Dust storm causes a 21-vehicle pileup in Montana, killing six

[Watts_Up]

Quite often, such terrible accidents occur and reach the headline news:

Dust storm causes a 21-vehicle pileup in Montana, killing six​

​

A dust storm caused a 21-vehicle pileup on Interstate 90 in Big Horn County, Montana, ​

on Friday evening, resulting in the deaths of six people, according to the Montana Highway Patrol.​

Since I was kid, I heared that in the future cars will have some kind of safety alerts system,
something that Waze App for example started to provide.

I read that self-driving cars will get more and more connected,
and will send to each other some surrounding informations,
such as for example alerts of an emergency vehicle approaching an intersection.

Currently, I believe that Tesla cars, using FSD, are connected in real time to a main server?
If so, could a Tesla detecting any type of incident,
(such as suddent lack of visibility, water flooding, mud slide, or car accident ...,)
be able to trigger an alert to other Tesla cars near by?

 

[Kablooie]

I don’t think they connect while you are driving but I have seen it reroute because of heavy traffic along the main route. They might be able to broadcast emergency information to cars at some point.

 

[LoudMusic]

I don’t think they connect while you are driving but I have seen it reroute because of heavy traffic along the main route. They might be able to broadcast emergency information to cars at some point.

That's just rerouting due to heavy traffic - traffic information is collected and centralized by several organizations. Tesla navigation appears to use Google's traffic information. You can see and use that in Google's navigation as well.

 

[RTPEV]

Correct. All FSD processing is local to the car. Plus it is not currently detecting those types of events, but other than perhaps loss of visibility, but that could be caused by something as simple as sun blinding the cameras.

That's not to say that there couldn't be such a system, but I think the instantaneous and random nature of these types of events would make it very difficult to implement effectively.

 

[Mr. Michael]

I wonder if radar would penetrate better than the cameras through a dust storm. But I guess that ship has sailed.

 

[JulienW]

I wonder if radar would penetrate better than the cameras through a dust storm. But I guess that ship has sailed.

First cameras are passive so they don't "penetrate". They only pick up light that is emitted from the source they want to detect. Radar is a lower frequency/longer wavelength of electromagnetic radiation than "human" visible light so it passes much easer through materials.

 

[ThomasD]

Could the static electricity generated by large Dust Storms affect the sensors in AV's?

 

[Mr. Michael]

First cameras are passive so they don't "penetrate". They only pick up light that is emitted from the source they want to detect. Radar is a lower frequency/longer wavelength of electromagnetic radiation than "human" visible light so it passes much easer through materials.

Sarcasm. Bring back radar and figure it out!

 

[JHCCAZ]

I wonder if radar would penetrate better than the cameras through a dust storm. But I guess that ship has sailed.

It's often asserted that Teslas could drive safely in these zero-visibility conditions If Only They Hadn't Removed the Radar.

First, the radar that was dropped from Tesla cars, like the radar in almost all current "adaptive cruise / collision avoidance" cars, is way, way too coarse (low-resolution) to do any sort of reliable navigation in such conditions.

Second, though there is emerging availability of higher-resolution radar (millimeter-wave sometimes called "imaging radar" or other descriptive names), it's still very new and in the beginning stages of commercial deployment for consumer vehicles. Very few if any commercial models have it yet.

Note that there is an inverse (presumably nonlinear) relationship between spatial resolution and the ability to "see" in adverse conditions. I do think there's somewhat of a sweet spot available in the spectrum, where objects can be discerned well enough to avoid collision but still operable in heavy precipitation, dust or sandstorms. However...​

Third, even if your car had such an operable system, that does not in any way mean that you could or should continue to drive in zero-visibility conditions! If no one else can see, then the only sensible action is to remove yourself from the driving area and shut down.

