[HN Gopher] A road safety plan that will lead to cars communicat...
___________________________________________________________________
A road safety plan that will lead to cars communicating with each
other
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 34 points
Date : 2024-08-18 15:29 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| tocs3 wrote:
| I like the modern world and its safety features. Things (cars,
| planes, food, etc.) are generally safer but I just do not really
| trust any of the people that would be writing these rules. I fear
| the regulatory capture aspect of it and what it might mean to me
| trying to get to the grocery store. I only drive a three or four
| times a week (most of that is short duration rural driving).
|
| It is not that I think some one will take my car from me so much
| as the industry may just work to make everything not new
| obsolete. A new $30K car (or even $8$15K used) is a steep price
| for an individual to pay to meet regulations.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| It's worth noting that this is 100% about providing more
| information to vehicles rather than requiring vehicles to use
| the feature.
|
| Think of it in the same category as driver assistance
| technologies (like radar cruise control, forward collision
| warning, lane assist, rear cross warnings, rear cameras, or
| blind spot warnings/cameras).
|
| It'll almost certainly never be mandatory to be road legal but
| it'll probably be a standard feature on most new vehicles.
| ItsBob wrote:
| > It's worth noting that this is 100% about providing more
| information to vehicles rather than requiring vehicles to use
| the feature.
|
| I'm calling it here and now: this absolutely will become
| mandatory in the nearish future. 100%.
|
| Same as in Europe with the speed regulator thingy in the
| cars... advisory at first now mandatory in many places.
| madrox wrote:
| * For some definition of near and mandatory
|
| Even when they started mandating airbags in new vehicles,
| it took something like seven years to go into effect so car
| manufacturers had time to plan. And then they didn't make
| cars that didn't have airbags illegal.
|
| Even the most universally embraced ideas take time to roll
| out.
| ItsBob wrote:
| I agree: it won't happen overnight.
|
| It will happen within a handful of years though. Too much
| potential for control to let it pass...
| pixxel wrote:
| Airbags aren't a useful tool for data/control.
| trte9343r4 wrote:
| We already have safety rules, but those are ignored!
|
| If you cycle into grocery store, you may get chased and
| attacked by dangerous dogs. Many people gave up cycling and
| jogging for that! And in grocery store more dogs and
| excrements! There are rules against all of that, yet it is
| widely ignored.
|
| Lidars will get vandalized pretty fast, because they will
| impede flow of traffic. Or thugs will use it to stop passing
| vehicles to make kidnapping easy!
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > thugs will use it to stop passing vehicles to make
| kidnapping easy!
|
| We already have this thing, it's called a red light.
|
| Is there a name for this, when people come up with a
| plausible sounding scenario for crime driven disaster, but it
| does not actually have basis in real world? The 'razor blades
| in candy' scares parents every Halloween but is completely
| made up and has never been reported.
|
| Peter Thiel had a similar moment on Joe Rogan podcast where
| he explained his elaborate social theory based on how chimps
| behave, but got the basics of chimp behaviour totally wrong
|
| TL DR: tech people suck at predicting human behaviour
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| People do get kidnapped at traffic lights. Here's an
| incident of it happening in Florida a few months ago.
|
| The ability to arbitrarily stop vehicles would be very
| useful for this kind of crime because it could be done in
| less crowded areas. And criminals could more readily select
| for expensive vehicles, young women or whatever else
| they're wanting.
|
| [1] https://www.crimeonline.com/2024/04/12/video-florida-
| woman-a... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usuo0jOcHJA
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| But the comparison we are making is different - do people
| create a fake traffic light, because that is really easy;
| and I have never heard of it happening.
|
| Ofcourse there are places where vehicles have to stop
| naturally, you can't avoid that.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| A convincing set of fake traffic lights requires a
| meaningful amount of time and equipment, as well as a
| plausible set of crossroads or roadworks.
|
| To steel man your position though, a fake police costume
| would probably be just as effective at stopping vehicles
| arbitrarily. And despite being cheap it's a relatively
| rare occurrence.
