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Comment by binarnosp | Hacker News Reader

+1, Instead of developing super smarts autopilots we could just instrument the highways so they can tell the car where to go. The instrumented roads could send out warnings and give control back to the driver when there are roadworks ahead.

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That would require a massive infrastructure investment. And seeing as we can't seem to even get a good chunk of roads to even be in good repair, I don't have high expectations for the possibility of instrumented roads.

So be it. We already have extreme amounts of signage for traditional drivers, it's time we stop treating autonomous cars like second rate vehicles and start providing detailed surveys of roadway boundaries and all of the signage that drivers rely on to autonomous vehicles in a manner suited to them instead of a human.

You say that it would take a massive investment but realistically existing signage, reflectors, and road markings probably cost more than the equivalent for an autonomous vehicle would.

No more massive than it takes to maintain these roads to begin with.

If we were willing to do that, we could have had self-driving cars decades ago. They were showing off systems with magnetic lane markers on the Discovery Channel when I was a kid.

The exciting thing about self-driving cars this time was that they worked on existing roads, making them financially feasible.

GM is driving around with LIDAR to create very precise maps of specific highways and their cars use those detailed maps to navigate.

And what happens when the lanes are shifted for road construction? Killing a driver is bad enough, killing an innocent construction worker would be marginally worse.

Those maps will get outdated with construction, etc.

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