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Comment by NikolaNovak | Hacker News Reader

I mean... I am "Tesla Hater" in that I don't like the direction they're proceeding in; but every human being I ever met in real actual life does rolling stops under some conditions. Last time I can confidently state that "I never rolled through a stop at very slow speed" is when I was 17, and only NOW do I realize how much of an annoying bum I was :P. So if a car does a rolling stop through a stop sign when there are no other cars obstacles or people, my thought is 1. yes that's a breach of law as written 2. It's what everybody else safely does.

Kind of like in many jurisdictions, police will gently talk to you if you drive 60kph on the freeway, or even if you're doing 90kph in the left lane. Yes it's legal, no it isn't safe.

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It is one thing to note that humans regularly break the law. It is another thing to task people with programing a robot to break that law. I'm very sure that many people break the speed limit regularly. But I would never expect to get away with programing a car to break that limit. No sane person would ever tell an employee or customer that rolling stops are OK, not in writing.

And 5.6mph isn't rolling. That's beyond a walking pace. That's jogging territory. Any cop watching an intersection would ticket this.

I fully support the noble notions and idealistic ideas.

But let's make it real, and let's ask a question about the real world:

Does that mean that expectation is all automated cars will go exactly the speed limit on the left lane of North American superhighways?

If so, those cars will inherently be a danger to life and limb. I don't care about any self-righteous driver who indicates houghtily "I drive speed limit on left lane of American super highway", I've spoken to advanced driver safety instructors, highway police officers and city councilors who all agree those people need to bloody well move it along - it's just not safe.

Yes. For a company to program illegality into a product opens them up to untold liability. Normal car companies program their speedometers to read slightly high (5% ish). This keeps them from being into lawsuits by people who claim that an inaccurate speedometer contributed to the severity of a crash. Any car company who programs a car to drive faster than the limit will be either liable or have to pay lawyers in every crash involving such cars. Even if their car doesn't cause the crash, the fact that it was speeding will contribute to the severity of the accident. It would be like programing a robotic bartender to serve kids who are underage but look old enough to pass for 21. Corporate lunacy.

>Yes. For a company to program illegality into a product opens them up to untold liability.

People have been saying this for years yet Tesla is not being sued into nonexistence. Presumably their contracts are written well enough that if the user tells the car to go above the speed limit that's on them.

Because incidents involving these programs are very small. At the moment there are very few Teslas on the road in comparison to other car companies. There would statistically only be a handful at most of such accidents. But give it a few years until there are 10x or 20x as many teslas on the road. Then the class actions will start. That is if, like here, Tesla hasn't already recalled all such vehicles.

What are your odds and the amount you'd be willing to bet that this is true? There are sums of money and odds that I would be willing to play this at.

There's a difference between the driver setting the cruise control above the speed limit, and a computer unilaterally deciding that it should run a stop sign.

> Does that mean that expectation is all automated cars will go exactly the speed limit on the left lane of North American superhighways?

It’s already against road rules to stay in the passing lane when cars behind wish to pass, regardless of the speed limit, or if you’re already driving at it. If cars behind desire to overtake, give way. This is already codified. No need to blame the cars or the self-driving tech. It’s the human driver who bears responsibility for what the car does or doesn’t do, as are the only ones able to countermand the autopilot. Blaming Tesla for any of that seems like dogpiling and behind the point.

That depends on the jurisdiction. In my state (MA), I can use the left lane while passing other traffic even if there is traffic behind me who wishes to go faster than I am.

I don’t think that is contrary to my point or what I was trying to say. The left lane is for passing cars in the right lane, and for turning left across traffic in cases with no middle turning lane. The left lane is not meant for driving. I don’t think this varies by jurisdiction and may not be a regulation per se, it’s just the norms and rules of the road.

Not in California. Left lane fast, right lane slow isn't the law, and you can pass in whatever lane you'd like.

Studies show that, adjusted for congestion and weather, SF Bay Area drivers have some of the highest accidents per mile in the country.

> Not in California. Left lane fast, right lane slow isn't the law, and you can pass in whatever lane you'd like.

That sounds really unsafe and surely must make driving much more stressful than it needs to be.

Seriously? That feels unpredictable and stressful, whereas I feel driving should be as predictable as possible.

> Does that mean that expectation is all automated cars will go exactly the speed limit on the left lane of North American superhighways?