| handsclean wrote:
| Soon:
|
| "Your honor, it may be true that my client's driving speed in
| combination with the thick fog prevented him from reacting to
| obstacles, and that his car then struck and violently killed this
| man while he used the crosswalk. However, it was not the fog or
| my client's speed that caused standard crash avoidance safety
| mechanisms to fail, but the crash-ee's negligent decision to go
| outside without a phone with a functioning and active location
| beacon."
| jacoblambda wrote:
| The crosswalk pedestrian detection is using LIDAR fwiw.
| Provided the vehicle was equipped with V2X and the crosswalk
| had pedestrian detection it'd go something like this:
|
| 1. The crosswalk announces itself to the vehicle via a P2P 3G,
| LTE, or 5G connection.
|
| 2. The vehicle notifies the driver or the adaptive cruise
| control (if enabled) slows down while approaching the
| crosswalk.
|
| 3. The post with the crosswalk button on it has a LIDAR sensor
| that looks down the length of the crosswalk (and presumably
| another one facing from the opposite direction) and a
| relatively low power DSP digests the LIDAR input looking for
| approximately not-car shaped forms on the crosswalk.
|
| 4. The crosswalk announces a pedestrian on the crosswalk to the
| vehicles if a pedestrian presses the button on the crosswalk
| post or if a pedestrian form is detected on the crosswalk.
|
| 5. The vehicle alerts the driver or the adaptive cruise control
| comes to a complete stop, prompting the driver to resume when
| the route is clear (or when it no longer reports pedestrians
| using the crosswalk.
|
| 6. When the crosswalk timer is complete and no pedestrian forms
| are visible on LIDAR, the crosswalk announces an empty
| crosswalk to the vehicles.
|
| So the "they didn't have their phone on them" defense wouldn't
| even begin to come into consideration.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You missed the point entirely - imagine LIDAR is broken, same
| outcome results - tech based excuse for dangerous behaviour.
|
| We already have people trusting google maps instead of their
| own eyes, and driving into fields, swamps and lakes. Taking
| right turns when they are forbidden, ignoring road markings,
| etc.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| "Your Honor, the towns bored teens or some other joker
| tampered with the senors/devices and my client/'s car never
| got the message."
| kkfx wrote:
| My actual commercial, real car, have some ADAS, some times
| every let's say 1000km driven it decide I'm nearly crushing
| on someone else triggering not needed "phantom" breaks, while
| I might have some other cars/bike nearby my rear bumper,
| normally with automatic braking on parking it does not sense
| the void so if I trust the system and go back without looking
| I might and up downhill...
|
| Aside the car is so safe and well done in software terms I
| often have my car's companion app to open,
| activate/deactivate A/C etc connect to another car in another
| country for unknown reasons and I potentially can control
| some function of that car, while I imaging someone else could
| control mine...
|
| Do you really want to trust these systems? Do you really want
| to trust instructions from another peer automatically without
| any means of human correction? Let's image a trigger to stop
| an armored bank van somewhere for a robbery...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The current status quo is that forty thousand people die
| from car crashes in a single year.
|
| I think we need to try to use technology to improve the
| situation, yes.
| gambiting wrote:
| And vast majority of them are due to drunk drivers, so if
| you used technology to detect a drunk person behind the
| wheel you'd cut this number in half if not more, but
| somehow this has less political support than mandating
| all cars to have expensive and complicated systems which
| don't do anything about the main problem of drunk
| driving.
| northwest65 wrote:
| Only nerds are dumb enough to think that adding LIDAR to
| every crosswalk in the world isn't a completely ridiculous
| idea.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I wish that the safety of the people outside of motor vehicles
| received at least as many resources (funding, research, legal) as
| the safety of motorists -- who are cause of these risks in the
| first place.
|
| Motorists already have strong incentives to make their vehicles
| safer for themselves, but they have very little incentive to make
| things safer for people outside of their vehicle. For that reason
| we need better regulations and infrastructure that account for
| those externalities.
| tocs3 wrote:
| And everything is so partisan. It does not seem to matter what
| is up for discussion. If party A is for it then party B is
| against (or vise versa). I like the notion that cars could have
| extra safety features but as is noted in other posts there are
| low hanging, lower cost, existing solutions that are not being
| implemented.
|
| By all means lets look into some of the tech solutions. But
| politicians (policy makers and pundits) are not the ones to
| listen to.
