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Comment by Timucin | Hacker News Reader

I read that as “let’s cut corners instead of building/improving roads”.

What sort of road building / improving did you have in mind?

We’re talking about city centre slow (<12mph) driving, I’m really not sure what road improvements could improve safety of silent cars?

My bad. I completely missed the point and thought they would make them noisy in general.

I wonder how they will solve the noise problem if it’s just slow moving traffic.

Probably a lot can be done to help safety without adding noise. Maybe something as simple as warning signs for silent cars can help.

So the road should create the sounds? or have some lights or other SciFi or software+hardware combination when a simple solution is possible.

I think roads should emit high energy lasers to prevent pedestrians to step on the road if the area is not designed to cross the road. :)

Kidding. I was thinking like adding more guidance for pedestrians and prevent them jumping on the road with pre-cautions but guess I missed the point since the news says when they are under 12 mph and reversing.

Although I have encountered quite a lot of "lazy" pedestrians who just cross the street immediately instead of waiting a few seconds for the car ('the car' means there is only a single one) to pass, I don't think that this is causing the majority of collisions. More likely someone took a right or left turn and didn't see the pedestrian because the drivers have to pay attention to multiple things at the same time.

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