7 ms·

It’s interesting that they are doing this, but it’s not particularly novel. The vast majority of accidents happen on roads that meet certain criteria: - Speed

It’s interesting that they are doing this, but it’s not particularly novel. The vast majority of accidents happen on roads that meet certain criteria: - Speed Limit > 30mph and < 60 mph - lots of driveways and left turns - moderately heavy traffic at some times of day but not constant gridlock Just picture the commercial drag strip and the collector roads that wind between huge garden apartment complexes or gated subdivision. Accidents are especially likely where two such streets cross. Why? These are the futon of transportation. They’re designed first for high speed and volume of traffic, but also high direct access to the surrounding businesses. These objectives are horribly in conflict and not safe to combine. People want to drive FAST on these, and they do, but they are frustrated by the stop and go nature and there is a constant stream of “surprises” when other drivers take a chance on a turn through a tight gap or run a light that just turned red because they’re sick of waiting. One moment of distraction for either party and BAM, a crash. Good streets for local access are small and slow moving (high volume can be accommodated by a parallel network of such streets, ie “a grid” but it doesn’t have to be perfect squares). Good roads for high speed are wide, clear, and simple, with lots of extra room to cushion mistakes (medians, shoulders, etc.) All this model has really done is learned to recognize new “stroads” that don’t have a crash history yet, but will soon.

