5 ms·

No, but they can react to those situations much better than a human driver and then wait on the side of the road for help.

a3n 8y ago
Officer: "OK, move your truck into the oncoming lane to make room for incoming emergency vehicles." Autonomous Truck:
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  ... On an interstate? What situation are you trying to describe here.
  - a3n 8y ago
    Any road that fits the situation I described. Not all driving is on interstates. Many US, state and county highways are two lane blacktops; as a truck driver I drive them often. Not every town is near an interstate.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Emergency crossover lanes are actually quite common, but rarely used (and due to this, not even mapped). Such as this (not US, but first one that came to my mind): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/353606400#map=17/50.03606/14.49237 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/353606400#map=17/50.03606/... You arrive from the northwesternmost link, the outer lanes south are blocked, so police opens up the service link (which is normally physically closed by a barrier and correctly mapped as "no access") and routes the traffic through it, into the inner lanes. Now you also have an indecisive truck sitting in the mess, waiting for a human to intervene.
    - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
      In America we have a breakdown lane on every interstate, meant specifically for disabled cars. And interstates are what we're talking about here.
- bkor 8y ago
  Loads of people within Netherlands use an app called "Flitsmeister" which does this and more. It basically gives you traffic information by determining where you're going to. It's different from Waze/Google Maps and so on that primarily it a) can auto start if you're using a bluetooth carkit b) it just looks at where you're currently headed. Not needing to set a navigation is quite handy because often you're headed towards the same places (e.g. work) and do not want to setup your navigation 2x/day. Things it warns about: emergency vehicles (!), open bridges, speed/red light cameras (name is based upon this), (dynamic) speed limits (if on a highway it shows e.g. 70 instead of 130 the app will know), stopped vehicles, bad road, etc. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.flitsmeister https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.flitsmeiste... I'm guessing they had to cooperate with a lot of different government bodies to make all of the functionality possible. Anyway, it works quite well in practice. Also, emergency vehicle notification is automatic, it's not based on people needing to report it!
jakeogh 8y ago
Computer control of vehicles is a magnitude of order worse by any data we have. This assumption that computers are going to outperform humans driving any time soon is wrong. I blame sci-fi.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  Says who? Ive seen things and these self driving cars are already here.
EpicEng 8y ago
>No, but they can react to those situations much better than a human driver Not yet they can't.
samplatt 8y ago
Interstate travel (especially here in Australia) means that sometimes the soonest someone can get there will be DAYS, purely from the tyranny of distance. Some of the things these trucks transport is required for very large & expensive projects which get more so with excessive delays. Paying a human trained in properly securing a load and changing a tyre nearly as big as the human is, to come along for the ride, is much cheaper than having a helicopter on standby every ~500km of the way and staff to be ready.

a3n 8y ago

Officer: "OK, move your truck into the oncoming lane to make room for incoming emergency vehicles." Autonomous Truck:

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
... On an interstate? What situation are you trying to describe here.
- a3n 8y ago
  Any road that fits the situation I described. Not all driving is on interstates. Many US, state and county highways are two lane blacktops; as a truck driver I drive them often. Not every town is near an interstate.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Emergency crossover lanes are actually quite common, but rarely used (and due to this, not even mapped). Such as this (not US, but first one that came to my mind): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/353606400#map=17/50.03606/14.49237 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/353606400#map=17/50.03606/... You arrive from the northwesternmost link, the outer lanes south are blocked, so police opens up the service link (which is normally physically closed by a barrier and correctly mapped as "no access") and routes the traffic through it, into the inner lanes. Now you also have an indecisive truck sitting in the mess, waiting for a human to intervene.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    In America we have a breakdown lane on every interstate, meant specifically for disabled cars. And interstates are what we're talking about here.
bkor 8y ago
Loads of people within Netherlands use an app called "Flitsmeister" which does this and more. It basically gives you traffic information by determining where you're going to. It's different from Waze/Google Maps and so on that primarily it a) can auto start if you're using a bluetooth carkit b) it just looks at where you're currently headed. Not needing to set a navigation is quite handy because often you're headed towards the same places (e.g. work) and do not want to setup your navigation 2x/day. Things it warns about: emergency vehicles (!), open bridges, speed/red light cameras (name is based upon this), (dynamic) speed limits (if on a highway it shows e.g. 70 instead of 130 the app will know), stopped vehicles, bad road, etc. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.flitsmeister https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.flitsmeiste... I'm guessing they had to cooperate with a lot of different government bodies to make all of the functionality possible. Anyway, it works quite well in practice. Also, emergency vehicle notification is automatic, it's not based on people needing to report it!

jakeogh 8y ago

Computer control of vehicles is a magnitude of order worse by any data we have. This assumption that computers are going to outperform humans driving any time soon is wrong. I blame sci-fi.

robertAngst 8y ago
Says who? Ive seen things and these self driving cars are already here.

EpicEng 8y ago

>No, but they can react to those situations much better than a human driver Not yet they can't.

samplatt 8y ago

Interstate travel (especially here in Australia) means that sometimes the soonest someone can get there will be DAYS, purely from the tyranny of distance. Some of the things these trucks transport is required for very large & expensive projects which get more so with excessive delays. Paying a human trained in properly securing a load and changing a tyre nearly as big as the human is, to come along for the ride, is much cheaper than having a helicopter on standby every ~500km of the way and staff to be ready.