Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

Humans are horrible at this I wonder what the limit is. I've always thought that I can tailor my speed to conditions but not everyone on the road slows down.

View on HN

It's really interesting because that's something they definitely don't teach you when you first learn to drive. Growing up in Florida, I learned to pull over and turn on emergency blinkers if the rain gets bad enough. The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others. Or maybe I would have learned eventually after a few close calls with skidding. Or maybe I would have never learned until it's too late. I wonder if the different responses to averse conditions you've observed is a function of the different experiences we've had as drivers. You might be a more experienced driver than some of those around you.

And pulling off through a patch of heavy rain is one thing. There are a lot of issues with pulling off in heavy snow unless you can really navigate off the highway to a safe location. Sometimes there aren't great solutions.

Hazard lights are almost never used by folks when driving, when you really should turn them on anytime the conditions are forcing you to not go the speed limit, IMO. The other lizard brains will see blinky lights and hopefully put down their phones so they don't rear end you.

I would hope the other folks would recognize that conditions are such that you're slowing down rather than have a bunch of arbitrary blinking lights on the road.

People mostly only turn on their hazards when they're a hazard to other traffic (which is the whole point, IMO) Even if you're the slow guy on the road your speed still probably doesn't warrant this hence why you mostly only see it when people are going a speed of zero.

> The reason I know to do this is because I saw other drivers do this on the highway and realized that's pretty wise. It's tempting to imagine that a younger version of me would have been smart enough to realize this on my own but I think most of us learn a lot by observing the behavior of others.

Did you ever hydroplane in a car, even ever so slightly? That experience teaches you to slow down or stop and wait for the rain to be over pretty quickly.

It's funny because when I lived in Texas, we just turn on windshield wipers on full blast, put the hazard lights on and drive around at 15mph. (This would have to be an epic downpour though.)

The only time people stopped was when it was hailing.. and then they would hide under bridges if they could.

I remember driving past Charles de Gaulle Airport when it rained so hard we couldn't see past the end of the bonnet (hood). Everybody just stopped until it passed.

The limit is much higher than human performance given enough low latency compute. [1] is probably the limit, the actual issue is being able to do that while also avoiding colliding with other road users. The challenges of state estimation and control should be the same.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MWib6bnnT8

Humans have one advantage over autonomous cars in ice: they can pull over and put on chains. Cars can’t do that (yet).

(I’d love to see a serious winter vehicle that can deploy traction devices by itself, perhaps while rolling at very low speed. Off the top of my head, it seems like it might be easier to put them on then to take them off.)

Outside of some specific areas, how many people do you think carry chains with them?

It's pretty much limited to areas with both snow and lots of elevation changes like in the mountainous areas. Having lived most of my life in the midwest now, no one here uses chains except maybe some of the private snow plow operators driving their trucks around at 4AM. Most people won't use dedicated winter tires either. We tend to rock all seasons all year round. Ice and snow on mostly flat roads are just something you get used to dealing with.

As someone who has lived in New England most of my adult life I've never owned either chains or dedicated snow tires. I do try to be relatively conservative in terms of driving in winter. But I haven't invested in special equipment.

They're required for traveling over mountain passes in the winter where I live, so I have them. But I have 3PMSF-rated tires and those are what I'd rather use 99% of the time.

Automatic snow chains are a thing, often seen on emergency vehicles even outside of the normal snow band. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/yus43b/wha...

No idea if they're compatible with Jaguars or whatever Waymo is rolling these days, but my guess is that Waymo could make the economics work.

All the school buses near where I live (Sierra Nevada mountains in California) have these - it's cool to watch them lower and start spinning.

But chains aren't enough in some common situations around here that locals, including school bus drivers, know well. When we get a good size snow storm (multiple feet) and the sun comes out a day or two later, thick ice forms on the sections of road that the sun hits - snow melt runs across the road during the day and freezes at night, getting thicker and smoother each day. When that happens on our steeper inclines, chains on AWD/4WD vehicles are not enough to get up those inclines or to stop on the way down them. Locals know where those spots are and take other routes in those situations. It's hard for me to imagine autonomous vehicles having such local information in remote areas like this anytime soon.

Chains are usually not the best option. Dedicated snow tires are better than chains for most light vehicles when there's snow and ice on the road. For fleet vehicles you would think they could install the proper tires at the depot based on the date or weather forecast.

Chains shine for the case where there generally isn't snow and ice where you spend most of your time, or where you occasionally visit, but there is between those places.

I actually had chains when I lived in the Los Angeles area, which is probably the last place most people would expect someone to have chains or snow tires.

I occasionally had to take I-5 to Central California or the Bay Area in winter, and in a typical winter there are maybe 1-5 days where you aren't allowed through Tejon Pass on just ordinary tires.

There are three cases, depending on the severity of the weather. From least to most severe the requirements are:

• If you have snow tires on at least two drive wheels you don't need chains. Otherwise you need chains.

• If you have a 4WD/AWD vehicle with snow tires on all wheels you don't need chains. Otherwise you need chains.

• You need chains.

I hate this sort of take. Humans aren't horrible, on average, they're about average. Your opinion is just a statement of "my judgement is decently far from the fat part of the bell curve" but dressed up in "and I know better" type snobbery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com