| bestouff wrote:
| Cars are a social problem - safety, ecology, economy, city
| shaping, etc. The solution goes through politics. Tech won't
| save us.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The solution is one that is unpopular to a good number of
| consumers, it's to make cars smaller, lighter, and slower.
|
| While I'm sure it's happened, death via golfcart is a pretty
| rare occurrence. Death via a Dodge ram, on the other hand,
| happens all the time. [1]
|
| Giant trucks are super popular and super deadly. I was nearly
| killed by one myself (driver ran a red light while I was in the
| cross walk). While I wouldn't outright ban them, I definitely
| would be up to something like requiring a CDL before you can
| buy one.
|
| [1] https://www.autoblog.com/article/most-deadly-cars-other-
| driv...
| david-gpu wrote:
| I completely agree on all accounts. Heavy vehicles such as
| pickup trucks should require a CDL... and drivers should lose
| it when they are found driving recklessly.
|
| I have no interest in unproven high-tech approaches when we
| haven't even implemented very basic proven pedestrian safety
| measures like eliminating street-level parking around
| pedestrian crossings to increase visibility, or mandating
| pedestrian safety tests for motor vehicles.
| Lance_ET_Compte wrote:
| This is exactly my feeling. Cars have gotten so huge now,
| erasing the fuel savings and causing the deaths of so many
| pedestrians and cyclists.
|
| I would like to see the cost to register these behemoths to be
| commiserate with the actual cost to society.
| ksplicer wrote:
| Cars are built for drivers, any inconvenience they cause for
| others is a problem for someone else to solve /s
|
| One example of this that drives me crazy is how soundproof
| vehicles have become. Horns and sirens keep getting louder to
| make up for it, which makes being near traffic incredibly
| painful. Sirens are often 120+ decibels, a volume that is
| unsafe for listeners for more than 10 seconds. All cars should
| be mandated to easily be able to hear a 100 decibel siren.
| beardyw wrote:
| But you can still drive a Cyber Truck.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I'm not pro Cybertruck. But people collectively losing their
| mind over it is ridiclous. Other trucks are more common and
| more unsafe.
|
| I have heard 100x more people making Cybertruck jokes but
| almost never about actually improving safety in any signifcant
| way. Farming browny points by with low-hanging anti-Musk stuff
| seems to be more important then anything else for most people.
|
| There is a whole cottage industry of anti-Cybertruck stuff all
| over the internet, if all those people put their energy into
| actually explain how to actually improve safty, we would be
| much better off.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I have heard 100x more people making Cybertruck jokes but
| almost never about actually improving safety in any
| signifcant way.
|
| That's a weird kind of blame shifting.
|
| 1. Many things that ought to change have _already been laid
| out well in advance_. Things like defined limits on how
| "sharp" the outsides can be or having a crumple-zone front
| instead of a pedestrian meat-tenderizer. This is especially
| true in jurisdiction where those recommendations are
| requirements, and the vehicle cannot be legally sold.
|
| 2. Many critiques have obvious solutions like "don't do the
| dumb thing" or "do it the normal way."
|
| 3. Improving safety is normally the job of the car
| manufacturing company, why would Tesla be any different?
|
| 4. If your want very detailed engineering fixes from the
| internet, tell Tesla to open-source their manufacturing
| process and pay people for time.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| More info, from the source:
|
| https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/program_areas/ops-cavet.htm
|
| There is a link to an ongoing test in the downtown area of Tampa,
| FL. They've installed lidar near crosswalks; when a pedestrian is
| in a crosswalk it broadcasts a "pedestrian in crosswalk" signal
| that nearby compatible cars hear (they've installed receivers in
| 1000 cars).
| panick21_ wrote:
| How to waste the maximal amount of money for minimal benefit.
| Lidar at ever intersection. The idiocy is incrdible.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I'm totally in support for reserving RF spectrum for this and
| can imagine many scenarios where low-cost, low-power RF
| transmissions would improve road safety (I've just braked
| really hard; I've just crashed; I'm an emergency vehicle
| stopped in the road; etc).
|
| But yeah, lidar at every intersection is just plain bonkers.
