Hacker News Reader

Comment by snrji | Hacker News Reader

> Waymo cars reportedly have problems turning left, a flaw the Information calls “the Zoolander problem”: local residents reported waiting behind Waymo cars for minutes at a time as the algorithm hesitates to turn into traffic.

UPS drivers are told not to turn left for a reason. Couldn't Waymo do the same?

View on HN

I think that only works for UPS because everyone else is turning left. But imagine a world where no car will turn left. I wonder if traffic would flow better or not.

I suspect not, because if that were the case, cities would outlaw left turns, and as far as I know, no city has done that.

Fair enough.

There is a difference between individual behavior and the law.

Imagine a world where no person drinks alcohol. I wonder if it would be more peaceful.

I suspect yes. Even though outlawing alcohol is not a solution that would lead to this world.

The issue is that "avoid left turns if possible" adds extra mileage and extra traffic on those streets that are used for a set of right turns; plus it's a SHOULD, not a MUST [RFC2119] - sometimes the right-turn detour would be just too long. UPS has a slight advantage here as it has a set of points to visit, not necessarily in a given order - more routing options, as compared to an A-to-B route.

> But imagine a world where no car will turn left. I wonder if traffic would flow better or not.

We have a ton of roundabouts in Europe and if you ignore the merge into the roundabout, it transforms any turn into a right turn.

I'm a huge fan of roundabouts, and wish we had more (or any) of them here in the states. But barring redoing the pavement at every intersection, that's not a very viable plan here. :)

They come in various sizes. In some extreme cases the circle is completely inside the crossing of the roads and doesn't even require any change to the existing roads. Like here: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8481471,-0.6336833,3a,75y,18...

If you can't turn left, it's the end of NASCAR! ;)

It should. Sometimes I choose to do the same thing if the line of cars gets too long behind me and I don't want to waste their time. Waiting when a human would have turned left should count as a disengagement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com