hetspookjee 5y ago
Well I think it might actually democratise some of the business logic you mention. Sure it makes sense from an experts view, yet these designs are still made plentiful. So what if you embed this approach in your development plan to have it develop around it. Eg implement it as a cost function in the overall implementation. I think that’s pretty sweet, and it can also validate the statement you made in one fell swoop because it is a model.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>These are the futon of transportation. Not getting the futon analogy?
- boyd 5y ago
  Futons are neither good couches nor good beds.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Which is not generally true if you have good (i.e. more expensive) futons.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      And likewise if you throw a dedicated turn lane and some sidewalks at these roads they do a pretty ok job.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        Unprotected lefts have been widely recognized as one of the tasks that are especially difficult for autonomous driving to handle--which, of course, means that they can be relatively tricky for people too. And, yes, well-defined places to walk and cross streets help pedestrians--at least if they use those defined places which they often don't in cities.
      - AlotOfReading 5y ago
        Absolutely not. If you're ever in Calgary, take a walk along Macleod trail near the Chinook centre. The sidewalks are filled with face-height street signage in the walkway, the sidewalks randomly venture between vehicle lanes, they'll sometimes just end, there are pedestrian road crossings without markings or signage, etc. It's one of the most unpleasant built environments I've ever encountered, up there with polluted Soviet mining cities.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I'm sure someone somewhere has managed to do it wrong but where I live it's done decently well and there's a fair number of main roads that meet the description I gave and are fine as a pedestrian, not perfect but fine.
mc32 5y ago
I remember reading somewhere some transit authority was trying to improve traffic flow into either the Lincoln tunnel or Holland tunnel. The result of the simulation was both interesting but also unrealistic. In order to improve intake from the feeder streets the simulation recommended something no normal drivers would do in rush hour: IIRC it wanted drivers to obediently and predictably do alternate lane merges as well as some intricate braided flow pattern. It was great if you were working with logical components but utterly impractical in reality. I don’t think any semblance of that system was ever implemented as it was obvious it would fail worse than the current bad design.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Zipper merges! It’s my understanding that that’s a norm in some countries, but that’s a social issue and not an infrastructure one.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Yes but more than just zipper merges. There was street realignment which also included a braided flow (crossing lanes because not only would they need to funnel traffic from so of canal to the tunnel but also allow them to get off on a local street before the point of no return to the tunnel and same for the ‘uptown’ side) anyway it was an over complicated solution that only worked in simulation and not with real cars and trucks so none of it was implemented.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I'm less familiar with downtown but the whole area around where the Lincoln Tunnel access is in Midtown is a snarled mess. You have the Port Authority, aka one of the world's worst bus terminals, and more generally just a bunch of intersections that are such a mess that you need cops directing traffic because otherwise you just get gridlock between cars trying to make turns and pedestrians trying to get across streets.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Most of society seems to have a problem with the notion of allowing someone else first ultimately means faster for everyone vs the asshats that actively speed up to block/deny someone from being able to merge ahead of them. To me, these are the same people that complain about a single longer queue rather than individual queues for each register.
adrianN 5y ago
So called Stroads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Stroads are really terrible. It's amazing how they can be legal in US.
  - avs733 5y ago
    Because the engineering design doesn’t just prioritize cars it fundamentally presumes cars. If the result is something unsafe: 1) they will use individual responsibility arguments on drivers to blame them 2) blame pedestrians or cyclists or whoever for failing to defer to cars It’s not a legality problem it’s a philosophy one.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      > It’s not a legality problem it’s a philosophy one. This is not a dichotomy. The legal aspect comes from the "philosophical" one that comes for lobby money.
      - avs733 5y ago
        I agree, but I think for the purposes of this conversation it fits...laws emerge from the philosophy. simply making an effort to change the laws won't change the philosophy, it will just be an anachronism standing against the dominant philosophy.
    - landryraccoon 5y ago
      This doesn't fully explain the phenomenon because stroads are terrible for drivers. They cause congestion and are much slower than actual roads, while still being unfriendly to pedestrians and bikers. They're bad for drivers and bad for pedestrians.
      - 5y ago
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Futons work pretty well unless you need a 10/10ths bed or a 10/10ths couch. These roads are the same. They're fine until you load them with enough traffic to make all the intersections dangerous but not enough to slow them down.
- airza 5y ago
  They're really not; even outside of their horrendous safety record they are also responsible for the death of pedestrian traffic in the US and canada
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    To be clear, high-end futons are actually really nice. Stroads have horrible safety records, futons do not. However there is always a trip and fall hazard around furniture. Please exercise caution when maneuvering indoors.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    What's your point? Every road with mixed traffic is going to be responsible for the death of pedestrians. If pedestrians were on highways they would get killed there too. These roads aren't ideal but they're everywhere because they're cheap. Unless you can wave a magic wand and make municipalities rich enough to carpet bomb everything with traffic lights, dedicated turn lanes and sidewalks there are going to be tradeoffs.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      I think he meant people don't walk anymore because the roads are fundamentally made for cars.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      I highly recommend the linked video (posted just above). It is not a natural law that pedestrians die on streets/roads, but it is a result of this typical North American road design.
    - 5y ago
what_is_orcas 5y ago
I talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I live in an area with a lot of traffic fatalities and it seems to me to be, at least in part, an economic issue. I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of my US city. There are a few major roads headed toward the more affluent neighborhoods and downtown. What I see when I run along/across or drive along those roads is mostly through-traffic. There aren't a lot of "shops" in my neighborhood, but one or two strip-malls and a few gas-stations and fast-food "restaurants". Anecdata: In my experience, the areas with less through-traffic (and thus high-danger traffic) are areas with destinations, whether they're shops for goods and/or services or restaurants (that don't involve cars). The reason I think it's economic is because it's not just about the customers/consumers visiting these areas, but the workers. I'd bet that a not-insignificant number of workers in my neighborhood drive to another neighborhood for work, but the inverse is probably not true (that a lot of folks from other neighborhoods drive here for work). I think part of the solution is to make communities smaller and more friendly to their inhabitants. There should be opportunities for work in these poorer neighborhoods, and that means the services to support them. It doesn't matter what number is on the speed limit sign on these major roads, people will drive 50 anyway (I have been passed in the turn lane several times because I drive the speed limit on a 2-lane (one each direction) + turn-lane road).
- prawn 5y ago
  On your last point, a friend who works in urban planning talks about the idea of designing roads to encourage a certain speed rather than relying on speed limits. Narrower streets or intrusions for greenery, etc will tend to lower the speed of traffic.
flashfaffe2 5y ago
So is AI really needed here?
jvanderbot 5y ago
It would be impossible for a non-expert to recognize these roads without hand-holding training. There are few quantitative criteria ("lots of"), and many that are only understood relative to a persons experience ("Just picture ... "). Yet, they are well-defined and the problem is well understood. Perfect application of AI/ML. The reasoning behind AI/ML does not need to be mysterious for it to be an appropriate solution. "All it has done is <Something I understand> " is not a valid criticism of the solution. "All it has done is add these values and subtract these values" would not be a valid criticism of a banking application, for example.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I once heard AI described as (paraphrasing), "Imagine you have an army of seven-year-olds that you can instruct to do a simple task for 24 hours a day"
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
In the 70s and 80s it seemed common for these types of situations to be handled by access roads that ran parallel to the through road. The access road handled all of the individual driveways, was lower speed, and had controlled entrances and exits to the through road. Access roads are still being built but they seem to be much shorter and serve few entities than the designs from the 70s and 80s, which results in more intersections between them and the main through road. My best guess for this design change is that businesses further along the access roads were at a disadvantage as they were less convenient to get to than businesses or properties closer to the entrance point.

