be confusing
| buro9 wrote:
| Nice.
|
| So we have some cars that rely on visual information for self-
| driving.
|
| And we have some cars that can project onto the landscape,
| modifying visual information.
|
| What could go wrong!
|
| I only have a Volvo, in the UK, and it has one of those systems
| that tell you the last road sign that it has seen. That
| information then can optionally control warnings, speed limiter,
| etc. I typically do use the speed limiter, it works well... until
| I was behind a car that had a 20mph bumper sticker on the back.
| Then my car kept insisting that 20mph was the speed limit. I was
| on a motorway.
|
| I also think of that Tesla stop light truck
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch7CJEQ2kz0 , and this
| https://uk.motor1.com/news/449020/video-tesla-model-3-traffi... ,
| and this https://techxplore.com/news/2020-02-road-self-driving-
| car-hi...
|
| Plot for a future novel: Project light onto surfaces from a
| moving vehicle to make another car behave in a way that kills the
| occupants. No evidence can be found at the scene as to why the
| car killed the occupants.
| googlryas wrote:
| Except in the self driving computer's recordings of its
| inputs...
| speed_spread wrote:
| First, display an uproad pattern crafted to cause a buffer
| overflow. 0wn the autpilot, trash recording. Bonus points for
| taking over the entertainment system, cueing Death Grips
| "Guillotine" at max volume as the car leaves the road.
| shreddit wrote:
| We are lucky that most people aren't murderers:
| https://xkcd.com/1958/
| stickfigure wrote:
| How about blinding the (meat) driver with a low-powered laser?
| If you want to murder someone, there are many options.
|
| I wouldn't bet on "no evidence" for the autonomous vehicle. It
| may record telemetry and video.
| buro9 wrote:
| > It may record telemetry and video.
|
| For the novel, probably neither of the above is recorded in
| high enough resolution.
|
| Thinking of subliminal messages inserted into old movies
| here, just flashing something up for a hundredth of a second,
| doing it enough that a system detects something... but not
| enough that video filmed at 30fps really shows it, and that
| telemetry doesn't really capture it.
|
| All the telemetry would show is "car thought X", and the
| video would appear to be clean. What isn't known from is
| "why" car thought something.
| solveit wrote:
| We have systems log stuff when there's less at stake. You'd
| have to really go out of your way to make this an
| unsolvable mystery murder.
| buro9 wrote:
| That's a shame, I was thinking a modern Crow Road (Iain
| Banks) with it being an accident that only later you
| pieced together that a person was in fact a suspect
| because they'd had these skills and could've done this
| far out thing.
| wyre wrote:
| Old movies are projected at 24fps so subliminal messages
| like you mention would be noticeable from a 30fps camera.
| bombcar wrote:
| I am actually slightly surprised that road signs haven't been
| updated to include something like a "barcode" or similar that
| would make it very easy for the machine to identify what sign
| it is. You could "paint" over the entire sign with a variation
| in the infra-red reflectivity with a QR code, for example.
|
| Then the computer would be _better_ at recognizing a sign than
| a human.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Back in the late 2000's I wanted to start a company that
| broadcasted the current speed limit near signs. Like a BT
| beacon, sorta, but obvs not BT. It turns out this requires
| too much coordination. Specifying a protocol, getting
| manufacturers to build it in, lawmakers to pay for it, sign
| makers to embed it, etc.
|
| The tech is the easy part.
| incone123 wrote:
| Isn't this solved by GPS and maps with speed limit data?
| Google maps gives me nonsense speed limits in a couple of
| places but mostly correct.
| samatman wrote:
| No, because the lower speed limits posted on flashing
| signs for construction are an important local case.
|
| In my experience, Google just thinks those are traffic
| jams. I've seen Maps 'know' about road construction speed
| limits, but it isn't usual.
| incone123 wrote:
| Good point. Also, M25 (London orbital motorway) has large
| sections with variable speed limit. Google maps
| navigation just doesn't show a limit for those areas,
| since it does not have timely data.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Also the 20mph boroughs really confuse the systems (cars
| and satnav), since they very often say 30 in 20 and also
| 20 in a 30. The various limits are, admittedly, not well
| signed, and I suspect that's deliberate to keep drivers
| cautious.
