Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

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> Try driving a combine harvester or an agricultural tractor pulling a long train of equipment.

Those are not typically driving on roads though. The seated position next to the center line means you don't have to pull as far into the other lane to see oncoming traffic.

Semis pass too.

WRT mirrors: no matter the high tech solution, having a manual backup is a prudent precaution. A mirror is harder to take out with a single splash of mud. It will also ease the transition between driving normal rigs to driving the Tesla rigs. Drivers working within their comfort zone is important when they're running for 10 hours at a time.

[EDIT] Wrote this before reading the article; frankly, the author does a much better job explaining why so many mirrors are a bonus (it's not just behind the truck that matters), and covers the central seating explanation much better. Short of being a trucker, I'm not sure how we can contradict his comments.

> A mirror is harder to take out with a single splash of mud.

Never mind mud, what about the ice? I drove trucks for a while and the entire front of my truck was routinely coated with snow, slush, and ice. If it was heavy enough I'd have to pull over and tap at it with a 'tire thumper' to knock huge chunks off periodically. Keeping the windshield clear was a constant battle. I wonder what kind of camera or sensor could be used that wouldn't ice up. Traditional mirrors have heating and most are enclosed in a front-facing housing. They get really hard to see out of too, because the salt and sand spray kicked up by the vehicle in front of you sticks to the heated glass of the mirror and collects there. Visibility in winter driving is a difficult problem but perhaps that can be improved.

I'd expect cameras to be easier to keep clear in extreme circumstances, actually. The key is the "clear view screen" [1], a circular window on bearings that spins rapidly to throw off obstructions. You can also heat them to deal with icing. I don't think that I've ever seen a mirror outfitted with one, but cameras are small enough to make them trivially fittable, and the units themselves I'd expect to be surprisingly cheap - armored ten-inch units for CNC enclosures are ~USD1300 even at low volume [2]. I could easily see a configuration that has four or five important cameras covered by spinners and placed so ice can't bridge the panel.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen [2] http://visiport.com/pdf/VPO-DEU_Unit-Pricing_PL1601.pdf

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