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Comment by kayodelycaon | Hacker News Reader

Even if the cones weren't perfect, a flagger should be sufficient for traffic control. It's same as if there was a police officer directing traffic in an intersection. Both are explicit overrides to posted signs.

Same with emergency vehicles, which self-driving cars have already been shown to ignore.

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Sure, but we don't know if there was a flagger either. Only a single construction worker standing to the side.

I'm not debating whether an AI car should "see" possible construction, even when not marked appropriately (most humans can too). Only pointing out we don't know if this zone was marked/flagged - and if it wasn't, there's a higher likelihood of human driver error as well.

> Rachel Gordon, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Department of Public Works, said that the paving project on Golden Gate Avenue had been marked off with construction cones and that there were workers with flags at each end of the block.

That's from the New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/us/driverless-car-acciden.... The linked article is currently from SFGATE. It may have changed since you made this comment.

Yes, this is an issue self-driving cars. Roads and signage are not unchanging and always set up proper or the same way every time, everywhere, nor do they need to be.

Light control at an intersection out? They'll just blink red, indicating a stop sign. Maybe they're off, and they put up temporary stop signs on the corners, or as you mentioned, a police officer redirects traffic. And then a fire engine will run through it, as they need to.

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