| labcomputer wrote:
| One problem is "map matching". That is, given your
| lat/lng (or, more realistically, a time-series of
| lat/lngs) and a map, figure out which road you're on.
|
| The thing is that most consumer devices with GPS (like
| phones and even standalone GPS navigators) have a lot of
| internal "magic" to hide the raw noise in location fixes
| from the GPS signal.
|
| For example, certain Garmin devices (intended to be used
| off road) will snap your location to an Interstate if you
| are going more than 55 mph and heading roughly in the
| direction of the road (which is evident when you run into
| traffic and your location keeps switching between the
| frontage road and expressway--the error distribution of
| the noise doesn't have mean=0!).
| cactacea wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how did the tech deal with things like
| frontage roads that have much lower speed limits than the
| highway right next to them.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Basically, they haven't, or at least they hadn't 4 years
| ago when the car I have with it was made.
|
| Diving along a free flowing 50 and having it decide it's
| now a 30 because it saw a sideroad and drop a gear is
| semi-regular. The second most dangerous thing it does
| after having a touchscreen.
|
| It also manages to read 45 sometimes but I have literally
| never seen a 45 sign.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Radio waves can be directional. So they were pointed at
| the road they influenced, not the highway.
| vlunkr wrote:
| This would probably be easy to exploit. Someone could drop a
| bunch of random invisible stop signs.
| kilociraptor wrote:
| That's why we need to sign the signs.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And use a blockchain to track every interaction between
| passing cars and the sign. Which makes speeding tickets
| all that easier.
| meowkit wrote:
| Tag the coded signs on a GPS map. If the detected "sign" is
| not on the GPS map the system can label it as "probably
| malicious".
| varjag wrote:
| Plenty of places have no reliable GPS reception.
| Macha wrote:
| Then why use the signs at all rather than just use this
| gps based road rule database
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Because not all cars are self-driving or have the ability
| to access this hypothetical database. That will remain
| the case for likely the next 30 or more years.
| Macha wrote:
| Right, but the cars that are scanning signs and will have
| the ability to read said code are the ones being
| suggested that they should consult this database to avoid
| errors. If they're consulting it to avoid errors, they
| could just use it directly
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Now you have two sources of truth for autonomous and non-
| autonomous cars. You end up with two groups playing the
| same game by different rules on the same board
| simultaneously.
|
| Whether or not that's a problem in practice is not clear
| to me. Among others, taxis, construction vehicles,
| emergency vehicles, garbage and delivery trucks,
| municipal busses, school buses, bicycles, motorcycles,
| and vehicles in funeral processions all play by different
| rules than the average motorist.
|
| This mostly doesn't cause disasters. Of course they're
| visibly different for the most part and make up a
| comparatively small percentage of traffic.
|
| Ride hailing vehicles might be an interesting point of
| comparison: they're visibly similar to normal vehicles,
| comparatively common, and play by something resembling
| taxi rules.
| fire wrote:
| honestly if we're going this far we may as well embed a
| speed system in the road itself and have the signs for
| redundancy.
| Findecanor wrote:
| I can see potential problems with _temporary_ signs, such
| as those put up for road works, around accidents or for
| police enforcement.
| rngname22 wrote:
| to be fair someone could also go toss a steel bar on some
| railroad tracks or drop rocks from the top of a highway
| overpass.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Right, but that's rather obvious.
|
| It's true that people aren't often looking for fatal
| pranks, but you could do more benign like try to get
| people pulled over by causing them to speed unknowingly.
| xwdv wrote:
| Someone could really just weld a steel bar onto a
| railroad track out in the wilderness and derail a train??