| kfarr wrote:
| Sells a lot of v2x chips tho
| bdavbdav wrote:
| 1000 cars doesn't sound like many as an accident reduction
| survey, unless it's just to prove the tech itself works.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I really don't want connected cars. It introduces way too much
| remote attack surface where there was zero before.
| dylan604 wrote:
| do the cars need to be connected to communicate with each other
| though? I think you're beating on a dead horse of an unrelated
| subject
| Arainach wrote:
| Could you elaborate? Communication is itself a connection.
| The complaint isn't that the cars are connected to the
| internet, it's that they're connected and communicating with
| each other.
|
| In an oversimplified system where Car A broadcasts "I'm
| braking" allowing Car B to slow down and avoid a collision,
| the attack vector is a simulated "I'm braking" message that
| causes car B to slow down/stop even though Car A is not
| braking (or may not even exist).
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe I missed the meaning, but with all of the other
| threads about connected cars, it's all about connected to
| the internet.
|
| Broadcasting current mode of operation doesn't really seem
| connected in the same way to me. Sure, it might be a way to
| "attack" another car by sending the same signal, but that's
| totally different from someone accessing the car remotely
| for other purposes. If you fake a hard braking signal, to
| my car, then my car will respond by slowing down and then
| transmitting that as well to other cars.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| They need to communicate somehow. That is a large a attack
| surface and bad actors could inflict a whole lot of damage.
| I'd say we take it slowly before we jump headfirst into this.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Thing is, there's absolutely no way to make this safe,
| ever. Not going to happen. No software of even the tiniest
| complexity has ever been secure, and pre-zero days are used
| for years often prior to discovery.
|
| It's not safe. It never will be safe. Ever. Self driving
| cars should have absolutely zero networking capability, at
| all.
|
| Anyone saying otherwise is ignoring te reality of software
| development history, and extremely naive.
| Axsuul wrote:
| Sorry but it'll happen regardless since the incentives are too
| strong. Imagine highway lanes in the future that only allow
| cars that support communication protocols - say goodbye
| traffic.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Most makers are trying to implement some form of self driving,
| even if it's just self parking while the owner is outside.
|
| Isn't there already a significant attack vector ?
|
| And the pressure is high for makers to bring more of these
| sooner than later, so having a more public and wider discussion
| on what this means on the security side is I think beneficial.
| Right now they're burying their head in the sand.
| new299 wrote:
| The number of negative comments here seems odd to me.
|
| If you actually want practical and safe self driving cars widely
| deployed it seems obvious that instrumenting roads and making
| them a better platform for self-driving vehicles is an important
| part of this process.
|
| To me this work seems like a part of the process of evolving
| roads from a Ad-Hoc and poorly documented system involving a lot
| of human guess work into a more robust and reliable platform for
| self-driving and human driven cars.
| adrianN wrote:
| We don't even instrument all the train tracks, a small portion
| of the network relies on the conductors. I think it's unlikely
| that the people commenting today will live to see a sizable
| portion of the road network instrumented for self driving.
| drtgh wrote:
| As the article and the linked PDF quickly mention,
| cybersecurity is a concern, a really big problem difficult to
| solve.
|
| A cracked traffic or car signal, a spoofed radio signal, or
| more simply a malfunctioning sensor from both, is something to
| watch out for. Then, at what point could the data received be
| trusted without a real trusted source like a visual of what is
| really happening?
|
| Collapsing a city or causing an accident could be as simple as
| tricking vehicles into thinking they have another vehicle in
| front of them by receiving false data with the codes of
| legitimate vehicles or traffic signals for example.
|
| IMHO vehicles should not react to data from third
| parties/external, but to a own -and mandatory redundant-
| sensoring data within the vehicle.
|
| But even nowadays there are problems with this as owners of
| cars with automatic proximity braking systems could explain.
| There is also another problem, when the vehicle is connected to
| a network to receive an OTA or to modify any type of
| engineering parameter, it already has its own vector of attack,
| homologous to when one use the remote key to open and start the
| car, and the signal is captured and cracked by a third party;
| We didn't saw manufacturers solving this across all this years.
|
| The article concludes like if the problem were political, a
| sabotage, but without explaining why the cybersecurity is a
| real problem.
