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This is true! It's one of the big reasons I cannot wait for self driving cars. I love driving on empty country roads but feel it's impossible to 100% safely dri

This is true! It's one of the big reasons I cannot wait for self driving cars. I love driving on empty country roads but feel it's impossible to 100% safely drive on busier roads, especially if you also need to read road signs because you don't know where you are going (what's up with US traffic sighs being covered in text btw.? That's obviously a terrible idea!). I came to this conclusion a few weeks after I had gotten my drivers license. I was meeting onto a Autobahn exit. I had a big truck in front. I check the mirror. All fine. Look over my shoulder to check blind spot and my girlfriend who was the passenger starts screaming because the truck in front had jammed on its breaks. I immediate slowed down and all was well. However it was a reasonably close call. Even now, many years later I'm unsure what I should have done differently. I need to look over the shoulder, I couldn't have kept meaningful, more space between me and the truck because I needed to adjust speed to the lane I wanted to merge into. I'm convinced it's a situation that can't be reliably handled 100% of the time given human limitations. Yet most people I talk to think that you just need to get gud.

jdavis703 9y ago
The truck almost certainly had a good reason for stopping. The question then becomes why you couldn't you see what the truck driver had seen (debris in the road, a broken down car, etc). Obviously you can't always see around a large truck, but often times danger can be spotted by looking far ahead. For example coming around a blind cliff I was able to deduce there was a person who would be standing in the middle of the road because I saw a photographer on the opposite side. I started slowing and my instructor was like "what are you doing?" which then turned in to "how did you know a person would be in the road?"
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  That's just a heuristic though. Given humans can't look into multiple directions at once therr is always the chance that something unforseen well happen in the direction you just stopped looking at. If the truck hadn't stopped, maybe the car behind me in the gap I wanted to me into could have accelerated to closer the gap. Unlikely, especially on the Autobahn, but could easily happen in LA.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    You're right we can't see or predict everything. I just heard a story where a pilot had to drop a snake out of their small private aircraft while flying over a highway. There was a high likelihood that a driver below had no way of knowing a snake might fall out the sky and perhaps shatter their windshield. Most things that happen on the road though aren't that random. I once had a bicyclist coming down a curvy mountain road. There was something about their riding that seemed uncomfortable, so I started slowing down. The biker then wiped out and crossed over the yellow line, stopping a few feet from my truck. If I hadn't been proactively scanning and thinking about everything that could go wrong they probably wouldn't have been able to get up, and say "thanks for not running me over." I don't write this to judge you, or brag about myself. I've made plenty of mistakes myself. This is more a general lesson for people: synthesize all inputs received while driving and take proactive steps to mitigate potential risks.
snowwrestler 9y ago
If you are approaching a merge with a vehicle ahead of you, the safest thing to do is keep full attention on that vehicle. If there is a merge lane, you'll have time to change lanes after you've merged. If there is no merge lane, it's more likely that the vehicle ahead will suddenly stop, and therefore even more important to keep full attention on it. Drivers often try simultaneously to monitor the vehicle ahead of them, and plan their merge. As you found, it's impossible for a human to do both safely; we can't look in wildly divergent directions at once. So, a person has to prioritize in that situation and the priority has to be 1) the vehicle ahead of you, which might stop, then 2) plan and execute your merge.
kqr 9y ago
Did this happen during a blind spot check or did you look to the side in order to determine a good speed and find a gap to merge into? When this kind of thing happens, its in my experience much more often for the latter reason. The driver keeps looking over their shoulder for one, two seconds or more, in order to figure out the flow of traffic in the other lane, while ignoring their lane. By accident, of course, but its worth keeping in mind.

jdavis703 9y ago

The truck almost certainly had a good reason for stopping. The question then becomes why you couldn't you see what the truck driver had seen (debris in the road, a broken down car, etc). Obviously you can't always see around a large truck, but often times danger can be spotted by looking far ahead. For example coming around a blind cliff I was able to deduce there was a person who would be standing in the middle of the road because I saw a photographer on the opposite side. I started slowing and my instructor was like "what are you doing?" which then turned in to "how did you know a person would be in the road?"

ajmurmann 9y ago
That's just a heuristic though. Given humans can't look into multiple directions at once therr is always the chance that something unforseen well happen in the direction you just stopped looking at. If the truck hadn't stopped, maybe the car behind me in the gap I wanted to me into could have accelerated to closer the gap. Unlikely, especially on the Autobahn, but could easily happen in LA.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  You're right we can't see or predict everything. I just heard a story where a pilot had to drop a snake out of their small private aircraft while flying over a highway. There was a high likelihood that a driver below had no way of knowing a snake might fall out the sky and perhaps shatter their windshield. Most things that happen on the road though aren't that random. I once had a bicyclist coming down a curvy mountain road. There was something about their riding that seemed uncomfortable, so I started slowing down. The biker then wiped out and crossed over the yellow line, stopping a few feet from my truck. If I hadn't been proactively scanning and thinking about everything that could go wrong they probably wouldn't have been able to get up, and say "thanks for not running me over." I don't write this to judge you, or brag about myself. I've made plenty of mistakes myself. This is more a general lesson for people: synthesize all inputs received while driving and take proactive steps to mitigate potential risks.

snowwrestler 9y ago

If you are approaching a merge with a vehicle ahead of you, the safest thing to do is keep full attention on that vehicle. If there is a merge lane, you'll have time to change lanes after you've merged. If there is no merge lane, it's more likely that the vehicle ahead will suddenly stop, and therefore even more important to keep full attention on it. Drivers often try simultaneously to monitor the vehicle ahead of them, and plan their merge. As you found, it's impossible for a human to do both safely; we can't look in wildly divergent directions at once. So, a person has to prioritize in that situation and the priority has to be 1) the vehicle ahead of you, which might stop, then 2) plan and execute your merge.

kqr 9y ago

Did this happen during a blind spot check or did you look to the side in order to determine a good speed and find a gap to merge into? When this kind of thing happens, its in my experience much more often for the latter reason. The driver keeps looking over their shoulder for one, two seconds or more, in order to figure out the flow of traffic in the other lane, while ignoring their lane. By accident, of course, but its worth keeping in mind.