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I live in a place with fairly snowy winters, which seems like a huge problem for self-driving cars. I completely agree with this thought that we should work on

I live in a place with fairly snowy winters, which seems like a huge problem for self-driving cars. I completely agree with this thought that we should work on making our roads help the self-driving cars. If we had started that effort several years back, we would likely have a lot of road miles that could safely handle self-driving vehicles. If we start now, in several years we'll have a bunch of road miles ready for them. Granted that the US has a lot of road-miles, but doing this work incrementally is the way to go. I have a feeling it will be faster to outfit the roads than to build reliable self-driving software. I will also grant that this is a "feeling" and I'm sure someone has done actual research :) If this capability could be used to help hasten the move to electric vehicles, we could even get a climate change win in at the same time.

w0m 5y ago
North East in winter has ~0% chance of getting FSD capable in the next 20 years I think. 80% of the population of my hometown can't leave the house for months at a time safely today; let alone automation taking over for that.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Great argument for more rail. Yes there are still conditions that freeze switches but that’s when you run gas lines under the tracks to prevent ice from forming: https://wgntv.com/news/when-its-this-cold-chicago-sets-its-train-tracks-on-fire/ https://wgntv.com/news/when-its-this-cold-chicago-sets-its-t... Weirdest thing that prevents trains from running tho is wet leaves on the tracks, of all things, it’s too slippery.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I just don’t see self driving cars taking off for this reason: people want or need to drive even when it’s dangerous to do so. Self driving cars might well refuse to move in bad conditions (my Prius gets very upset when navigating my overgrown driveway for instance, sometimes slamming on the auto-brake to avoid the plant-pedestrians)

w0m 5y ago

North East in winter has ~0% chance of getting FSD capable in the next 20 years I think. 80% of the population of my hometown can't leave the house for months at a time safely today; let alone automation taking over for that.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
Great argument for more rail. Yes there are still conditions that freeze switches but that’s when you run gas lines under the tracks to prevent ice from forming: https://wgntv.com/news/when-its-this-cold-chicago-sets-its-train-tracks-on-fire/ https://wgntv.com/news/when-its-this-cold-chicago-sets-its-t... Weirdest thing that prevents trains from running tho is wet leaves on the tracks, of all things, it’s too slippery.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

I just don’t see self driving cars taking off for this reason: people want or need to drive even when it’s dangerous to do so. Self driving cars might well refuse to move in bad conditions (my Prius gets very upset when navigating my overgrown driveway for instance, sometimes slamming on the auto-brake to avoid the plant-pedestrians)