hetspookjee 5y ago

Well I think it might actually democratise some of the business logic you mention. Sure it makes sense from an experts view, yet these designs are still made plentiful. So what if you embed this approach in your development plan to have it develop around it. Eg implement it as a cost function in the overall implementation. I think that’s pretty sweet, and it can also validate the statement you made in one fell swoop because it is a model.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>These are the futon of transportation. Not getting the futon analogy?

boyd 5y ago
Futons are neither good couches nor good beds.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Which is not generally true if you have good (i.e. more expensive) futons.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    And likewise if you throw a dedicated turn lane and some sidewalks at these roads they do a pretty ok job.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Unprotected lefts have been widely recognized as one of the tasks that are especially difficult for autonomous driving to handle--which, of course, means that they can be relatively tricky for people too. And, yes, well-defined places to walk and cross streets help pedestrians--at least if they use those defined places which they often don't in cities.
    - AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Absolutely not. If you're ever in Calgary, take a walk along Macleod trail near the Chinook centre. The sidewalks are filled with face-height street signage in the walkway, the sidewalks randomly venture between vehicle lanes, they'll sometimes just end, there are pedestrian road crossings without markings or signage, etc. It's one of the most unpleasant built environments I've ever encountered, up there with polluted Soviet mining cities.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        I'm sure someone somewhere has managed to do it wrong but where I live it's done decently well and there's a fair number of main roads that meet the description I gave and are fine as a pedestrian, not perfect but fine.

mc32 5y ago

I remember reading somewhere some transit authority was trying to improve traffic flow into either the Lincoln tunnel or Holland tunnel. The result of the simulation was both interesting but also unrealistic. In order to improve intake from the feeder streets the simulation recommended something no normal drivers would do in rush hour: IIRC it wanted drivers to obediently and predictably do alternate lane merges as well as some intricate braided flow pattern. It was great if you were working with logical components but utterly impractical in reality. I don’t think any semblance of that system was ever implemented as it was obvious it would fail worse than the current bad design.

ashtonkem 5y ago
Zipper merges! It’s my understanding that that’s a norm in some countries, but that’s a social issue and not an infrastructure one.
- mc32 5y ago
  Yes but more than just zipper merges. There was street realignment which also included a braided flow (crossing lanes because not only would they need to funnel traffic from so of canal to the tunnel but also allow them to get off on a local street before the point of no return to the tunnel and same for the ‘uptown’ side) anyway it was an over complicated solution that only worked in simulation and not with real cars and trucks so none of it was implemented.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I'm less familiar with downtown but the whole area around where the Lincoln Tunnel access is in Midtown is a snarled mess. You have the Port Authority, aka one of the world's worst bus terminals, and more generally just a bunch of intersections that are such a mess that you need cops directing traffic because otherwise you just get gridlock between cars trying to make turns and pedestrians trying to get across streets.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Most of society seems to have a problem with the notion of allowing someone else first ultimately means faster for everyone vs the asshats that actively speed up to block/deny someone from being able to merge ahead of them. To me, these are the same people that complain about a single longer queue rather than individual queues for each register.