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Are you genuinely asking about the feasibility? If so,
| then: yes.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Yes. Railroad tracks in the middle of nowhere are usually
| freely accessible. Why bother putting a fence if no one's
| around? Even at railroad crossings in cities, one could
| cause a some collateral damage by welding it right next
| to the crossing.
| neongreen wrote:
| AFAIK, at least in Russia there are signaling systems
| that will interpret a metal object connecting the rails
| as "another train is on the track" and inform the train
| driver.
|
| Not sure whether those systems are also installed in the
| wilderness though. But it seems kinda likely that anybody
| thinking "I should derail a train for fun" might not
| bother driving into the wilderness when there's an
| alluring, convenient, seemingly unobserved stretch of the
| railway available nearby.
|
| Edit: another thing that comes to mind is that you'd also
| have to find a low-visibility part of the railway, even
| in the wilderness -- because otherwise the driver will
| just notice the obstacle and stop the train.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Yes? No welding required, just a few thumbscrews, if you
| use one of these:
|
| https://westernsafety.com/nolan-portable-derail-pd-2/
|
| On sale now! Or pick this one for bigger and faster
| trains:
|
| https://www.aldonco.com/store/c/127-SaberTooth-Portable-
| Dera...
|
| There are lots of tools, weapons, chemicals, and other
| things that a person could do that would be bad. It
| doesn't take much creativity, just a callous disregard
| for other people. But in contrast to the fearmongering
| and crime you'll see in the media, consider it a bit of
| good news that in spite of how incredibly easy it is to
| intentionally cause harm to someone else, billions and
| billions of people choose not to do that every single
| hour of every single day.
| xani_ wrote:
| I mean, you now have told a lot of people that you can
| just get a tool to derail a train easily, that I'd guess
| most (I didn't) don't even know it exists.
| samatman wrote:
| I think that's GP's point: derailing a train is just a
| search engine away, and that's only scary when we think
| about it, which we almost never do.
|
| Which in turn is because our emotions around people
| setting out to do that, are calibrated around the fact
| that it basically doesn't happen outside of war
| conditions.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You don't even need to weld it, you just need to leave it
| somewhere in the way and striking it at sufficient speed
| will result it in bludgeoning through a car or worse.
|
| An improperly stored rail from a maintenance project
| derailed a NYC subway train in 2017: https://apnews.com/a
| rticle/a6a01e5928f9478bab0d33f03260870e
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Its hard to derail a train.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK_Bs
| GlitchMr wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1958/
| bobthepanda wrote:
| We can barely just keep a road painted. There's no budget for
| wholesale replacement of signs, which often have replacement
| spans in terms of decades.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Or they could have something like an IR beacon, that way cars
| can recognize them without relying on computer vision and
| nothing that looks like a road sign can confuse the system.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Signs are already reflective and pretty standardized. I don't
| think machine-readable codes are really necessary for this.
| labcomputer wrote:
| One advantage of something machine-readable, like a QR
| code, would be to incorporate additional information (more
| than could be easily consumed by a human).
|
| For example, a speed limit sign could include the name of
| the road it controls, which would help reduce instances of
| cars suddenly slowing to 35 mph on the freeway when passing
| a sign on the frontage road.
|
| It might also be useful for cases of (this is US-centric)
| yellow "advisory" speeds posted for, e.g., sharp curves.
| The machine-readable aspect might indicate how long the
| advisory speed applies (next 1000 ft) and why (sharp curve,
| hidden intersection, etc.)
| xani_ wrote:
| If you just want to feed computers just put a database
| with every sign location and data.
|
| That way even faking or destroying sign would be
| ineffective.
|
| Would have to be updated during temporary situations
| (roadwork etc) tho
| mbreese wrote:
| _> That way even faking or destroying sign would be
| ineffective_
|
| In theory you could add an HMAC (or similar) signature to
| the QR code. It would be bigger, but if cars maintained a
| DB of state DOT public keys, you could mitigate this
| somewhat.
|
| Then you'd also have to worry about duplicate codes, but
| at least they wouldn't be "fake". Maybe even add lat/long
| coordinates to the code... again, more data, more pixels
| required, but it would make sure the signs are roughly in
| the right place. Which doesn't seem all that feasible to
| require construction crews to put the _right_ sign in the
| _right_ place.
