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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

That’s a very strange way to close a highway.

Where are the blinkenlights? The words? The flashing arrows? The plastic jersey barriers?

The buckets full of sand or water?

The repainted lines directing you to the right?

Can’t tell if this is temporary or long-term closure, but if it’s a multi month thing, I would expect more “Don’t you dare fork to the left” signalling.

Not everyone is a local.

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The section of road shown in the video is the I-5 express lane where it rejoins the regular freeway in North Seattle: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7021836,-122.3299637,3a,71.1... Note how it's configured for southbound traffic in the street view image. It switches direction twice a day.

Though you can't see it very well in the video, there is a crash arresting net after all the signs. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.7034263,-122.3302029,3a,19.3... You can't just drive through a couple of boards and run into oncoming traffic.

I followed back the first link for the opposite direction of travel and didn’t find any signage before the swing-gates. You kinda truck along at 45mph+, sticking to the left to continue and with a small amount of notice time, you need to fork to the right.

I get that a local would know you are to always fork to the right, but someone unfamiliar or a machine could be confused by the initial half barriers, with only a 2 lane wide barrier after the demarcation point. Along with the oddly painted lanes.

But as I said in another post, I guess DOT would have the data on incidents (and hopefully act on it if there’s enough evidence in favour of more safeguards).

There is signage - there are signs to tell you whether the Express Lanes are open or not that are level with the general signage for direction of travel (ie above the road)

It's a lane of traffic that can go either way depending on demand. Common in larger cities in California and Washington.

Why would any of that be relevant?

Because the same things that confuse humans can confuse computers that are largely trained with human data.

Upsetting as it is, it also turns out that different things also confuse the computers. Sometimes unexpectedly and suddenly.

Millions of drivers per year use roads like this in California and Washington. They’re not very confusing for a human driver who’s paying attention.

I’m from Toronto, so I never underestimate drivers’ ability to do stupid like drive into streetcar-only tunnels past the end of the ashphalt, despite ample signage. 26 times.

https://torontolife.com/city/queens-quay-streetcar-tunnel-dr...

How many hundreds of thousands of cars for those 26 to make that mistake?

Now imagine if every Toyota did this instead?

FSD is being touted as a "force multiplier" for safe driving, but it could end up being a force multiplier for deadly mistakes

Few care about the 26 that missed the signs.

It’s the multi-hour shutdown of the city’s 3rd busiest transit route that connects to the continent’s 3rd busiest train station that impacts a lot of people.

I'd like to see the data behind this statement. I highly doubt that the "roads like this" see zero accidents.

Based off of guard rail end cap lawsuits alone, it seems that humans many times get confused even when driving straight on a highway; whether they are paying attention is another question, if it's relevant at all.

Increasingly, cities will be expected to plan roads in a way that would be simpler for autonomous vehicles to bavigate.

And humans.

If two lanes in the default path of highway driving (stay left to continue) are closed half the day, I’d expect some blinking sign overhead saying “two left lanes closed ahead, stay right”.

I guess DOT would have the records of people making the mistake to know if there’s enough value from implementing another signal for what you’ll have to do up ahead.

Dunno if Tesla reads signs or not (or used scanned signs to navigate), but seems like a useful thing for humans that could assist machines.

But maybe I’m just spoiled by my jurisdiction’s electronic signs that say this kind of thing.

Wow. Where I'm currently at they'll put up "left lane closed signs" and you don't know if it's the left lane, the right lane, or neither, that's actually closed until you get there.

The SDC concept vastly underestimates the processing power of wetware. The tendencies to view humans as the bugs and to add rules to make reality more predictable are just excuses to avoid the real issue.

I would think the several reflective construction signs with arrows would be enough. Also there is an impact attenuator (buckets of water). It's also cut too soon to the turn to know whether there was more signs leading up to it.

The only reflective gate that swings into the second lane from the left is after the barrier.

I checked the street view linked above and followed it back: no signs.

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