Daniel4

Like stopping at red lights, stop signs and amber lights? Being rear-ended in cases like these indicate the car behind is following to closely. And, yes, we've been taught to follow at a safe distance exactly for cases like these and other cases where the lead car has to unexpectedly stop.

As I've mentioned many times before, if self-driving cars are programmed to follow the rules of the road, which includes safe driving practices during collisions, we'll know which cars were manually driven because it'll be manually driven cars causing collisions.

CliffordK

There are two ways to approach traffic lights.

1. Timing Lights
   Take it easy approaching the next light, and gently coast through the light just as it turns green. This, of course, saves on gas and perhaps wear on the car. But, it is not without issues, as one times the lights wrong, and slams on one's brakes, or shoots into the intersection at speed with a legal green light, but before the intersection completely clears (bicycles?)
   .
2. Race to the lext Light
   As soon as the light turns green, pedal to the metal, screeching tires. Then just before slamming into the stopped car ahead, slam on the brakes.
   Good way to burn gas and wear out brakes. And, the overall result is white knuckles, and it may well be slower than the coasting method above.
   Risks, of course, including going too fast, as well as abruptly stopping in front of following cars.

A following car, of course, should be able to have enough buffer to deal with abrupt stops (or even to predict when the car in front may stop), but abruptly stopping does create a risk.

Ideally, one will be driving somewhat in the middle between the two extremes. And, say the self driving car leans towards one behavior extreme or another, it creates a hazard.

One can't just assume the road will always be clear in front, and situations will never change. That cyclist that gets caught by a light change?

mamonahan

I agree

grayEZrider

I think the next and most effective version of AV will be PARTIAL evaluation and control in normally driven cars to "auto-correct" and buffer poor driving habits and driver errors. The first things to be required by law (big brother's constant concern for safety of course) would be prevention of exceeding speed limits, keeping stop light intersections clear, lane hop-scotching and passing on the right. Keeping cars from driving or parking in bike lanes probably won't be included.

CliffordK

A lot of that is already in process.

We have cruise controls that automatically slow down as traffic ahead slows.

Lane Departure Systems. There was a complaint posted here earlier about a car with lane departure controls that forced a close pass of a bicycle. I don't remember all the circumstances.

Automatic braking. Volvo claims that their system, had it been unmodified would have detected and stopped for the pedestrian in front of the car.

The Tesla "Autopilot" is essentially the sum of all of those programs. Auto braking, auto lane departure, etc. To the point that drivers have discovered they can take their hands off the wheel and do other things (and then kill themselves for going beyond the design parameters).

Speed Limit Detection? Perhaps that will come quickly. No reason not to use GPS and bluetooth or WIFI to set/detect speed limits.

Daniel4

A lot of new cars have as options a forward-collision-mitigation system and other features for bad drivers.

So what's missing is for self-driving cars to have a reverse proximity detector indicating to the vehicle who is following that it is following too closely for its speed and road condition. Many times when I approach an amber light, I take a quick glance at my rear view mirror before tapping my brakes.

A few weeks ago, I was driving in a suburban city outside of Toronto. It was a long highway-like road with a posted speed limit of 70km/hr. But I hit every red light. Lights would actually turn red as the traffic approached the intersection. I said to my wife why the speed limit was 70. It should be 50 instead. But I'm guessing that the design of the road would make drivers want to speed so traffic engineers had to find a way to control the flow. This kind of thing would only frustrate any driver and make them want to go at 80 to beat the next light and create collisions with self-driving cars.