In the vast majority of states this would also be illegal. If Tesla decides it safe, they should be able to just rewrite the rules, though, right?

> And 5.6mph isn't rolling

Most cars idle at 5 to 6 mph, so any roll through a stop sign is likely to break the 5 mph mark.

> Any cop watching an intersection would ticket this.

Not sure where you live, but this is absolutely not the case where I am. I have only ever once heard of a traffic officer ticketing for this. On the other hand, I see cops watch on as people ignore "no turn on red" signs and let them get away with it pretty much every day. Let alone rolling through an intersection at 5 mph.

I’ve gotten a ticket before for a rolling stop. It happens.

Lol, I live in SF. I've seen two cruisers waiting at a red light watch a car go right through it and do nothing. I'm not complaining or anything, but that guy is defo wrong that cops will ticket anyone.

On a public road I almost always come to a full stop, and if I don't I recognize it as an error. That's the law and there are very good reasons for it. It's an unambiguous standard of performance, for example. Arguments for rolling stops based on personal utility are selfish, IMHO, and arguments pleading utility to others are disingenuous--the rolling stoppers say that it's safer to rolling stop because of the rolling stoppers? Please. Think it through. :-)

(Part of the reason I do it is because as I age I would like to ingrain habits that will make me a safer driver even as my cognitive ability declines.)

Near me there is an intersection where the same cars drive through on a daily basis and where the drivers have habituated themselves to rolling stops. Yes, it's almost always fine. But I have been almost T-boned twice, and was hit once, fortunately with minimal damage. And even though they do not have the right of way, their habit of rolling stops regularly pre-empts the actual rules of the road, and they cut off drivers who have the right of way.

That this is due to the normalization of deviance is abundantly obvious.

One thing that pops up into mind - I wonder if there's a difference between drivers of automatic vs manual gear shifts in propensity for rolling stops.

I don't know. I drive standard. Maybe part of the reason I always stop is because I love a well-executed launch. :-)

When I was a kid and we were living in Vancouver, my mum told me how she did a 'rolling stop' through a stop sign at 4am in the morning with empty streets, and a cop car noticed it and gave her a massive fine. She was in tears because my family wasn't earning much money at the time.

For some reason I still remember this story decades later and always come to a full stop at stop signs, that's how I was taught in driving school and that's how I will always do it. I'm a calm driver and I don't care if people are annoyed by me, I will drive the speed limit and I will not rush anywhere, it's not my problem that someone else needs to speed because they woke up late, safety should be the number one priority when you're operating a vehicle.

Sounds like a ticket to fight as the cop working at 4am would have a hard time showing up to court.

In my area, cops have specific court dates; all their tickets are set to be handled on the same day that's already part of the cop's schedule.

Those are traffic cops working daylight hours who pull over many cars and it makes sense to stack those cases. We have a 4am case with a very high bill. If the officer keeps that shift chances are they are not going to want to show up 9am one day before going back to nights the next.

The cop working at 4am might be working a schedule like 12am-12pm and have their cases handled at 9am one day a month.

Or they switch between night and day shifts, like lots of nurses do.

They’ll make it work.

Overtime is used in some jurisdictions as an incentive to show up in court.

A) Cops don't work such shifts for the weeks/months it takes to get a court date. B) Cops don't normally "show up" in traffic courts. They can often appear via electronic means. C) Cops have great respect for courts. If called, they show up.

D) If your only defense is the faint hope that the cop doesn't show, the judge is going to rain hellfire on you for wasting everyone's time. Court costs. Amended tickets. Contempt. Unless you are about to lose your license, you don't want to roll that dice. If you go to court to fight a traffic ticket you better have an actual defense.

I’ve shown up to contest all but one traffic ticket I’ve ever received*. It’s up to the state to prove what I’m being accused of; I am not required to admit to it or passively pay the fine without appearing if I choose.

I’ve won many (outright or gotten reductions to non-moving violations) and lost some, but I’ve never had a judge “rain hellfire on [me]” or anything even remotely similar to that, even in cases where I pled “not guilty”, listened to the state’s case, and presented no argument in my defense.

* I got a camera ticket in Switzerland on a business trip that I did just pay rather than traveling back to appear and undoubtedly lose.

In this case you should go and ask the judge for a smaller ticket regardless. Getting a ticket so large that we are talking about it on hn 40 years later? Go to court.

