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Comment by jhoelzel | Hacker News Reader

I was recently driving a VW ID4 and I loved it.

It only has lane assist and distronic but its very well implemented and especially in heavy traffic its a godsent.

Basically it simply follows the car in front of you but even that is super relaxing, especially in morning taffic. In any major city rush hour traffic is always fun, but this makes it at least somewhat enjoyable.

We have come a long way with assisted driving and as a german I very much enjoy that because it means that I can still "become one with my machine" ;)

This is a clear step up and I believe that the future will lay in smart roads, even if its just a lane maker that your car can rely on.

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I agree with the roads. Why adapt computers to a legacy program when you can just add simple markers or computer read information to it instead?

Because smart roads are a massive coordination problem. Counties and states already can't afford to do maintenance on the existing dumb roads. Many of those roads will see no maintenance or upgrades for the next decade. Even if we had the standards, widespread government support, and commoditized tech to do this today, it'd still be decades away at the earliest. Everyone is targeting rollouts in major cities a lot sooner than that.

A few reflectors aren’t going to go over budget more than the crap they do. You can pork barrel it since it won’t be that much more. Roads are often updated if there’s any sort of traffic on it by design since construction is a racket.

A few retroreflectors is not even scratching the surface of the issue. Most local governments don't even have accurate maps of their own road infrastructure, let alone correct infrastructure. They already can't afford to maintain what's already built, much less take on significant additional maintenance. Humans are able to cope with these issues most of the time, but for machines you'd end up needing to build nearly the same autonomous capabilities you'd require without smart roads.

Stop signs are notorious hard to detect. They could make them easier to detect.

I'm not sure where you heard that. Stop signs are one of the more highly recognizable signs in my experience. They can be obscured, rotated, be used in commercial signage or otherwise distorted, but these aren't things that would be helped by a different design.

Geohot who made comma.ai mentioned this but I may be paraphrasing it differently. He said stopping at stop signs is very hard. https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/07/comma-ai-launches-comma-t...

that is true but imagine that car makers would agree on a standard for one second (i know it will most likely never happen) but at that point they can actually donate those to make the streets work wherever they want to.

This also totally does not solve the problem of object detection of the car but its another assist. Like you yourself are driving too: with context.

I (the car) am on a redisdential road, my speed is automatically limited and am in "high awareness" mode.

I (the car) am on the autobahn, I opt my sensors for distance. "ping" oh i will enter a construction site in 1km, i better notify my driver that this could get ugly and that he should be able to take over any second now.

No, they’d chose the easiest and cheapest standard. Volvo gave away their seat belt patent, there is no agreed standardization. Yet they all have it.

Also a political and arguably civil liberties problem, as far as how cyclists, dumb cars, etc could be potentially excluded from some or many roads.

Aren't a lot of vehicles already not supposed to be on highways?

I recently drove an ID3 and it was impressive, but it had a very different effect on me. I suddenly realised that I'm an able bodied person using an electric wheelchair. It made me seriously question what I was doing. Why am I, a person perfectly capable of locomotion, relying on a monstrously large, unsustainable vehicle for everyday travel?

> Basically it simply follows the car in front of you

What if the car in front of you heads off on a route you didn't want to take?

I think it only uses the car in front for speed corrections. It will stay in the lane it's in.

then it leaves the lane markings and that would cause my car to at least ping me.

we are not talking about self driving here at all, but more like a "i am aware that you exist and adapt accordingly". There is an old person going 30 in a 50 zone? ok I will slow down and drive with the correct distance to him. He is speeding up? nice i will follow his lead to the maximum speed limit that is set.

When going from a 50 to a 30 the car also reduduces the speed to 30 and when you to to a 50 zone again it will speed up

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