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Comment by whopa | Hacker News Reader

> they aren't biased by the immaculate freeways and roads in California -- Pittsburgh has a much wider variety of challenging driving situations, weather, and conditions than California so it is a great test bed for developing autonomous vehicles

Careful, don't compare Pittsburgh to an entire state. Pennsylvania doesn't have any real mountains, whereas California does. Google tests their self driving vehicles in the Lake Tahoe area, which in the winter can be much more challenging than anywhere in within 500 miles of Pittsburgh.

Navigating serious grade changes, both uphill and downhill, presents more of a challenge for trucks too, even for humans right now. The only places to really test that in the US are pretty much west of Denver.

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This sounds like someone who has never driven in Tahoe and Pittsburgh. I've done quite a bit in both.

I can tell you that 80 and 50 that head over the sierras are often closed for what would be consider relatively minor snow in Pittsburgh. Sometimes it's not even the road conditions, just lack of visibility (fog or snow). Significant ice is also fairly rare just because of level of maintenance, I suspect somewhat fueled by poor California drivers and ski resorts that push for excessive road maintenance.

On the other hand Pittsburgh gets plenty of snow, plenty of storms, and I can assure you they don't close the highways unless it's a storm of the century so bad that you'll not even be able to find cars let alone drive them. Additionally the Pittsburgh area roads have significant elevation changes, often narrow, and poorly maintained. Take for instance the top 10 steeps roads in the USA. Pittsburgh has #2 and it snows there. SF has #9 and #10, but it rarely snows there. Another puzzling factor is Pittsburgh uses a ton of salt, yet has temperature variations that often lead to snow melting from salt, then refreezing in sheets of ice or "black" ice. I've definitely skidded WAY further in the Pittsburgh on ice than I have have around Tahoe. For a year or so I was crossing 3 7200 foot passes each weekend around Tahoe and in the last 20 years I'm often up around there for various reasons.

Even the average Pittsburgh driver seems to deal with snow MUCH better than the ones I find up around Tahoe area when it snows. Even though the Pittsburgh driver is likely in a 10 year old front wheel drive econobox instead of a newish AWD SUV.

As an SF transplant, my only thoughts after seeing California drivers struggling with the artificial snow and hills at Tahoe were "these people have never been to Pittsburgh."

Also, eastern Pennsylvania has the Appalachian mountains, and last time I checked, they were "real."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Davis_(Pennsylvania) - 3,213 ft - highest point in PA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tejon_Pass - 4,160 ft

Tejon Pass is on I-5 in northern LA County, and it is a huge trucking route. The grade is very steep between the Central Valley and the top of the pass, and is fairly challenging for trucks. There is no equivalent to those conditions in PA.

Also, if your impression of Tahoe is only the heavily touristed parts, your view is incomplete. The mountain roads in the Sierras have no equivalent east of the Mississippi.

looks like someone has never been to Pennsylvania.

Tejon Pass' major difficulty is the grade, and that's about it. PA may not have a highway that matches that grade, but many come close, and there are far more tight curves, typically far worse road conditions, and bad weather season is far more common than in N LA.

My point about Tejon Pass is that it's a steep grade mountain pass with heavy traffic including lots of trucks. There's no equivalent in PA.

Highway trucking will be the first significant deployment of autonomous vehicles. One of the big challenges is Mountain West interstates.

I do agree that the NE US is a proper testbed for bad weather city driving, since no West Coast cities have really that bad winter weather, I'm just objecting to the claim that somehow Pittsburgh captures all the challenging road conditions that autonomous vehicles will encounter.

I'm also thinking of the Virgin River Gorge on I-15 in Southern Utah, which isn't just steep and winding, but also extremely narrow and windy, and yet supports interstate speeds. I don't know of anything similar in the Eastern U.S; upstate NY and Appalachia have plenty of gorges, but most are local roads and aren't the main interstate thoroughfare between them.

Have you ever driven on 70 or 80 through PA? Because "steep grade mountain pass with heavy traffic, including lots of trucks" is an apt description of either route.

Definitely easy for a non-Pittsburgh to equate difficulty with elevation. Which ignores elevation changes, weather, sharp turns, tunnels, and bridges. Also a strange fondness for salt which generally makes things worse. Find a Pittsburgher who thinks driving in Tahoe is hard, even off the beaten path.

Personally I try my best to get as far off the beaten path as I can. Tahoe and surrounding areas is a cake walk compared to Pittsburgh.

Also a Bay Area transplant here, initially from Boston.

I'd agree that Californian snow-driving skills are a joke, and that Tahoe isn't actually that difficult compared to New England winters.

However, there really are terrain types that CA has (and Google tests its self-driving cars on) that just don't exist back east. There's nothing like CA 1 on the east coast, with windy 15mph switchbacks and a sheer several hundred foot drop into the ocean if you miss a curve. Nor do they regularly have to deal with the road being closed because of rockslides, or Tesla drivers who pass you illegally.

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