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Comment by Smerity | Hacker News Reader

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

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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)

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

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

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

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