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Comment by celticninja | Hacker News Reader

Why bother, err on the side of caution with pedestrians. The driver is already benefiting from auto pilot, a minor delay due to safety of other road users would be acceptable to most.

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It's inconveniencing other drivers on the road and much more importantly this erratic stopping from a human perspective might make it more likely to cause an accident. Granted the accident would legally be the meat driven car's fault who bumps into the suddenly stopped Tesla. It would still be nice to play well with human drivers who don't have the luxury of relaxing in a self driving car.

Well no one think of the coffee?

> Granted the accident would legally be the meat driven car's fault who bumps into the suddenly stopped Tesla.

Exactly. If you bump into the car in front, because they stopped for a percieved hazard, it is your fault for tailgaiting, not their fault for percieving a hazard.

That's all very nice in theory but, in the actual real world, if you do a lot of unpredictable braking or other unexpected behaviors, you will basically get hit all the time even if those accidents aren't technically your fault.

Soon people will either adapt and end up following the law, or they will be unable to pay for insurance, because of the amount of claims that they're taking out against it.

I generally not a fan of social darwinism, but in this specific case, I think that something of the sort will have a positive effect. How many people have been injured because the car they were hit by was being forced to go faster, because of tailgaiting?

I agree, legal or not, I very much rely on other drivers "signals" when driving. Over the years you learn to predict what the driver in front of you would do in a normal situation and adjust your driving in advance. I'm still able to break on emergency but when you can clearly see way ahead of the car in front there is no obstacle and yet they still brake it's extremely risky and frustrating. Young drivers here usually mark the car some way to warn you to be super aware of their unexpected behavior, I'd expect self driving cars would to the same.

It means that you would have been surprised if the jogger was making a jump to her left (avoiding hole in her path for example), forcing any driver to hit the brake.

Of course you are correct. However, we don't need to make those incidents more frequent than then already are.

Instead of relying on other drivers' signals, you could instead use them as extra warning, and instead of driving so close to them you're putting yourself and them and potentially others in danger if they brake when you didn't expect, you could back off to a safe distance.

Well, not sure where you read I drive close to anyone. What I'm trying to say is that erratic drivers are dangerous because you learn to predict what a normal driver would do in a typical situation (e.g. jogger too close to the lane => slow down to a safe speed and navigate towards the center).

If a self driving car doesn't reproduce the most common driving style the other drivers should be extra careful around it, some kind of mark on the outside could help.

I wish there were some external visual cue like a light or something to indicate a car is using autopilot. That way you could give them a wider buffer.

Maybe a pulsing red light, moving back and forth horizontally.

when you park it

"by your command"

The problem is that pedestrians on the sidewalk could potentially become an unavoidable obstacle at any time if they walk into traffic. For this reason there can never be a 100 percent safe system until vehicles and pedestrians are physically separated by barriers or separate structures which may happen eventually in some new urban designs.

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