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Comment by amluto | Hacker News Reader

From that article:

> Also snow seems to be solvable, as there will probably similar patterns that the sensors get in their signals.

Real snow is not just a software problem. Fancy rear facing sensors near bumper? I hope they function through a couple inches of frozen muddy spray. Front windshield? Sometimes needs scraping. Lidar on roof? Does it work through the big heap of snow on it?

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I have a hunch that as cars get more sophisticated, they also need to have more sophisticated treatment. The reason I leave my car out to have a foot of snow on it is because it works anyway. If the car wouldn't actually work without the windscreen clear and sensors ice-free, I would either use a garage every night or have a less sophisticated car. And I suspect that once autonomous vehicles get good enough, people will actually want to ride in them - so will keep them indoors more than they do with their normal cars. Effctively then, the rugged cars have become machines we treat like fragile fighter jets.

Still, for a wide range of weather conditions the autonomous car will just say a big NOPE and refuse to drive anywhere. Which is why it must always have manual controls. The autonomous car that could take me to the city through the worse conditions I experience every winter, won't have to take me in it because that car is probably clever enough to do my job as a software developer too.

There's real irony in this statement, when the people who develop the technology and commend home garaging are also the garage-free, commute-free kind type of people who vehemently tear down the idea of a suburban home/garage setup.

But I guess when it's your product; you change your mind.

*This is not an attack to alkonaut.

Can confirm proximity sensors don't work well on most cars when even a bit of road haze develops on them.

Though I'm sure SV's real solution to this is to have perfect weather (ie. "can't reproduce; closing bug").

As it is now, sometimes ice needs to be scraped off the windshield before you can drive. It may be the same with the cars external sensors.

Also mud spray and other road debris covering sensors can be solved with hardware (wipers, sprayers etc.) so it's probably not at the top of Waymo's long list of difficulties.

Until I see self-driving cars driving in a Montreal blizzard aftermath navigating the various streets, they can't handle snow.

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