|
| I'm European, so I'm not sure what lobbies are involved there,
| for sure they exist, but if we ignore it and look at it from a
| technical point of view, IMHO the cybersecurity problem should
| be solved -which I'm not sure can be solved- before moving the
| money.
| latortuga wrote:
| > If you actually want practical and safe self driving cars
| widely deployed
|
| I can't speak for everyone in this thread but personally this
| sounds like a nightmare. If we're dreaming about possible
| future worlds that are better than what we have, I'd rather
| have less or no cars. Much cheaper to maintain, not hackable.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _If you actually want practical and safe self driving cars
| widely deployed_
|
| That's a big if ;)
|
| Not to be a luddite, but we are many that don't enjoy our
| cities being designed around car usage. That they take up all
| space that could have been used for nicer things.
| surfingdino wrote:
| Thing is, those who like cars and driving don't want autonomous
| cars; those who only see cars as a way to transport humans and
| goods should stop pretending they want cars and simply use Uber
| or Rent-a-Van. Self-driving cars are a solution to a non-
| existent problem.
| philsnow wrote:
| > If you actually want practical and safe self driving cars
| widely deployed
|
| I don't, though.
|
| If we're going to propose a sci-fi future state of the world
| that will take a mind-boggling amount of investment, not to
| mention a giant leap of faith that we'll ever actually get
| there, I would prefer to reclaim all the space that's currently
| devoted to car infrastructure and be able to walk to
| everything.
|
| > practical and safe
|
| This isn't even enough; it would need to be _cheap_ and
| universally accessible as well. I don 't want to live in a
| society where we've agreed that cars are necessary despite a
| high and growing number of vehicle fatalities per year, and
| then provide miraculously-effective safety features [0] that
| only 1% (or 10% or whatever) of people can afford.
|
| [0] if about_to_collide() dont();
| bankcust08385 wrote:
| Self-driving cars able to communicate intent and negotiate could
| be extremely efficient by reducing collisions and traffic.
|
| From a standstill, all vehicles waiting could accelerate
| simultaneously rather than create pressure waves due to human
| reaction times.
|
| With fully-autonomous coordination, might also be possible to do
| away with traffic lights and other control elements to negotiate
| scheduling of vehicles moving across each other so they cross
| intersections using precisely-allocated time slots without
| stopping.
| psini wrote:
| Sounds like reinventing trains, but honestly why not with all
| the existing road infrastructure
| BoringTimesGang wrote:
| The 'tech bros reinventing trains' refrain fails to take into
| account that the same people would love 1/100th of the
| coverage of the global road network for rail.
| xen0 wrote:
| This is a terrible world for pedestrians, bicycles, or anything
| other than an autonomous vehicle.
| patapong wrote:
| Not necessarily? This depends on how the system is set up.
|
| For example, cars could share the positions of pedestrians
| and bikes with each other to ensure that even cars with no
| direct line of sight are aware of them, making the roads
| safer for everyone.
|
| Likewise, if traffic lights are integrated into the system,
| the waiting times could be much shorter as cars can
| dynamically slow down to allow pedestrians to cross, wihtout
| being contrained by fixed time blocks of green/red.
| xen0 wrote:
| We already have systems that permit pedestrians to cross
| with priority over cars; they don't need lights.
|
| They don't scale to really busy streets, and one of the
| failure modes would be perpetually blocked vehicles.
|
| And this still leaves other road users that aren't
| autonomous cars up in the air.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Why, could integrate the beacons into signal pedestrian
| crossings forcing the cars to stop (whereas currently an
| absent minded driver might go through it), also doesn't stop
| development of other safety systems like object detection.
| xen0 wrote:
| If you want to avoid traffic 'waves', so all vehicles
| accelerate and decelerate at the same time, you must remove
| _everything_ that might introduce unexpected variance.
|
| Which basically removes people.
|
| A simple fact is that faster moving traffic is necessarily
| less dense; the gaps between vehicles must be larger to
| account for small variations that matter more and more at
| speed.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| I'd say it's more about reducing unnecessary stoppages
| where possible. The wave is triggered by someone braking
| ahead for whatever reason, we're looking to prevent the
| unnecessary wave, not necessarily stop the initial
| braking event as it may have been necessary.