That's a very odd reason to contest a fine. Clearly it was justified.

It may not have been. Can the case be made, is there proof, will anyone show up? Contesting a fine takes time but the judge can reduce the amount if it was unusually high.

enlyth's mother did say she rolled the stop sign, so unless she's lying, it's clearly a justified fine.

I wouldn't hesitate to break traffic rules at 4 o'clock in the morning if there was zero risk of harm - especially while bicycling I'm very flexible, but I also wouldn't complain if I got fined breaking the law. The law must be upheld even at night.

I wonder if that might be a function of how roads near you are designed. I live in the Bay Area and there are definitely certain roads and intersections where I don't feel safe not coming to a full stop and looking both ways. It might be because of hills or that the other direction has no stop sign, etc. Maybe where you live roads have better visibility but at least in my experience in my part of the Bay Area, I often find myself needing to be very careful at some stop signs and has consequently been doing complete stops.

Some people have never seen sidewalks, tall hedges, or kids riding bikes on said sidewalks blocked by said tall hedges, because they don't exist in modern suburbia, particularly in certain climates.

> Yes it's legal

IDK about the US, but in France the speed limit is a target speed; if conditions are good (weather, visibility, traffic) you're supposed to drive at or near maximum speed. It's illegal to drive too slow, and there's a specific fine for this.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... [in French]

The law that you linked says that drivers aren't allowed to drive at an unreasonably slow speed, and defines that to be (for highways, with good weather, and just on the leftmost lane) 80 km/h.

It doesn't say that the speed limit is a target, or that you're supposed to drive at or near it.

Yes, but it's how we're taught at driving school. I think it's written down somewhere but can't find it at the moment, so the article I linked to is the closest I could find.

> ...but it's how we're taught at driving school.

It doesn't matter. People have all kinds of things they are taught about driving from their parents, instructors, and even official documents that don't carry legal weight (e.g., a highway patrol website).

Even when these types of ideas are good ideas, they aren't binding and you can't count on others to follow those rules. The only true rules of the road are the subset of the laws that are enforced; where enforcement might be done by law enforcement officers, civil judges, or insurance company adjudication processes.

In Australia (I left 15 years ago) it was stated that you were required to drive at the _maximum_ speed that met the conditions:

- not exceeding posted speed limit

- appropriate for environmental conditions

- your ability to safely control the vehicle

And failure to do so could be fined.

Any idea how that worked out in practice?

Anyone can claim their ability to safely control the vehicle would have been impaired at $cited_speed + 1 km/h.

This is incorrect (which is lucky, because it would both be extremely unreasonable and impossible to enforce). You can only be fined if you are driving so slowly that you are causing an obstruction.

Citations:

NRMA: https://www.mynrma.com.au/cars-and-driving/driver-training-a...

Australian road rules: http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/sa/consol_reg/arr210/s12... -- key paragraph: "a driver does not unreasonably obstruct the path of another driver or a pedestrian only because [...] (b) the driver is driving more slowly than other vehicles (unless the driver is driving abnormally slowly in the circumstances)." (Note that these rules form guidance for the States, so there will be per-state differences -- see below)

Western Australia is the only state which explicitly defines "too slowly", it's 20km/h below the limit, and it only applies to freeways. https://www.whichcar.com.au/car-advice/is-driving-slow-illeg...

In the US it’s legally a max. I have seen — although rarely — entire lines of cars pulled over and ticketed for speeding on an interstate (limited access, multilane divided highway, max speed 65-70 mph (104-112 kph)) Driving too fast for conditions, is a different fine, so if it’s foggy and you’re going the posted limit, you could also get fined.

You can get ticketed for driving too slow, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve only seen a minimum speed posted on an interstate (45 mph (72 mph)), but conceivably you can get ticked anywhere for impeding the flow of traffic.

> You can get ticketed for driving too slow, but I’ve never seen it.

I have (very gently) forced a car off the road once in Germany with the police on 112, a very elderly gentleman was doing 30 Kph on the autobahn and caused one near miss after another. Police came and helped him to get home, we talked for a while and it turned out that it was his first trip in a long time to go and see his sister in another town, he'd gotten lost and was frightened out of his wits by all the traffic zooming by.

I don't know how it ended, he probably kept his license because clearly there was no officer around to witness the event but I'm pretty sure he avoided the autobahn after that.

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