|
| Logistically this doesn't seem all that promising.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Just give the road crew a phone app that can read the
| sign.
|
| Given the phone's camera, compass and GPS, validating
| that the sign has been installed as specified (location,
| facing direction) is almost trivial.
| xani_ wrote:
| > Plot for a future novel: Project light onto surfaces from a
| moving vehicle to make another car behave in a way that kills
| the occupants. No evidence can be found at the scene as to why
| the car killed the occupants.
|
| Aside, well, the video the car recorded...
| reginaldo wrote:
| Add the "autonomous car trapped by a circle of salt" to your
| repertoire if you haven't seen it already:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thuN2HD6m2s
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Most interesting to think about are the stickers[1] that look
| random but actually trigger some kind of adversarial behaviour,
| a bit like how tiny human-imperceptible changes to an image can
| completely flip an image categorisation network's guess.
|
| Perhaps most fun to think about in a Dan Brown-style NSA
| capabilities combined with Peter Watts' Blindsight's near-
| total-imformation perceptual-cognitive shenanigans kind of way.
|
| [1]: https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/adversarial-traffic-
| sig...
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Autonomous Trap 001 is another:
| https://jamesbridle.com/works/autonomous-trap-001
| seri4l wrote:
| Humans also rely on visual information for driving and can
| easily be tricked. For instance, I don't think there is any
| security mechanism to prevent the placement of a battery
| powered green light on top of a red traffic light. In that
| case, an autonomous car's logs could actually help in
| discovering the tampering.
| verbify wrote:
| Interfering with a traffic signal is a crime in many
| jurisdictions.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| No, but the reason there are three (at least) lights is that
| the designers were well aware that colorblindness exists and
| the _position_ of the light is also significant.
| xani_ wrote:
| It's still kinda shit design _to be honest_.
|
| Could have both color and shape. Make red hexagon, yellow
| square for example. or really any recognizable shape
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'm sure that manufacturability is a concern.
| dqpb wrote:
| Can we just make headlights less blinding?
| frogpelt wrote:
| This is so cool. Also I can't wait until a headlight goes out and
| it costs $2k to replace it.
| leetbulb wrote:
| I recently replaced my headlight (entire assembly because it's
| all hermetically sealed). It was about $2000 USD. There are far
| more expensive.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Does anyone have a link to a video of what this will look like on
| rainy roads, snow and ice?
| JohnFen wrote:
| This sounds like a recipe for disaster. And unnecessary. Surely
| AR tech has advanced to the point where these road overlays can
| be done in a way that only the driver can see them.
| mzs wrote:
| Ford's PR on this:
| https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/feu/en/news/2022/08...
| lordnacho wrote:
| Gonna be great once the advertising industry finds out about
| this.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Why can't a simple HUD work for this? I know saab and others had
| HUD's for navigation over a decade ago.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| No. We need to remove all the bullshit from cars. No LCDs, no
| touchscreens, no heads up displays, no blinky flashy beepy
| distract-o-trons that take the driver's eyes off the road.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Like the undercarriage lighting that is popular in certain
| groups?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Does that distract the driver? Like, as much as all the
| bing-y beep-y pointless shit that car manufacturers fill the
| car with?
|
| One of the things I hate about driving the lovely quick
| silent eco-friendly Renault Zoes we have at work compared to
| my decidedly not silent or quick 25-year-old Range Rover, is
| that it's like driving a Fisher-Price Activity Centre.
| *Constantly* there's something beeping, flashing, lighting
| up, switching off, chiming, popping up a message on the LCD
| dashboard that's bigger and brighter than my laptop screen,
| or otherwise demanding my attention.
|
| The dashboard in my old Landrover has got four gauges, of
| which the only one I need to care about is the speedometer.
| Even that that, with the gauge illumination turned off you're
| either driving at the same speed as everyone else, or if
| there's no-one else you're driving at an appropriate speed
| for the conditions. It only beeps if it feels there's
| something drastically wrong, rather than "oh hey there's
| another car quite close to you better beep and light up a
| bunch of stuff so you're not looking at the car that's quite
| close to you".
