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Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

It's a really cool idea, but I couldn't help but think they should move the water stop sign to well BEFORE the million dollar damage point. Some big trucks would have a hard time seeing the stop sign, reacting to it, slamming on the brakes, and coming to a complete stop in time before they cause damage to the overhang and beams.

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The advantage with the signs before the final water sign is that they should be enough for any reasonably alert driver and don't make the environment more hazardous.

You really want to have the water screen projection, which douses the road with water, as the last line of defence. Water on the road is likely to make it far more difficult to stop a large truck like that. Having it earlier could actually be detrimental to their stopping ability[1].

We're also assuming the unexpected water doesn't cause additional accidents from all the other vehicles. A wall of water could provoke some quite irrational reactions. I drive that road on a fairly common basis and even a small accident there could well result in an expensive pile-up.

[1]: Conjecture

Better a wall of water than a truck crashing into the tunnel!

I worked near a train bridge that was constantly being hit by trucks. It was a near weekly event at times. They installed big, flashing lights and drivers would still blow through.

Same thing here for this tunnel in Louisville http://www.wave3.com/story/21389005/wave-3-investigates-stuc...

Check out 11foot8's YouTube channel for some great examples of how common this can be in some places.

http://www.youtube.com/yovo68 http://11foot8.com/

An other fun one is "2m40" (after the tunnel's height, of 7ft10), on the tunnel de l'etoile in Paris: http://www.2m40.com/ (in 2009, a truck crashed into it every 10 days and there were bets on the time the hanging sign would last)

signs and "plackards" go ignored all the time. i worked in a computer lab and had to put up signs when things were broken ( internet, printer, etc.. ) and we always got people ignoring them...

"Placards" is the word you're looking for.

Yeah, nobody likes reading, and even when they do, they assume that they can disregard the signs if they have a good reason - such as, they reaaaally want to.

At some point you have to accept this, do some A/B testing and find the way to actually get people's attention. For instance, a WET PAINT sign will be ignored. But "This paint was wet at 8:32 AM, please do not touch til after noon" might be more effective.

A sign on the printer that just says it's broken will be blithely ignored. But if you cover it with a sheet, and the sign says "Printer out of order on May 10th, tech has been notified", that's a lot tougher to miss.

The burden of communication is on the communicator, not the recipient, so if the sign's not working, get better at making signs.

Sort of related: I heard a story where a decorator would write signs that said "wet pant" instead of "wet paint", because the "wet paint" sign would cause people to touch the paint to see if it was indeed wet. The "wet pant" signs, however, would cause people to point out the spelling error instead of leaving finger marks.

True, but not always. There will always be the 1-3% of the population that can't do something right, no matter how elegant the UI or detailed the sign. These trucks fall into that bin. Some people are just going to plow through whatever you put in their path.

I have to agree.. thanks for the reply I guess i never thought of that while i worked there, i just kept thinking "why don't they read the signs...", we did try a few different ones, and also made them 2 feet from the door sometimes, but it was still ultimately our responsibility to inform them of whatever the situation was..

@placards: i figured i spelled that wrong, thanks

No. The whole point is to make this work for the sleep-deprived, inattentive drivers. Designing for "any reasonably alert driver" will result in horrible accidents.

When we have reliable, safe, self-driving cars this is the first industry that should be replaced by robots. How archaic is it that we pay people to ruin their bodies while attempting the inhuman task of keeping perfectly alert for several boring hours, while piloting a giant mass at lethal speeds.

Unfortunately when we have reliable, safe, self-driving cars, the loudest complainers will be truck drivers who now have to find new careers. I hope I don't sound too mean to hope their concerns are ignored.

I predict legislation saying that certain self-driving vehicles cannot be unmanned. This benefits the truck driver while still maintaining a reason to have one. Besides, someone will still have to fill the thing with diesel.

In the long term, though, you're most likely right; truck drivers will have to find new careers. However, said legislation combined with what I believe will be slow adoption due to high cost should give truck drivers a decade or two to migrate to other jobs.

Someone can fill the thing with diesel at the gas station. You'll get full-service pumps outside of Oregon and New Jersey! (Another industry that requires regulation to avoid firing unnecessary people).

Over that long, most of the industry should disappear through attrition alone.

If we make long-haul trucks self-driving, then we'll just have to replace the 'driver' job with 'guard' job. Otherwise it's far too simple - block the road; the robot will stop to avoid an accident, and you loot the cargo and/or the car.

It doesn't really matter what they're shipping - a truckload of TVs is nice, but even a truckload of sh*t is valuable enough to make it worthwhile.

That's fine as long as they don't kill people by driving while fatigued

It's a really cool idea, but I couldn't help but think they should move the water stop sign to well BEFORE the million dollar damage point

I thought the stop sign was only visible because of the dark background (i.e. moderately lit tunnel) behind it?

My first thought was similar - it needs to be seen sooner - but I presume that even some braking before slamming into concrete is better than none.

You mean, before the 3 flashing stop signs BEFORE he got to that point?

A better idea might be a low bar that causes the truck damage well before they reach the tunnel. Only issue is how to make it safe and very obvious it's done the truck damage?

The problem with a barrier that is hit is that you need to make sure it is structurally sound before you allow any other traffic past it. And if it leaves debris on the road, that needs to be cleaned up too. It's already a slow process to back out the oversized truck, so you don't want countermeasures that make it even slower.

I wonder if a clearly labeled "all trucks go into this lane" well before the tunnel would work. You could have your barrier there, and not impede the rest of the traffic. You could even divert trucks into the car lanes while you clean up.

One one hand, they're already ignoring signs. On the other hand, a sign that says "ALL TRUCKS go this way" might get a better, or at least different, response from "YOU are too tall".

Depending on the truck, load, and barrier, that could be a hazard to other vehicles and occupants. Likely less so than the tunnel itself.

Many places in Europe have a bar with chains, the chains hang off the bar at the height of the upcoming tunnel / bridge. Does of course assume that the driver will hear the chains knocking about on his truck...

The whole point of the water sign is not to cause damage/kill regular cars that might be next to or in front of the truck.

You mean, before the 3 flashing stop signs BEFORE he got to that point?

The video shows why the stop-signs may be ineffective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...

They use the blinking not only for critical messages ("STOP") but also for unimportant stuff ("slow down"). The boy who cried wolf...

I think they actually shut down the lights in the tunnel before the screen goes off. You can see it in the video when the lights go off and tunnel is suddenly much darker.

Probably not the whole tunnel, just the entrance to enhance the projection effect. Remember there is still traffic in the remainder of the tunnel.

We have a variant of this installed on a tunnel (which is probably safer, but not as cool :) ): Directly after the last highway exit before reaching the tunnel is a light barrier installed. If something breaks the barrier the tunnel entrance will be closed by boom barriers (and warning lights, so nobody drives into the boom barriers). Then the police drives out to the tunnel, finds the culprit, pulls him out and unlocks the tunnel again.

Obviously, this only works because there is enough time after the last exit to block the tunnel before the truck reaches it.

That and apparently some active enforcement about load heights. Load height is one of the things that is checked and enforced at truck inspection stops on US highways and interstates for this exact reason (to try to prevent over tall loads from damaging bridges).

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