Tagged on the Highway

[AlanSubie4Life]

as does every other person on the road who learned to drive. Hard to tell is he is being serious or is just an angry troll.

I see you disagreed. And I'm sorry you do. I'm not saying people should not check their mirrors, obviously! I'm just saying you can't count on it. It's basic defensive driving. You do what you can to avoid danger zones.

To be clear, the pickup is at fault here, obviously. But why would you want to deal with the aftermath of a traffic collision?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

so riddle me this, everyone who says you cannot drive in someones blilnd spot. How do you drive in Bumper to Bumper traffic? Last time I checked people change lanes there also.

I said "whenever possible." It's all about minimizing risk. This is not complicated. In bumper-to-bumper traffic things usually happen more slowly.

The last time this happened to me, it was nearly bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was nothing I could do to avoid the spot but to look for clues. It was very sudden - they simply did not know I was there - I did avoid the collision, but it required sharp braking and evasive action followed by honking as soon as I could get on it.

 

[WilliamG]

so riddle me this, everyone who says you cannot drive in someones blilnd spot. How do you drive in Bumper to Bumper traffic? Last time I checked people change lanes there also.

Sure. But people are generally more careful at that point because everyone is aware there’s someone next to them (again, generally).

I make it a habit not to drive on the highway next to anyone, blind spot or otherwise, whenever it’s possible.

 

[Joshan]

I see you disagreed. And I'm sorry you do. I'm not saying people should not check their mirrors, obviously! I'm just saying you can't count on it. It's basic defensive driving. You do what you can to avoid danger zones.

To be clear, the pickup is at fault here, obviously. But why would you want to deal with the aftermath of a traffic collision?

Maybe I read more into your post than you meant, you know... the internet. I will remove the disagree

 

[Knightshade]

Did anyone actually watch the video?

There was a big truck in front of the Tesla driver.

And a car to his right and left.


How would he "stay out of everyones blind spot" short of just driving way slower than traffic and letting everyone pass him? (or rear end him since he's going so slow at that point)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Maybe I read more into your post than you meant, you know... the internet. I will remove the disagree

I agree I was being a bit provocative.

 

[Joshan]

yes that was my thought also Knight and why I corrected the person who said that AP should have changed to the right lane as it was "empty".

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Did anyone actually watch the video?

There was a big truck in front of the Tesla driver.

And a car to his right and left.


How would he "stay out of everyones blind spot" short of just driving way slower than traffic and letting everyone pass him? (or rear end him since he's going so slow at that point)

I did indeed. I think in this case I would have dropped back and let the silver sedan on the right merge in and take one for the team. It looks like it already had some left hand side body damage so it would be a perfect candidate. Note that the length of the side repeater clips are shorter than the length of the clip from the front camera.

It's much safer to drop back from a position where someone can see you to behind a car (in this case I mean dropping behind the silver sedan on the right) than to move forward into a "blind" spot (especially moving forward on the right of traffic - I mean the pickup).

This really isn't complicated. Obviously for sufficient traffic density it becomes impossible. But making no effort to move your vehicle to avoid being in those danger zones is a bit silly.

 

[Joshan]

This may be the first thread ever where someone is stating that AP did not drive defensively enough. Normally it is post after post of "it accelerates too slowly from red light", "it is not aggresive enough to merge" etc etc. A little different to see the opposite play out.

 

[Nocturnal]

I don't know about these blindspot comments. He wasn't in the blind spot until the last few moments. Blind spot is such a vague term, I don't think you can program for it. Even if you can determine a section that is a blind spot for a given sized vehicle, do you want AP to constantly change speed to stay out of it? I don't think I do.

 

[Daniel in SD]

How would he "stay out of everyones blind spot" short of just driving way slower than traffic and letting everyone pass him? (or rear end him since he's going so slow at that point)

Wouldn’t have had to drive slower, just back a little bit or forward a little bit.
Many people don’t use their mirrors but can see you if you’re visible through their windshield.
Also you can clearly tell from the video that the other driver is about to change lanes. They’re leaving a huge gap between them and the car in front of them. The neural net that’s supposed to predict when cars are about to change lanes that they talked about at autonomy day clearly needs a lot of work.

 

[Nocturnal]

Wouldn’t have had to drive slower, just back a little bit or forward a little bit.
Many people don’t use their mirrors but can see you if you’re visible through their windshield.
Also you can clearly tell from the video that the other driver is about to change lanes. They’re leaving a huge gap between them and the car in front of them. The neural net that’s supposed to predict when cars are about to change lanes that they talked about at autonomy day clearly needs a lot of work.