|
| The Zoe has a fantastic "eco" button that will allow it to
| accelerate like a bat with the squits, up to 60mph and then
| hard limit the speed so the guy behind you who is also trying
| to overtake the same lorry you've just pulled out to pass
| gets a nasty surprise. No brake lights no indication that
| you're not accelerating any more, just WHOOOOSH THUD. Fucking
| stupid idea.
|
| Make cars simpler. Make them safer, by taking out all the
| distracting "safety features". Teach people how to drive more
| safely.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I agree. I think the answer to automotive safety is _not_
| more technology or more car. Instead, we need less car and
| more driver responsibility. Too many people take driving
| for granted and don 't seem aware they're piloting a two-
| ton death machine through a shared space.
|
| I drive a 28-year-old Saturn with zero gadgets and great
| rear visibility. I keep my lights on all the time to be
| seen, but nearly every week somebody tries to change lanes
| on top of me. I'm not sure if people are relying on their
| gadgets to tell them I'm in their blind spot, or if they
| just don't look where they're going, but I'm getting a
| louder horn before I end up wedged underneath an F250.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > nearly every week somebody tries to change lanes on top
| of me
|
| I find this comment funny because it's exactly the same
| complaint my wife has when driving her F-250. "How is it
| they can't see this fucking massive white truck and still
| try to merge into me?"
| reaperducer wrote:
| If it can be abused, it will be abused.
|
| All it takes is one TikTok video of someone projecting their rap
| video on the road, and the streets will be awash with them.
|
| Or better yet -- Coca Cola delivery trucks projecting Coca Cola
| ads on the streets in front of them, and behind.
|
| Or supermarket delivery cars projecting the latest specials on
| the streets for everyone to see.
|
| Or road-spam-as-a-service, where you can rent a car to project
| your ads on the streets.
|
| Combine it with a little bit of "AI:" Car sees someone walking
| their dog on the sidewalk, and projects ads for dog food at their
| feet.
|
| Welcome to the dystopia.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You forgot the step where the Karens get to screechin' and the
| legislators get to legislatin' and we wind up with some knee
| jerk laws that don't really prevent the bad but curtails any
| development of the good.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| And if you have not paid for this feature, it displays and ad
| instead! I mean, come on, we all know this is what would happen.
| Macha wrote:
| Why let users get away with only paying once? Need to make it a
| subscription to capture that recurrent value stream. Make sure
| to communicate the price in coffees, the standard unit of
| nickel-and-diming. I'd drown in all those "just one" coffees
| companies would like me to buy
| [deleted]
| skywhopper wrote:
| This article makes claims without any evidence. I assume they are
| just repeating marketing copy from Ford et al. In what world
| would projected symbols from passing cars help pedestrians? Turn
| signals maybe but the given example of warning surrounding
| pedestrians about slippery surfaces is laughable.
|
| And then there's this line: "Touchscreens were intended to reduce
| the level of distraction". If anyone actually ever said that,
| then they were just lying.
| misterbwong wrote:
| I've asked this around a few times and I don't if it's completely
| dumb or somewhat viable.
|
| Why can't we put rails on top of (some parts of) freeways and
| adapt our cars to work somewhat like railways? Call it "smart
| freeways" to sell it to general public.
|
| When you merge on to the freeway, you "hook in", and the car
| starts to control itself. You tell it where to exit, and it takes
| care of merges, changes lanes, exiting, rerouting due to
| unforeseen obstacles, etc.
|
| Seems like it could end up with the benefits of self driving cars
| but with training wheels and utilizing existing tech. Cars could
| easily signal lane changes, merges, and generally communicate
| with other cars to make things flow evenly and allow vehicles to
| move around. You would also avoid the "last mile" issue of
| getting you from the freeway to the destination-that would still
| be up to the driver
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Actual metal rails aren't viable for a large number of factors.
| The least of which is maintenance due to big trucks damaging
| continuously degrading road around them. You'd be better off
| putting magnets in the road and have equipment in cars to
| follow them.