In Arizona and other dust-storm areas, there has been, for years, the standard directive that in an oncoming or developing dust-storm situation, you need to carefully (not abruptly) slow down and pull off the road as far as possible, and furthermore shut off all lights and don't press the brake. Other drivers may incorrectly try to use you as a guide by following your lights, and may crash into you or others in trying to continue driving like that.​

I urge everyone to think again whenever someone here implies that Teslas, AVs or whatever vehicles could operate in horrible conditions, if only they had better sensors. That situation may come someday, but it needs generally and reliably deployed sensors on practically all vehicles, not to mention a possible V2V/V2X communication standard that is presently stalled.

Sometimes people try to compare this to airplanes that can navigate and even land in zero-visibility weather "because they have radar". They also have inertial navigation, a plethora of instruments, on-file flight plans with a coordinated Air Traffic Control authority, and a hugely lower density of traffic compared to road vehicles.

 

[Just a Reader]

Quite often, such terrible accidents occur and reach the headline news:

Dust storm causes a 21-vehicle pileup in Montana, killing six​

​

A dust storm caused a 21-vehicle pileup on Interstate 90 in Big Horn County, Montana, ​

on Friday evening, resulting in the deaths of six people, according to the Montana Highway Patrol.​

Since I was kid, I heared that in the future cars will have some kind of safety alerts system,
something that Waze App for example started to provide.

I read that self-driving cars will get more and more connected,
and will send to each other some surrounding informations,
such as for example alerts of an emergency vehicle approaching an intersection.

Currently, I believe that Tesla cars, using FSD, are connected in real time to a main server?
If so, could a Tesla detecting any type of incident,
(such as suddent lack of visibility, water flooding, mud slide, or car accident ...,)
be able to trigger an alert to other Tesla cars near by?

Such a system is in development and already partially opertional both in Europe and in Japan. The intention is to have a common standard for such communication between cars and between cars and road infrastructure, e.g. traffic lights. Companies like Toyota, Mercedes and Volkswagen are working on this. Look for "car-to-x" technology.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

In Arizona and other dust-storm areas, there has been, for years, the standard directive that in an oncoming or developing dust-storm situation, you need to carefully (not abruptly) slow down and pull off the road as far as possible, and furthermore shut off all lights and don't press the brake. Other drivers may incorrectly try to use you as a guide by following your lights, and may crash into you or others in trying to continue driving like that.

As I understand it the situation in Montana was a combination of an instant drop in visibility, and no uniformity in how drivers dealt with the situation. There were a lot of travelers so probably quite a few of them were unfamiliar with that kind of situation.

I don't like an an area prone to do that so my first question is how can there be a standard directive of pulling off the road when you can't see anything? I likely would have let off the gas to slow down slowly to stop in my lane, and not try to change lanes to get off the road. I also would have turned on my hazards.

 

[drtimhill]

Quite often, such terrible accidents occur and reach the headline news:

Dust storm causes a 21-vehicle pileup in Montana, killing six​

​

A dust storm caused a 21-vehicle pileup on Interstate 90 in Big Horn County, Montana, ​

on Friday evening, resulting in the deaths of six people, according to the Montana Highway Patrol.​

Since I was kid, I heared that in the future cars will have some kind of safety alerts system,
something that Waze App for example started to provide.

I read that self-driving cars will get more and more connected,
and will send to each other some surrounding informations,
such as for example alerts of an emergency vehicle approaching an intersection.

Currently, I believe that Tesla cars, using FSD, are connected in real time to a main server?
If so, could a Tesla detecting any type of incident,
(such as suddent lack of visibility, water flooding, mud slide, or car accident ...,)
be able to trigger an alert to other Tesla cars near by?

The round-trip time would be on the high side for a real-time intervention, but yes some form of Waze awareness of upcoming hazards seems possible at some point in time.

 

[jakimo]

Bring back radar and figure it out!

While I agree with the track of moving to Vision only, I believe it could be better interpreted: use vision 80%, radar 20%.. and as computers get faster and more capable, the overhead of trying to use radar efficiently should become more and more negligible as a catch-all when vision doesn't cut it

Radar would have definitely helped. Radar sees through water and snow as well.. when normal vision cannot