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That’s not how this works - cars go at a speed limit set by the road they’re on. The speed limit is selected based on safety factors present on the road. By yo

That’s not how this works - cars go at a speed limit set by the road they’re on. The speed limit is selected based on safety factors present on the road. By your logic, one needs to move 30mph on the interstate to make sure they can react to whatever jumps out at them. Or am I misunderstanding something here?

leereeves 5y ago
I'm not talking about situations where something jumps out of nowhere or a meteor falls out of the sky onto the road. This deer didn't jump out onto the road. It slowly walked out onto the road; it was visible near the edge of the car's vision; and it was easy to anticipate that it might walk in front of the car. I've encountered many situations like this without hitting the animal. I would slow down and move aside to give the deer room, starting as soon as I saw the deer at 3:53. If the deer had moved faster and taken the whole lane I'd have passed it in the other lane. The oncoming car wasn't that close. But you must also be able to stop in this distance, because the obstacle might not be a deer you can steer around, it might be a fallen tree that blocks the whole road. You're certainly right that many human drivers would not do better than the Tesla here, but we should expect the Tesla to be better than a bad human driver.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  It's interesting to watch the continued narrative shift away from the original sales pitch of self-driving as a solution to human fallibility even at low autonomy levels to stuff like "you wouldn't expect a human to do better in the same situation." It's like that scene in The Simpsons with Homer chasing the grill as the pig atop it connects with increasingly nasty things as he yells "it's still good!"
timerol 5y ago
Speed limits are a maximum, not a minimum. With limited visibility in fog or snow, it is extremely common to see cars going 10+ mph under the speed limit. The speed limit is supposed to be the maximum appropriate speed in ideal conditions. In practice almost no one treats it that way, but that's the philosophy by which it was designed. They take into account the clear area on the side of the road, sight lines, and the curve of the road itself.

leereeves 5y ago

I'm not talking about situations where something jumps out of nowhere or a meteor falls out of the sky onto the road. This deer didn't jump out onto the road. It slowly walked out onto the road; it was visible near the edge of the car's vision; and it was easy to anticipate that it might walk in front of the car. I've encountered many situations like this without hitting the animal. I would slow down and move aside to give the deer room, starting as soon as I saw the deer at 3:53. If the deer had moved faster and taken the whole lane I'd have passed it in the other lane. The oncoming car wasn't that close. But you must also be able to stop in this distance, because the obstacle might not be a deer you can steer around, it might be a fallen tree that blocks the whole road. You're certainly right that many human drivers would not do better than the Tesla here, but we should expect the Tesla to be better than a bad human driver.

mkr-hn 5y ago
It's interesting to watch the continued narrative shift away from the original sales pitch of self-driving as a solution to human fallibility even at low autonomy levels to stuff like "you wouldn't expect a human to do better in the same situation." It's like that scene in The Simpsons with Homer chasing the grill as the pig atop it connects with increasingly nasty things as he yells "it's still good!"

timerol 5y ago

Speed limits are a maximum, not a minimum. With limited visibility in fog or snow, it is extremely common to see cars going 10+ mph under the speed limit. The speed limit is supposed to be the maximum appropriate speed in ideal conditions. In practice almost no one treats it that way, but that's the philosophy by which it was designed. They take into account the clear area on the side of the road, sight lines, and the curve of the road itself.