| itishappy wrote:
| > you must remove _everything_ that might introduce
| unexpected variance
|
| I'm not sure that follows. Cars that communicate can
| accelerate and brake together even in unexpected
| situations.
| xen0 wrote:
| You need the increased space, which means you have the
| traffic waves.
|
| You need the space because of variations in cars; some
| have better brakes than others, some may be heavier so
| need more time to slow down, others may be on wetter
| patch of road, etc.
|
| And one car may not even get the signal, so only slows
| down when it observes the vehicle ahead of it doing, an
| observation that needs time.
|
| Or a car starts accelerating as the one in front just
| stalls.
|
| It may all be better than human reaction times, but for
| robustness, which is really very necessary, you're going
| to get the same dynamics.
|
| And this all assumes only good actors; somewhat
| optimistic in my view.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Cars that communicate can accelerate and brake together
| even in unexpected situations.
|
| A horde of cars where 100% of them consistently operate
| in a failure-free state and have comms that can't be
| hampered by the environment - that group could maybe do
| this.
| globular-toast wrote:
| There won't be any. If you want to do that kind of stuff
| you'll take a wheelchair to the nearest "activity centre"
| where you'll be able to move your appendages around to
| simulate some kind of neolithic locomotion. It will be
| considered quite a niche pastime, though, as you can just
| take pills to remain happy and in shape.
| 6510 wrote:
| I've been advocating for railside cameras so that the driver
| can see things further down the track. The accidents happen
| at crossings of which there are relatively few.
|
| If you put a cam and a computer with a crosswalk it can
| rigorously figure out (and transmit) someone is crossing the
| road. Very much more so than a vehicle approaching from
| around the corner.
| matsemann wrote:
| It will just be the new victim blaming: the cyclist got run
| over because they didn't have an expensive responder on their
| back!
| hammock wrote:
| It would be awesome on any grade-separated highway
| bobthepanda wrote:
| all grade separated highways eventually exit onto not-grade
| separated roads, and often tailbacks are the result of
| delays happening off the highway system.
| itishappy wrote:
| Is it? "Large blocks of vehicles moving in tandem" is a
| technology we have today: trains. Are trains that bad for
| pedestrians and bikes?
| wanderinghogan wrote:
| You mean the trains that go by once every 15+ minutes, and
| are confined to a track with no way for the operator to do
| anything but brake or speed up, compared to every few
| seconds with the ability for the driver to take control at
| any moment?
|
| But I guess this would work/be status quo for non-autos if
| we kept the signals so peds and bikes knew they could still
| cross and probably not get run over by someone who decided
| to switch back to manual control.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| how many pedestrians and bikes are directly crossing busy
| train tracks at grade? traffic lights signal cycle every
| minute or so.
|
| the issue is that unlike trains, roads are so numerous that
| they are hard to avoid, and it is financially unrealistic
| to bridge or tunnel for non-motorized users across every
| road, particularly if you want that crossing to be
| accessible.
| xen0 wrote:
| The intersection of paths taken by pedestrians and trains
| is much more limited than that for pedestrians and cars.
|
| And notably, trains don't stop for pedestrians.
|
| Or another way:
|
| Roads are a shared resource. Train tracks are not.
| tetris11 wrote:
| sounds great in the US where cars are first class citizens in
| cities, but it feels like a loss for pedestrians in more mixed
| cities.
|
| Though I suppose, mixed cities will ultimately push cars out,
| which will separate the two better and allow the car world to
| do whatever automated works it wants without harming anyone
| maccard wrote:
| Not all roads are in cities, though. I'd be fine with
| "manual" driving in a city if I could turn on smart-cruise-
| control on the motorway and let it do its thing at 40/60/70
| knowing that I can relax just a little bit more. Doubly so if
| in an EV world, the cars can talk to each other and a central
| network to say "I'm going to need to charge in X km, so I can
| use charger A, B, or C" and they communicate to minimise wait
| times across the board.
