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Comment by jayd16 | Hacker News Reader

This is an honest question here but why is the pile up so bad if driving conditions were ideal? The next 6 drivers were not keeping a safe distance or paying attention?

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Have you watched the video? Its freeway speeds, a decently busy freeway, at a tunnel entrance that’s curving. Plus the car switched to the passing lane and abruptly stopped.

This wasn’t going straight on a highway stopping in the same lane the driver was already in.

I can understand how the conditions probably made it worse.

> Have you watched the video? Its freeway speeds, a decently busy freeway, at a tunnel entrench that’s curving. Plus the car switched to the passing lane and abruptly stopped.

The Tesla car switching and abruptly stopping was a big problem, and I can understand that first car having trouble, but for cars behind the first one they should ideally all be keeping a distance ready for suddenly hitting the brakes in an emergency. I find at least in Australia a decent number of drivers do not keep an adequate distance from the car in front for emergency braking.

Even the recommended 2 second following distance is insufficient when the vehicle in front of you comes to an immediate halt and there’s no room to switch lanes.

The recommended following distance is "Never get closer than the overall stopping distance." [1], so even if the car in front somehow went from 70mph to 0 instantly, you should be able to stop.

[1]: https://assets.highwaysengland.co.uk/stay+safe+stay+back/HE_...

Expecting people to follow that far is like expecting people to read every TOS.

Dude, we’re talking about explaining away a Tesla failure here.

Pedantic analysis of DMV regulations is absolutely essential. Clearly any dolt practicing defensive driving would anticipate the self driving car cutting him off and hard braking.

Stories like this make people think that full self driving is actually a car the drives itself fully. The car is safer than any human and by critically thinking about this we are preventing sales and essentially killing people, since Tesla has fewer deaths per mile travelled.

> Clearly any dolt practicing defensive driving would anticipate the self driving car cutting him off and hard braking.

Not sure if you are being serious. How can you tell whether a car is driving autonomously? Expect it from any Tesla?

I haven't consciously ever seen a car driving itself. And I like to think of myself being pretty defensive as a driver. I'm not even sure if the feature is available in Australia.

Of course I’m not being serious.

But if there was a video of a Tesla doing anything, the fandom of Tesla is such that defenders would appear.

> Pedantic analysis of DMV regulations is absolutely essential.

If you think following the most basic driving safety rule is 'pedantic', please don't drive.

> Clearly any dolt practicing defensive driving would anticipate the self driving car cutting him off and hard braking.

The Tesla was 100% at fault, nothing can be done when you get cut off like that. But that's not the case for every single car behind them that failed to stop in time.

> Stories like this make people think that full self driving is actually a car the drives itself fully.

In my opinion Tesla has been criminally misleading with their avertising. The level of gaslighting they've been able to get away with is unbelievable.

That doesn't reassign fault. It maybe adds more people to the "at fault" group.

The difference is that not reading the TOS will not kill you.

It's also not just some arbitrary rule, it's a fundamental principle based on the rules of physics.

That is not possible. I know it is impossible, because I am trying. What will happen when you have that distance is that someone will change lanes to what he perceives as huge space between cars. And they will get very close to you initially.

The recommended distance is not 2 seconds at highway speeds. 2s is a rule of thumb for <35 mph; for 50mph, it's somewhere around 4s.

But, in any case, it is your obligation to leave as much space as it takes for you to stop your car before it hits the car in front, taking in consideration the speed of both vehicles before braking and the condition of the road. The rule of thumb is there for you as a baseline; blindly following it does not automatically mean that you're in the right if an accident results.

In the police report, out of the 8 cars, only 3 cars were noted to have been driving unsafe for the stopped traffic ahead. The rest of the cars were propelled into the car in front by the car behind them hitting them.

That makes a lot of sense. Doesn’t matter how careful I am if the person behind me only gave themselves 10 feet to react and stop.

Somewhat counter intuitively, and to great frustration of the person behind. The safe thing to do when someone is tailgating is to give more space in front of you so that you can brake more softly giving them more time to react.

Or pull over and let them pass, as people often use tailgating to attempt to indicate the car in front is too slow.

Edit: (tailgating = follow too closely)

I used to think the bumper stickers that said "the closer you get, the slower I go" were purely out of spite, but yeah, as it turns out they can be both for spite as well as for sound safety reasons.

That isn't the passing lane as its a bridge (not just a highway) and the left most lane before that area is an exit, so not guaranteed to be the "fast" lane.

its very difficult for cars behind to judge the level of braking. in a Freeway everyone assumes to break enough for a slowdown and not full stop. In Italian Highways there is a very practical custom. the cars that see a full stop not only break but signal full stop to behind cars so they know to fully break an not only slowdown

This is hardly the "passing lane," it's just following a left lane exit onto treasure island. the entire bridge is a splits into three different freeways when it touches down in Oakland. You pass in whatever lane is moving fastest.

The tunnel is not curved. it's straight.

Cars are traveling at 'freeway speeds' in the video, but they are breaking the law. The Bay Bridge is signed for 50 MPH. This issue is endemic. When I lived in the Bay area, I'd set cruise control to 60MPH on the Bay Bridge, and would be practically run off the road by traffic speeding by.

I think it’s mostly caused by the folks making abrupt lane changes as the Tesla slows down. You can see people start to swerve into other lanes instead of just slowing down (they are looking in their side mirrors to avoid the slow car and sometimes even accelerate). I’ve had this happen where you are cruising at a speed and the person in front of you serves to avoid a slow car and now you lose all of the time to react by changing lanes as well

I’d even wager if that pickup hadn’t swerved and everyone just slowed down it wouldn’t have piled up

Side tangent, I love watching car crash videos. Really interesting to see how the system breaks down and people make mistakes. I spend hours on YouTube sometimes :)

The car behind the pickup truck had almost 0 stopping distance. To me, it looks like the pile up could have been prevented there too. Good reminder to keep a safe distance.

> Side tangent, I love watching car crash videos.

Your and my YouTube feed algorithms....

They kind of creep me out when it is a crash that was not avoidable. But, boy, most of the crashes have me talking to the computer display, "What are you thinking? You have no stopping distance at all, I know exactly what's coming up in about 3 seconds!"

Exactly! Sometimes when I’m driving I get a weird sense of a terrible crash that I couldn’t see coming. I should probably give the videos a break

> I’ve had this happen where you are cruising at a speed and the person in front of you serves to avoid a slow car and now you lose all of the time to react by changing lanes as well

It's worth anticipating this by watching the other lanes and what drivers are doing. If you can see a slow down happening in an adjacent lane then you might reasonably expect at least one of the drivers approaching to pull over in front of you.