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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> limited-access divided highways with no stoplights, roundabouts, or other traffic control systems

Yeah I don't understand where exactly this would be usable, at least around where I live. If it's a divided highway, it would have to have stoplights. Are there places where divided highways have stop signs?

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My guess is that it's intended to be used in the entire State of Connecticut, between the hours of 8AM and 10AM and 4PM and 6PM. i.e. situations where the highway is doing its best impression of a Dunkin' Drive-Thru.

Signed, slightly-jaded person who drives the Boston<>NYC track enough to be slightly-jaded.

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Or, Wareham -> Barnstable on Cape Cod, on any weekend morning for 6 months out of the year. Or 101 in the CA Bay Area during rush hour.

Basically, any time+place where the the thought of driving elicits an audible moan from the people then and there.

It's intended for use on interstates and highways during stop and go traffic jams.

So it's basically adaptive cruise control with lane keeping? I guess they don't have to worry about turns that are too sharp (which an be troubling for lane-keep systems) because they're limiting it to freeways that are meant to be driven at 70 MPH, but only when the speed of traffic is half that.

They are also trying to convince regulators that they, not you, are legally responsible for any incidents. As long as you are ready to take over with a ten second warning.

Limited-access divided highway in this context means freeways and toll roads with walls to roadsides. It is generally considered acceptable to operate dangerous robot machines in a fenced off areas with enough precautions, and that isn't much different in philosophy to a self driving car on such a highway.

> Yeah I don't understand where exactly this would be usable, at least around where I live.

German autobahn.

< 37 MPH?

Stop and go is an all too common thing on the Autobahn, often during rush hour in areas near large cities.

If you are thinking of places like Hamburg then the terms and conditions forbid it because the motorways in the Hamburg area are all construction zones and have been for at least the last five years that I have driven through them.

A limited-access divided highway does not have stoplights or stop signs, or any intersections at all. Cars enter and exit the roadway exclusively via on- or off-ramps.

A stop sign is a traffic control system, FWIW. They're saying a freeway, more or less, although the low top speed means really a freeway during congestion.

I've been on many rural roads with divided county highways with stop signs.

And as others have mentioned it's still a traffic control device.

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