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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Why? There are more reliable means of conveying information. Just because someone figured out they can do this doesn’t mean it is a good idea. The road in front of the driver is an area where the drivers focus should be solely dedicated to being aware of their surroundings. Projecting other symbols only clutters the information that the brain has to process. Status indicators work better in dedicated spaces to reduce cognitive load.

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I could see projecting information that's useful to other drivers and pedestrians.

A rectangle indicating your stopping distance would be useful for cars intending to merge in.

A turn signal that is projected forward would tell people entering a cross-walk "there is a car trying to turn across this, watch out for them and make eye-contact".

A rear-projection rectangle would indicate a car is in reverse and may back up without seeing you.

The problem with all of these, and any other information is that they really only work at night, so...

I partially agree. I think this system is useful, but only for very simple spatial data. Having the car project a line one car length ahead and flashing bars synced with the indicators would be a major improvement over a standard unagumented view; however once you start trying to be fancy with symbols, letters, and numbers I feel any improvement in spatial awareness would be canceled out by the extra cognitive power needed to parse those symbols combined with the extreme clutter created by every other car on the road doing the same thing

Perhaps it should project a yield to pedestrians symbol warning the driver that there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk

Could just broadcast that info to cars around, ADS-B-style, then put it on HUD. Probably pretty hard to make it secure tho

I'd love to see info "the car in front of me will be taking right soon, or exact speed just displayed via HUD on top of the car.

> A rectangle indicating your stopping distance would be useful for cars intending to merge in.

> The problem with all of these, and any other information is that they really only work at night, so...

Nah, the real problem in my experience is people don't care. It's rare for people to even give me half of the distance they should when they merge. The full distance? That would be a miracle. It's hard for me to give the full distance. People just start passing me on my right even when I have my signal on.

I was initially very much against the idea, but this comment kinda put me in a 'maybe not a bad idea' camp. Naturally, the stuff will soon be hacked to project all sorts of other things, but that is, for better or worse, standard human behavior.

Does anyone know why we don't use audio for this sort of thing? Do we? I might have just missed it, not a driver.

I am aware of navigation/GPS of course but I mean for these sort of snippets of road info. The only non-GPS audio info I've heard is the bleeps in some cars that say there's a speed camera coming up.

Car: "40"

Brain: Aight speed limit is 40 now.

Car: "Give way"

Brain: I need to yield at the next junction.

It could even auto-pause if you're applying brakes or indicating / turning the wheel to avoid distracting you.

I know (or at least media has told me) that airplanes do use audio for this sort of info, wondering why it never made it to cars.

E: lol doubt I'll get a response, for some reason this post went from #2 to like #50

Not quite the same thing, but some cars did talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3EuP7vZRSo

>the door…is ajar

Many cars are well-proofed against outside noise (like the Infiniti I used to drive.)

I imagine it using the speakers already inside your car. I'm not sure what you mean sorry.

because no one wants to take liability for an error

That would be one hell of a projection if it is visible to where I'm looking in the road. I'm not looking at the road immediately in front of me. I'm looking well ahead just as taught while learning to drive.

The proper look ahead distance varies based upon speed. When performing low speed maneuvers, a driver will need to look at the area immediately in front of their vehicle.

Projecting map info on the road means the driver has to look at the map screen less, which increases the focus on the road ahead.

Why on earth would you project this onto the actual road instead of just some HUD for the driver?

This whole thing seems like an absolutely insane idea to me from the get-go but the comments in here seem to really like the idea. I can't think of anything worse than light-projection systems from cars onto the real world for almost anything.

The only one I'm onboard with is something more visually indicating that a car is backing up. Plenty of vehicles have audio cues so a visual one makes sense to me.

But ideas that cars should project a warning to pedestrians that a car is going to turn blows my mind. How about you warn the operator that they might kill someone?

Cars already have mandatory lighted equipment to warn that they are going to turn, but too many operators seem to forget how that's supposed to work. I can't imagine how drivers are going to figure out how to communicate more complicated information if they can't remember how to use a little lever.

This isnt for the driver of the projecting vehicle, it is for everyone else around them.

And as many wrecks I have seen involving idiots invading safe stopping distances, this is a good idea, if they could make it work well in daytime.

Yeah a block of light in front of the car which overlaps with the lane merge projection from grandpa who left his blinker on conflicting with someone's navigation projection who needs to be in the right lane yesterday conflicting with someone's broken projection for pedestrians on a stroad sounds like a fucking hellscape.

People can't use blinkers correctly or keep their headlights and tailights in working order. I'm sure expensive light projections that link with software and a onboard computer that was out of date the day it was made is going to work splendidly.

>involving idiots invading safe stopping distances

What makes you think this will stop them?

Do you really think those idiots will pay even the slightest bit of attention to that stuff?

Personally, this looks like it will just add additional visual pollution to an already visually polluted landscape.

Assuming that the vehicle has empty road in front of them, at night, with sufficient contrast.

Many people drive vehicles during the day, on a road with other vehicles, or other competing lighting sources.

What is better is an indication system that works in all conditions, rather than requiring the driver to look different places under different scenarios.

Indicator lamps placed high upon a dashboard work in 100% of driving conditions and also allows the driver to remain looking in the correct direction.

The only thing they lack is marketing gee-whiz favor.

HUDs already exist in cars to do something very similar without potentially confusing symbols that others will see.

But other drivers can see it as well. It could easily draw their attention and thus make them more distracted.

Cars aren’t always alone on rural roads at night like the pics in the article.

Why not use a heads-up display on the windscreen? Some automakers already do this and it should avoid most of the concerns around projecting outside the vehicle.

Use a HUD.

I had a 90s Cadillac that had a FLIR HUD display. It was a little gimmicky but pretty cool and better than polluting the surroundings.

My Subaru has a very basic hud that I don’t think is distracting at all.

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