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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

This (video) is another instance where the lanes split apart but the part in the middle has absolutely no markings to indicate that you shouldn't drive there.

This (photograph) is what it should look like: http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea81...

Is this (bad line painting) common in the US?

Edit: on a second viewing, I think it actually does have some chevrons, but they're very faint.

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It's pretty common to have poorly painted roads. There are definitely some roads in my area where the lane lines are no longer discernable at all if it's raining. (Newer roads have embedded reflectors.) If self-driving cars are going to survive, they need to be able to deal with the environment we have, not the utopia where all the road lines stay well painted. ;)

moreover even perfectly painted lines are invisible under a thin coat of snow.

UK roads are some of the safest in the world. US roads are an outlier amongst developed countries and sit with the 3rd World when it comes to road safety.

Yes they are very faint.

I think in rainy conditions humans might also be fooled by it.

Without prior experience, and without a stream of other vehicles to follow, I likely would. I hate slowly forking motorways with a passion.

Do any of the self-driving setups have a weighting for "follow the stream" that comes in when the road markings are crappy, I wonder?

This was in chicago. If it was daylight out right now I would send you a picture of how visible the lines are. (Often times they're not there.)

Forget the paint, how does the radar miss this??

AFAIK The radar is tuned to explicitly ignore non-moving objects because it has to be able to ignore overhead road signs and other such stuff[1]. It is more tuned to changes in speed of the vehicles in front of the car.

[1]: https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...

Tesla was working with their supplier (Bosch?) to get the radar to work as a six-field array, providing more resolution than “the nearest return is 100m away”. The discussion at the time was tht higher resolution radar would remove the last advantages that lidar supposedly has over cameras.

There is a solid white line. It's forbidden to cross a solid while line on the freeway.

What does a solid white line mean to you (in your country)?

The linked video is a different story, but the image you linked makes it quite clear not to drive there.

It's not universally the case that a white line may not be crossed. In Arizona, for example, carpool/HOV lanes have a solid white line that may be crossed at any time.

In Britain, the solid white line would have red reflectors, and it's very unlikely to be so worn out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ysBB-LI6YEc

The photo is a good example of how the lines should be painted. The video shows a well painted line on the left of the “v” but the chevrons and right side line are exceptionally faded. If I was to guess the extreme contrast probably contributed.

I didn't see the car cross a solid white line in the video that this thread is about.

The image I linked is showing what it should look like. I agree the image I linked is perfectly clear.

Its there but its faded.

Ah, I misunderstood you. I thought you linked to another example of a failure situation because you wrote "this is another instance".

Just realised I used the word "this" 3 different times to mean 3 different things :). I've disambiguated this now.

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