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Comment by JshWright | Hacker News Reader

This has great implications for emergency vehicles. The current methods of inter-vehicle communications used by emergency vehicles (loud ass sirens and flashy lights) are ridiculously error prone, and becoming less and less effective as manufacturers get better at insulating cars.

Even when the driver does hear it, it's often hard for them to localize where the sound is coming from.

"An ambulance is approaching from the left" would be fantastic.

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"The current methods of inter-vehicle communications used by emergency vehicles (loud ass sirens and flashy lights) are ridiculously error prone, and becoming less and less effective"

Yes, you could solve that problem with complex, interdependent systems that will fail in unpredictable ways.

Or you could just mandate better driver training and education which is the clear failure point here, at least in my experience.

My experience is both as a driver and as a firefighter who regularly drives a fire truck.

"Yes, you could solve that problem with complex, interdependent systems that will fail in unpredictable ways."

Isn't that what you have now by depending on people?

You can blame individual people, but the mfgrs will simply purchase immunity from their hired politicians. Its a question of responsibility. Individuals have it. Corporations do not.

I'm not sure that's true. Auto manufactures are a really big target for liability in accidents (I'd likely get more from GM then an individual in a won law suit), and a quick search [1] seems to back my feeling that there is sizable law and case law that define this area of liability. I'm not saying that it's simple to win against any sufficiently funded entity, but it's not impossible that anyone has immunity.

[1] http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/automotive.html#.U_Jd_2...

I guess you missed the CEO of General Motors getting grilled by congress earlier this year and tha massive writedowns they took due to the settlements they entered into with the families of people hurt/killed by faulty ignition switches. I could cite a slew of similar examples.

Training will not help a driver localize where a EV is approaching from. I'm not suggesting this system would supplant traditional warning systems, but would simply augment them with additional information. It would allow drivers to make better decisions about how to yield, rather than having the decision forced upon them when I'm suddenly right on top of them.

If it's relevant, I'm firefighter/paramedic, been driving EVs for a decade or so.

I live in Chicago, and sometimes it's really hard to tell where the EV is coming from. They're ear-piercingly loud, and the sound bounces everywhere. You hear the siren, then frantically start checking all your mirrors every 0.5 sec, which probably creates more of a distraction to the driving you should be doing.

I've been thinking that would be possible with just a microphone (or a few) and DSP.

It would be a non-trivial problem in urban environments, where the sound has almost certainly taken a few hard reflections before it got to you.

Non-trivial, but probably tractable. Moreover, just identifying that there is a siren and turning off the radio could be a tremendous help.

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