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I've been driving in intense blizzards and ice and steep bad roads of Colorado for 20 years now. Still never had an accident or even gone off the road. That's t

I've been driving in intense blizzards and ice and steep bad roads of Colorado for 20 years now. Still never had an accident or even gone off the road. That's the standard. Anything less and I'm completely uninterested, because it's just bad tech. When your engineers say the problem is "too hard to solve" you need to hire better engineers, because those engineers are lying to you. Just because everyone is racing towards a technology and some teams are doing it poorly doesn't mean the problems are insurmountable.

planteen 8y ago
Don't you think part of that experience is luck? What can you do if you are stopped at a red light on an icy road, someone comes in hot and rear ends you, causing you to collide with the vehicle in front of you? You will be at fault for the vehicle you hit. Such accidents are common when it's icy. I have never been in one personally, but lots of friends and co-workers have.
- endofcapital 8y ago
  Yeah, that exact scenario has happened to me twice. I like to glance at the rearview if I'm the last car in line to avoid some drunk ramming me, and it definitely saved my life once. Once I just saw someone coming in a little too hot and was able to pull forward a bit to make room as they were standing on the brakes. Not a big deal. The lifesaving situation was different though, I was the only car in the right lane and one of those massive F250 trucks was barreling up behind me, not appearing to slow down at all. I was kind of boxed in because the cross street had heavy, fast traffic, and I couldn't pull forward or to the left since there was another car stopped next to me there. So I just quickly scanned the sidewalk to my right to make sure there were no pedestrians, and hopped up the curb to drive on the sidewalk/grass. I wasn't sure if this would work in my tiny car with small wheels, but I figured it would be better than dying. Worked great. The truck blew through the light and T-boned a Tesla. The guy had 37 empty Coors Light cans scattered around the floor of his truck. Have any of the self driving car companies even gotten started on the "when should I drive on the sidewalk" subroutine? No, of course not, they are still mired in the bad, early days of the tech where they can't deal with a missing double yellow. It's laughable, the engineers can do much better instead of just repeatedly lowering the bar.

planteen 8y ago

Don't you think part of that experience is luck? What can you do if you are stopped at a red light on an icy road, someone comes in hot and rear ends you, causing you to collide with the vehicle in front of you? You will be at fault for the vehicle you hit. Such accidents are common when it's icy. I have never been in one personally, but lots of friends and co-workers have.

endofcapital 8y ago
Yeah, that exact scenario has happened to me twice. I like to glance at the rearview if I'm the last car in line to avoid some drunk ramming me, and it definitely saved my life once. Once I just saw someone coming in a little too hot and was able to pull forward a bit to make room as they were standing on the brakes. Not a big deal. The lifesaving situation was different though, I was the only car in the right lane and one of those massive F250 trucks was barreling up behind me, not appearing to slow down at all. I was kind of boxed in because the cross street had heavy, fast traffic, and I couldn't pull forward or to the left since there was another car stopped next to me there. So I just quickly scanned the sidewalk to my right to make sure there were no pedestrians, and hopped up the curb to drive on the sidewalk/grass. I wasn't sure if this would work in my tiny car with small wheels, but I figured it would be better than dying. Worked great. The truck blew through the light and T-boned a Tesla. The guy had 37 empty Coors Light cans scattered around the floor of his truck. Have any of the self driving car companies even gotten started on the "when should I drive on the sidewalk" subroutine? No, of course not, they are still mired in the bad, early days of the tech where they can't deal with a missing double yellow. It's laughable, the engineers can do much better instead of just repeatedly lowering the bar.