Slow down for 5 seconds, then speed up for 5 seconds when the PU speed changed, repeat constantly.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I don't know about these blindspot comments. He wasn't in the blind spot until the last few moments. Blind spot is such a vague term, I don't think you can program for it. Even if you can determine a section that is a blind spot for a given sized vehicle, do you want AP to constantly change speed to stay out of it? I don't think I do.

I guess it should more accurately described as the spot that people often move into without looking or because their mirrors are misadjusted.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I don't know about these blindspot comments. He wasn't in the blind spot until the last few moments. Blind spot is such a vague term, I don't think you can program for it. Even if you can determine a section that is a blind spot for a given sized vehicle, do you want AP to constantly change speed to stay out of it? I don't think I do.

I'll leave those details up to Tesla to figure out. I seem to have no problem doing this smoothly as a fully (???) functioning human. I assume that Tesla can figure out a way to program it up - they have some very smart people working on this and if FSD is possible, this is definitely possible (I can't imagine the computing requirements are enough to bring HW2.5 to its knees). I'd be ok with it being an option, I suppose, though making it an option leads to greater likelihood of the feature being garbage.

My guess is in about a year they might add this. Once they get enough sideswipe accidents (I assume this will show up in their "accidents on AP" statistics, but who knows) they'll have an incentive to reduce the rate. This is how you would do it.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Slow down for 5 seconds, then speed up for 5 seconds when the PU speed changed, repeat constantly.

It’s not like AP is at all smooth now in traffic. I am way smoother than AP while also not camping in people’s blind spot.

 

[5_+JqckQttqck]

I commute daily 50km each way on Canada's busiest highway. In the morning it's 60km/h constant smooth medium highway traffic (similar to the video speed and spacing) and in bumper and bumper traffic in the afternoon. EAP does a fantastic job letting other drivers in front at follow setting #1... too much sometimes especially in the far right lane where it'll match the speed of the merging vehicle (this I find annoying).

For this case, not much AP can do unless it accelerates ahead and be up on the bumper of the truck. The white pickup clearly did not even look past their right elbow - that much would of shown the top of a vehicle to their right.

AP engaging the horn would be an interesting feature in situations like this.

 

[WilliamG]

I commute daily 60km/h constant smooth medium highway traffic (similar to the video speed and spacing) and in bumper and bumper traffic in the afternoon. EAP does a fantastic job letting other drivers in front... too much sometimes especially in the far right lane where it'll match the speed of the merging vehicle (this I find annoying).

For this case, not much AP can do unless it accelerates ahead and be up on the bumper of the truck. The white pickup clearly did not even look past their right elbow - that much would of shown the top of a vehicle to their right.

Right, and people would freak out if there were sudden acceleration above the speed limit/set speed in a Tesla. They’d not even know WHY the acceleration happened, and would be blaming Tesla left, right and center if they grabbed the wheel to take control and hit something/made the situation worse.

In a perfect world, people check their blind spots and mirrors all the time, or everyone is FSDing so the car does it for us.

Until then, we do the best we can, and accidents will continue to just happen.

 

[Saghost]

I commute daily 50km each way on Canada's busiest highway. In the morning it's 60km/h constant smooth medium highway traffic (similar to the video speed and spacing) and in bumper and bumper traffic in the afternoon. EAP does a fantastic job letting other drivers in front at follow setting #1... too much sometimes especially in the far right lane where it'll match the speed of the merging vehicle (this I find annoying).

For this case, not much AP can do unless it accelerates ahead and be up on the bumper of the truck. The white pickup clearly did not even look past their right elbow - that much would of shown the top of a vehicle to their right.

AP engaging the horn would be an interesting feature in situations like this.

I've joked about Autohonk on a few occasions. I think it will become necessary at some point - there are some situations that you can't really fix by your own actions - you need someone else to stop violating the rules to prevent the accident.

Imagine how embarrassing it'll be if Autohonk triggers at the wrong times, though.

The other option for this scenario is to slam on the brakes, which AP does somewhat excessively in situations like this while overtaking now but not when you aren't passing someone.

 

[Joshan]

some states and cities have laws about honking (including the town I live in). So that could be a problematic feature that they cannot add because of regulations. Kind of like windows rolling up from the app, and other things people have suggested.

 

[acarney]

It actually looks like the Tesla was not maintaining the same speed as the truck. It's hard to tell, but it looks like given two or three more minutes the Tesla would have been ahead of the truck, so while it might currently have been in the blind spot, and probably was for a minute or two, it probably wasn't that way for 10+ minutes or anything. The truck just didn't pay attention and was probably to far behind for the Tesla to think slowing would help and too far forward for the Tesla to think speeding up would help. The only thing would have been an auto lane change, and I'm not sure how Tesla's handle that right now for accident avoidance.