Rail Crossing Warnings Are Sought for Mapping Apps | Hacker News Reader

Rail Crossing Warnings Are Sought for Mapping Apps

nytimes.com

24 pointsdankohn129 comments

I think we need to ensure people pay attention, instead of adding even more information to these systems.

Sure, we could add warnings for potentially dangerous railroad crossings (e.g. those that do not have a signal installation), and other dangerous places, but how to ensure that people do not rely even more on their systems and after a crash argue that their system did not warn them of this particular situation?

I know a street segment that is constantly blocked by trucks which blindly followed the GPS to a bridge they can't pass and turning around is almost impossible, although multiple signs warned them. Now and then a truck takes down the roof of the bridge, although a HUGE sign says it will be too low. Before the prevalence of the GPS, this almost never happened AFAIK, and the drivers always blame the GPS.

What about people driving off cliffs, into lakes, or as stated in the article, along blocked streets. If a guy puts up a sign that this street is closed, it is closed and you need to follow, no matter what your GPS tells you. The sign or any legal representative is the normative authority and you must obey - the GPS is merely assisting you.

Drivers need to pay attention - and they might have to learn to do it despite having an assisting device giving them directions.

I would be surprised if there was any link between bridge collisions and GPS, other than the fact that they now have something external to blame for the error.

I certainly remember multiple accidents, both in the news and happening to people I know, and seeing damage done to local bridges before GPS was common.

I think we are talking about different things.

What I meant: Truck drivers are driving down a 3 km long street, where it is clearly stated that they are not allowed to go and at then end of that street is very old, wooden bridge with a roof. Almost never trucks went down there until a few years ago, the roof had not been repaired in ages.

Since the prevalence of GPS that street is regularly blocked by trucks stuck at a dead end. The roof was taken down around a year ago by a large truck ignoring at least 5 signs he is supposed to look out for (multiple max weight, max height, etc.).

There probably should be some more sanity checks for GPS, since drivers even pre-smartphone era were horribly inattentive, and there is no more perfect example than the 11'8" bridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11_foot_8_Bridge

There are numerous compilation videos on youtube [1] about this bridge from a local, and it's not a matter of people following the GPS blindly each time, it's just inattentive drivers who don't pay attention to what is in their immediate vicinity. Watch the video linked and see how many warnings and alerts have been made for the bridge, and how often people keep skinning off the tops of trucks and RVs on it. It has a sensor to warn drivers in advance if their vehicle is too tall, signs everywhere, and I imagine there must be a fair amount of debris from the numerous accidents it has.

It's not just a matter of technology leading people astray, it is people not really being aware of their surroundings period. The warning from a GPS map might be nice and help, but I personally have a hard time believing that they'll pay attention to that any more than they would the multiple warnings in real life.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzkWTcDZFH0

The flip side of that is that if you ask your GPS to provide you a route and it sends you somewhere that you can't pass then chances are that a shorter route was available if the GPS had known that you couldn't go there, so that information is useful to have in the system (for rail crossings you might have a point, but the max height on a particular segment of a route is useful even assuming people do pay attention once they arrive at the problematic part of the route).

This is the crossing in question. https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B011'49.6%22N+119%C2...

I don't think it was a situation where the driver couldn't get past the crossing. I think they are saying he parked his truck across the rails when it broke down. Had the GPS warned him, "hey this is a railroad crossing" he might not have chosen that spot.

IMHO, that's a stretch. If you are too out of your wits to notice a railroad crossing - you shouldn't be driving at all.

  I think they are saying he parked his truck across the rails when it broke down

The article isn't really clear on the events, but I'm interpreting it a different way.

  "he would have been less likely to misinterpret the visual cues and mistakenly turn onto the railroad tracks"

It sounds like he was driving along the main road, when the GPS instructed him something like "turn left", and displayed a junction with a 90º left turn: he turned left 10 yards too early, onto the railway track, rather than 10 yards later, onto the road running alongside.

  He had abandoned it on the tracks with the headlights and hazard lights on and the driver’s door open.

It suggests that rather than breaking down, once on the tracks, he was stuck (maybe "beached" on the rails), and couldn't get the truck off the track.

"Drivers" = "the car itself" in the next few years. A self-driving car is only as good as the data it has to make the decisions.

Yes, and I am not aware of a system that does not include road signs and further an (abstract) model of the surrounding world into that data.

I think considering to rely on a external model (e.g. from an online database) _only_ is close to building suicide machines. At least for the coming years.

And also, I think this is a far fetched argument related to OP.

