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Comment by to3m | Hacker News Reader

The lack of turn signals makes me highly suspicious. There is more to this omission than meets the eye, I am quite sure of it. As you say, adding turn signals in should be straightforward. The computer presumably has its turns planned far enough in advance. So why doesn't it?

I am actually even less inclined to trust these so-called "self"-driving cars now. Not like I even trust the human-driven variety all that much...

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If the turn signals are not on the CAN bus it could be annoying to implement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

They've made a self-driving car. The merely annoying parts are going to be the fun bits! Everything else is going to be difficult, if not bordering-on-impossible. I find it very difficult to believe that there is any technical barrier to computer-operated indicators.

Wouldn't it be sufficient to wire in a computer controlled switch in parallel to the mechanical switch that the human uses to control the turn signals?

Or just add a new set of turn signals independent of the built-in ones.

The lack of "support" for turn signals is probably a way to ensure that a human is always present and aware during operation.

It's a really clever, simple solution. They've turned the absence of a feature into a feature.

I don't know why the Google engineer would lie about it, though.

Or it could just be that the turn signals aren't wired in to the computer system. On my vehicle, the wiring for the turn signals is pretty basic, there is no computer involved.

Sure, but wiring something that simple up to their system should be very easy as well.

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