|
| Even then, you're no better off than existing self-driving
| because you have to deal with every other car on the road that
| doesn't support "rails".
| misterbwong wrote:
| Ah, yes I forgot to mention that part of the idea is that
| everyone on that particular "smart freeway" would be required
| to have the hardware to support it, no exceptions.
|
| Yes, I understand that would be quite regressive and has a
| host of other concerns. However, for the narrow purposes of
| easier, safer, and more efficient driving while on the
| freeway, I do still wonder if it will work.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Assuming your suggestion is possible, why wouldn't we just
| replace the road with railway tracks and move vehicles on
| flatbed cars instead?
|
| No one would need to change their cars.
|
| And before anyone mentions throughput, let's assume we can
| use custom track sizes and just have people drive into the
| side of a railway car, like it was a ferry. Should be able
| to stack cars two height.
| misterbwong wrote:
| I mean...you're not wrong on that suggestion :D It just
| seems like _something_ would be easier than solving for
| every.single.edge.case with generalized autonomous
| driving.
| withinboredom wrote:
| We can't even get trains to drive themselves.
| cush wrote:
| No. The correct answer is No.
| mightypirate wrote:
| beeforpork wrote:
| No.
| corobo wrote:
| Isn't there a an odd effect where people are drawn towards what
| they're looking at while in motion?
|
| I'm not sure I'd be a fan of plopping something unusual on the
| road in front of me if there's other lanes. I'm picturing some
| random rubbernecker sending me flying off the road because my car
| decided to project a raincloud in front of me.
|
| E: target fixation is the term I was after
| trgn wrote:
| Target fixation is apparently how many motorcyclists crash.
| They see the tree and then ride directly into it. The first
| thing they teach a rider is looking where you need to go. It
| doesn't come naturally at first, because it often means you're
| not looking in front of the bike, and have to trust physics
| will do its thing. That body-bike connection needs to develop
| over time and become instinctual, the mind needs to be taking
| out of the equation. It really takes time. That's why it's
| often a horrible idea to start learning to ride well into
| adulthood, it's harder to learn these embodied habits.
| m3047 wrote:
| Depends somewhat on the bike, but yah; and personally I
| prefer a bike that just goes where I look.
| burmer wrote:
| There are already too many problems with cars using roads as
| cars. Cars have monopolized public space in an unprecedented way
| that needs to be vastly scaled back.
| silisili wrote:
| I for one can't wait to have direction arrows burned into my
| retinas by all the half wrecked and lifted vehicles that today do
| so with plain ol boring shapeless white light.
| ktpsns wrote:
| Just one data point from Germany: The legal situation currently
| makes it illegal to use arbitrary lightning signals in motorized
| traffic. This has many clear reasons, such as reducing stress and
| distraction and reserving blue warning lights to emergency
| vehicles, for instance.
|
| Given how traditional and cautious Germany is when it comes to
| new technology, I could imagine that projecting cars have a long
| way until getting recognized. On the other hand, Germany thinks
| of itself as a automotive country. Car manufactures have a lot of
| influence in politics.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| No. It's a shared space.
| seqizz wrote:
| Umm. No?
|
| BMW's heads-up display shows an important example: Reflect it
| from your front window, do not litter streets.
| tejtm wrote:
| No. (Betteridge)
|
| Shall we talk about the weather then?
| phkahler wrote:
| For a while now I think big trusks should project (via laser
| scanner maybe) a large keep-out zone in front of them. My
| impression is part of the reason those trucks drive so much
| slower is their need to maintain a safe following distance,
| combined with cars that pass them cutting into that area. If we'd
| stop violating their safe-following zone they could drive faster
| and not slow overall traffic so much. This is not considering the
| speed limit often being lower for them.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Touchscreens were intended to reduce the level of distraction
| but have proven controversial...
|
| Had to laugh at this. I've never heard of the concept that touch
| screens were intended to _reduce_ distractions. If that was the
| intent, I think it has failed catastrophically.
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