> I think we need to ensure people pay attention, instead of adding even more information to these systems.

How do we ensure drivers pay attention?

to me, the very fact that I can die if I don't pay attention to what I am doing (and others around) me, I can get into an accident. We are driving these powerful machines that can do a lot of damage.

Its enough to keep me aware. I use the GPS, but I don't trust on it blindly and no one should. IMHO.

[First time commenter] I cannot thoroughly express the rage this kind of writing provokes into me. «He came upon the rail crossing before sunrise, having not slept substantively in more than 24 hours [during which he drove 350 miles], the safety board’s report said.» The guy did something very wrong: what the hell do mapping apps have to do with this crash?

I fear for the generation of drivers who never learned how to navigate without some App or GPS. By using voice announced turn-by-turn directions, you loose a certain amount of situational awareness, this situational awareness is critical to preventing all sorts of troubles while on the road.

I have found that when I use a GPS navigation device, it is only a secondary reference that I rarely look directly at. I also disable all audio output.

I find them very useful for navigating through an unfamiliar area, but I mostly see the screen in my peripheral vision because I'm paying more attention to the road and signs, etc. I can see when a turn is coming up because the brightly colored line indicating my path on the screen bends, and I complete the turn having never looked directly at the device. I do look at it occasionally when going straight to have a sense of the next road name, distance until next turn, etc.

Try this if you haven't already, because I found looking at the device too often was disorienting (especially in traffic circles or complex intersections) because the display lags slightly behind your actual position.

You are absolutely right about situational awareness though. That's always top priority and any device that interferes with it should be disabled or repositioned in your field of vision.

Yeah, I guess I am old, too. If I have to drive somewhere unfamiliar, I look it up and figure out how I'm going to get there before I leave the house. And this doesn't really happen that often; 98 percent of the places I drive to, I know how to get there.

I have many friends who cant even find their own house without GPS. It's somewhat disturbing

Agree. Too many people are concerned with not missing their turn, and they will take extraordinary measures not to do so. If one misses a turn, too bad. Re-route. The number one concern of a driver on the road should not be getting to their destination - it should be operating the vehicle in a safe manner.

> Too many people are concerned with not missing their turn

This is not a new problem.

Which is odd, because one of my primary uses of GPS is simply so that when I do miss my turn, it doesn't matter ("Rerouting..."). It's when I'm relying on memory or a paper map that missing a turn becomes an issue. I'll cross four lanes of traffic to make that turn because I don't have a readily-accessible Plan B.

It seems that more and more, people just ignore everything in transit to make that turn. Even if it means crossing a 4 lane road to turn left or right in less than 30m..

The article says the truck got stuck on the railway - the same could have happened if the driver knew the route too, so I don't really understand why mapping apps are too blame. Here in the U.K. most (all?) at-grade crossings have lights, barriers, but most importantly an emergency telephone so you can contact the signal operator in situations such as this.

Most. Still a reasonable number of open crossings either in rural areas or for private use (e.g. between two fields of a particular farm). Lots of accidents at the open ones, too - Google the Rail Accident Investigation Branch if you want to read the post-accident investigation reports...

The mapping app can have an option to call the nearest signal operator. (And hopefully you won't have to wait for an ad to download first like I do to check voicemail.)

I think there are 2 sides to this...

1) Its ridiculous... the gps is a guide, not a dictator, and you're still responsible for where you put your vehicle. If the guy was reading a map, he'd have had the same problem.

However, 2) With autonomous vehicles coming, potential places for a vehicle to get stuck should be on the maps...

Whatever happened to simply teaching people what a level crossing looks like and not to stop on it?

Edit: Oh right I forgot self driving cars

I just wish that mapping apps had information about traffic lights—"turn left in 2.3 miles" is much less useful than "turn left at the third light".

Rail crossings often have gates across the paved road but never across the rail road. Why not put a wooden breakaway gate across the rail road as a visual barrier to warn drivers not to try to drive on the rails? If it failed in the down position the train could still safely drive through it at any speed.

Interestingly I would have considered the "driver attempt to take car on rails" an uncommon occurrence but just yesterday someone posted a video on the Palo Alto FB page of a Prius turning onto the tracks, then (luckily) backing out and proceeding, to take the actual right turn they thought they were making. Yikes!

More importantly, our self driving cars need this data.

I think the convergence of drivers getting worse and self driving systems getting better is going to make this happen very soon.

Instead of warnings, can I get the apps to please know where the crossings are and just avoid them if it doesn't cost too much time penalty?

(E.G. if there is a bridge near by that was built to avoid that issue, send me to it)

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