| kkfx wrote:
| Unless someone, for instance from remote, crack some cars to
| send false signals, let's say a police mandating stop when an
| armored bank van pass by, signaling to also open doors
| meanwhile another armored semi-autonomous car from a very
| active activist suddenly accelerate crashing onto an elementary
| school group on a trip stating was the activist driving, and
| the smart-blood test state he/she is on drugs and alcohol while
| he/she was effectively not and wasn't driving at all or
| controls was not operational being by wires... etc etc etc...
|
| You can't design the world as anyone is a good actor. Most are
| indeed good actors, but most and all are different quantities.
| 7952 wrote:
| It turns the whole world into a computer science problem. A
| distributed database of state with some malicious data. With
| various asynchronous processes that have different versions
| of the data. All needing to make decisions with incomplete
| data.
| textlapse wrote:
| I can almost squint at this and see 'self driving cars over a
| long enough period of time in reality are just .... trains with
| cars connected by wifi instead of physical beams'.
| p51-remorse wrote:
| Except able to go to different places, with the much lower
| cost of road infra vs. rail infra.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I wouldn't want all cars to accelerate simultaneously since I
| don't think they can all brake simultaneously
| UltimateEdge wrote:
| It seems this comment is paraphrasing the following video by
| CGP Grey: https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The system will not be used for efficiency in the wider sense,
| merely in the car centric sense of increased throughput.
|
| As another commenter has pointed out such a system makes life
| for other road users: cyclists, pedestrians, horses, most
| uncomfortable (to put it it exceedingly mildly).
| nxobject wrote:
| The article doesn't make it clear to me when the DOT talks about
| "V2X being deployed", what the full scope of that is - does it
| refer to just the physical technologies, or the lowest layers of
| the OSI model? Or does "V2X deployment" here mean more
| application-level stuff, i.e. a series of minimum requirements
| about what information classes of devices will broadcast to other
| classes of devices, with what limitations?
|
| Without that clarification, I think the first thing readers of HN
| will think, justifiably, is "is all of my car's information being
| broadcast all the time to everything", for plenty of reasons -
| dragnet surveillance, disruptive attacks ranging from Flipper
| pranks to state actors, etc.? It's not clear whether that's true
| or expected of this V2X initiative.
|
| After some quick digging, it looks like so far, it looks like
| only very domain-specific features have been "implemented with
| V2X", and will be for the forseeable future (see p7+ in [1]) -
| oversize vehicle complaince, pedestrian in crosswalk, blind spot
| warnings. How that's implemented will probably need a lot more
| digging.
|
| [1] https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/68128
| Havoc wrote:
| Makes sense to me. Even if it's just a "hint" that could
| massively alter outcomes. eg braking a second earlier could be
| the difference between crash and no crash
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is it just me or does this seem like it could be abused?
|
| Like, could you just stand on a bridge on a freeway and send
| 'I'm max braking' signals to all the cars and then they all
| react to that and stop?
|
| Bearing in mind the incredibly poor tech of most cars - like
| the keyless entry that you can just boost the signal while the
| keys are in a house and open the car - I don't have much faith
| in car companies to do a good job.
|
| I don't mind my car reacting to real events actually happening
| before I know about them, but reacting to signals scares me a
| bit.
|
| Is there some clever way that they'll avoid this?
| Havoc wrote:
| Yes definitely worth some careful consideration.
|
| The current situation of 2 tons hunks of stupid metal flying
| around with only slow reacting humans to maintain safety
| isn't optimal either though.
|
| There has got to be some sort of happy medium here
| h_tbob wrote:
| As an American there are few times when I think the government
| did something awesome.
|
| But I'm amazed they are thinking of this. This so awesome.
|
| Plus the FAA will need to do this as we get more electric
| personal aircraft
| xnx wrote:
| Like other networks, dumb pipes (roads) and smart endpoints
| (self-driving cars) will serve us best in transportation. Vehicle
| to vehicle communication makes almost no difference to the
| remaining hard problems Waymo is working on. E.g. Vehicle to
| vehicle doesn't help a Waymo car identify and properly handle
| downed power lines during a snowstorm.
| eth0up wrote:
| My morning $0.02:
|
| I have thought for many years that we need to make driving a part
| of both middle and highschool. Not merely the principles of motor
| vehicle operation, but the humanities aspect too.