adrianN 5y ago

So called Stroads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

goodpoint 5y ago
Stroads are really terrible. It's amazing how they can be legal in US.
- avs733 5y ago
  Because the engineering design doesn’t just prioritize cars it fundamentally presumes cars. If the result is something unsafe: 1) they will use individual responsibility arguments on drivers to blame them 2) blame pedestrians or cyclists or whoever for failing to defer to cars It’s not a legality problem it’s a philosophy one.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > It’s not a legality problem it’s a philosophy one. This is not a dichotomy. The legal aspect comes from the "philosophical" one that comes for lobby money.
    - avs733 5y ago
      I agree, but I think for the purposes of this conversation it fits...laws emerge from the philosophy. simply making an effort to change the laws won't change the philosophy, it will just be an anachronism standing against the dominant philosophy.
  - landryraccoon 5y ago
    This doesn't fully explain the phenomenon because stroads are terrible for drivers. They cause congestion and are much slower than actual roads, while still being unfriendly to pedestrians and bikers. They're bad for drivers and bad for pedestrians.
    - 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Futons work pretty well unless you need a 10/10ths bed or a 10/10ths couch. These roads are the same. They're fine until you load them with enough traffic to make all the intersections dangerous but not enough to slow them down.

airza 5y ago
They're really not; even outside of their horrendous safety record they are also responsible for the death of pedestrian traffic in the US and canada
- nerdponx 5y ago
  To be clear, high-end futons are actually really nice. Stroads have horrible safety records, futons do not. However there is always a trip and fall hazard around furniture. Please exercise caution when maneuvering indoors.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  What's your point? Every road with mixed traffic is going to be responsible for the death of pedestrians. If pedestrians were on highways they would get killed there too. These roads aren't ideal but they're everywhere because they're cheap. Unless you can wave a magic wand and make municipalities rich enough to carpet bomb everything with traffic lights, dedicated turn lanes and sidewalks there are going to be tradeoffs.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I think he meant people don't walk anymore because the roads are fundamentally made for cars.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I highly recommend the linked video (posted just above). It is not a natural law that pedestrians die on streets/roads, but it is a result of this typical North American road design.
  - 5y ago

what_is_orcas 5y ago

I talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I live in an area with a lot of traffic fatalities and it seems to me to be, at least in part, an economic issue. I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods on the outskirts of my US city. There are a few major roads headed toward the more affluent neighborhoods and downtown. What I see when I run along/across or drive along those roads is mostly through-traffic. There aren't a lot of "shops" in my neighborhood, but one or two strip-malls and a few gas-stations and fast-food "restaurants". Anecdata: In my experience, the areas with less through-traffic (and thus high-danger traffic) are areas with destinations, whether they're shops for goods and/or services or restaurants (that don't involve cars). The reason I think it's economic is because it's not just about the customers/consumers visiting these areas, but the workers. I'd bet that a not-insignificant number of workers in my neighborhood drive to another neighborhood for work, but the inverse is probably not true (that a lot of folks from other neighborhoods drive here for work). I think part of the solution is to make communities smaller and more friendly to their inhabitants. There should be opportunities for work in these poorer neighborhoods, and that means the services to support them. It doesn't matter what number is on the speed limit sign on these major roads, people will drive 50 anyway (I have been passed in the turn lane several times because I drive the speed limit on a 2-lane (one each direction) + turn-lane road).

prawn 5y ago
On your last point, a friend who works in urban planning talks about the idea of designing roads to encourage a certain speed rather than relying on speed limits. Narrower streets or intrusions for greenery, etc will tend to lower the speed of traffic.

flashfaffe2 5y ago

So is AI really needed here?

jvanderbot 5y ago

It would be impossible for a non-expert to recognize these roads without hand-holding training. There are few quantitative criteria ("lots of"), and many that are only understood relative to a persons experience ("Just picture ... "). Yet, they are well-defined and the problem is well understood. Perfect application of AI/ML. The reasoning behind AI/ML does not need to be mysterious for it to be an appropriate solution. "All it has done is <Something I understand> " is not a valid criticism of the solution. "All it has done is add these values and subtract these values" would not be a valid criticism of a banking application, for example.

brundolf 5y ago
I once heard AI described as (paraphrasing), "Imagine you have an army of seven-year-olds that you can instruct to do a simple task for 24 hours a day"

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

In the 70s and 80s it seemed common for these types of situations to be handled by access roads that ran parallel to the through road. The access road handled all of the individual driveways, was lower speed, and had controlled entrances and exits to the through road. Access roads are still being built but they seem to be much shorter and serve few entities than the designs from the 70s and 80s, which results in more intersections between them and the main through road. My best guess for this design change is that businesses further along the access roads were at a disadvantage as they were less convenient to get to than businesses or properties closer to the entrance point.