|
| For example, psychology, basic physics and sociology would be
| integral to the curriculum. It is important to view
| transportation as closely as possible for what it is. As
| conscientious driver, I do my best to be courteous and safe, for
| both selfish and altruistic reasons. I try to apply my
| understanding of traffic dynamics every time frustration is
| detected. It is impossible for me to drive without observing
| stupidity, inefficiencies and systemic flaws. Realizing that I am
| part of it and not an exception, I try to view others (drivers,
| bystanders, pedestrians, cyclists etc) with equal or greater
| importance to myself. I do not tailgate, unless it is a
| collective circumstance, eg slow high-density traffic. I heed
| speed limits, general laws, and remain cognizant of signs. I
| expect unexpected behavior and try to not react beyond necessary
| correction.
|
| And I piss off a lot of drivers. Traveling the speed limit in the
| right lane in low density traffic, I will be tailgated or worse.
| Yet, while mostly driving well within legal parameters, I make
| good time and often end up ahead of erratic impatient drivers.
|
| I believe that most collisions can be avoided through rational
| driving practices. But many are never exposed to the concept. A
| mere pulse is sufficient to receive a driver's license.
|
| Traffic enforcement also seems to be more revenue than safety
| driven and lacks consistency, eg ephemeral speed traps.
|
| An essay or book could be easily written on this subject. As such
| an integral, ubiquitous part of society, it is amazing that such
| minimal attention is placed upon it. The fact that so many lives
| are at stake seems enough to make a religion of it. We really
| should do much more, without sloughing responsibility onto
| technology and the lottery of enforcement. For me it is one of
| the most outrageously glaring contradictions of expressed values
| there is, with carnage universally and quietly accepted as
| collateral damage.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| This would work if we had the ability to deny licenses to
| people, which would require us to have a real alternative to
| driving in more cities :(
|
| > And I piss off a lot of drivers. Traveling the speed limit in
| the right lane in low density traffic, I will be tailgated or
| worse. Yet, while mostly driving well within legal parameters,
| I make good time and often end up ahead of erratic impatient
| drivers.
|
| The impatient drivers overtake me but curiously I've never
| gotten a single ticket nor been in a collision. (I was forced
| off the road exactly one time)
| eth0up wrote:
| No tickets nor collisions... Keep it up!
|
| I know a bit about being forced off the road. Last time it
| was road rage, but typically it's unintentional.
|
| What I know without any doubt, is that we need to take more
| responsibility and proactive measures. If we leave it all to
| technology, we'll all have regrets.
|
| Ride safe!
| neonate wrote:
| https://www.its.dot.gov/research_areas/emerging_tech/pdf/Acc...
| Joker_vD wrote:
| How about Google and Apple teaming up, taking all the data they
| receive from Google Maps/Apple Maps telemetry, including the
| destination waypoints, using it to calculate globally optimal
| routing for every car on the road, and then making the cars
| execute it? Like, sure, this may sound like a central planning
| caricature but we _do_ actually have enough computing power to
| pull it off in this case! It will be glorious! And pedestrians
| can be easily taken into account since they all carry small GPS
| /radio-trackers on them anyhow.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The main issue I see is one of privacy and government control.
| Kill switches, speed governors, cars communicating with other
| cars ... soon we're on the doorstep of the same ability the CCP
| has to restrict transit.
| slackfan wrote:
| We are not on the doorstep, we are very much already there. And
| we do. Quiet Skies exists, and all intercity Amtrack trains
| fall under TSA as well.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I don't mind governors, you can set all US cars around 80 MPH
| without putting any cars on the Internet.
|
| The risk to privacy isn't a government nefariously shutting
| down my car, it's a bunch of corporations trading my personal
| information, and I'm already losing the war
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The other problems with capturing peoples freedom of movement, is
| the liability it creates in insurance and or legal
| accountability.
|
| It will lead to countless edge-cases that usurp normal judgement
| by rational drivers. Example: "The school bus stopped on the
| railway crossing, because some drunk in a Tesla passed out in the
| turning lane."
|
| What a silly policy from naive nerd hubris. =3
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Honestly a neat idea, making cars not run into each other seems
| like an almost trivial idea to implement if they can talk to each
| other.
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