Most street legal vehicles utilize a combination of three colored lights: white for headlights and reverse lights, red for tail and brake lights, and orange for blinkers....
Mercedes-Benz debuts turquoise exterior lights to indicate the car is self-driving | A visual indicator for other drivers::undefined
It's less about being careful around the car and more about how you might interact with it. For example, honking the horn or flashing your beams wouldn't have the same effect. On that note, it might be nice to have some way of telling a self driving car to temporarily use elevated sensors or something, the same way a horn tells a driver that something is wrong. As long as there's a way to prevent abuse of the system
I don't know much about these lights, but we COULD use some new standards in general with how many things have changed with cars in recent years. Brake lights on electric vehicles being another thing to consider.
You're still the driver in the self-driving car. If someone honks, you have pedals and a wheel in front of you. It always comes down to driver neglect. It's like blaming the cruise control for speeding, but giving cruise control more responsibilities.
As a Level 3 system, the driver is permitted to take their hands off the wheel, their feet off the pedals, and divert their attention away from the road. [...]
The turquoise markers will alert other drivers to the fact that your vehicle is driving itself, so hopefully they won't be alarmed if they see you doing other things while behind the wheel.
To play the devil's advocate: early cars needed a guy with a flag im front of them because people were used to horses and carriages and not automobiles. After a while that stopped being a thing.
There are warning signs to indicate people learning to drive in ex-Soviet countries (such yellow triangles to put behind the glass), even though they are driving with an instructor.
Now when I think about it, it's been some time since I've seen that sign.
Somewhat similarly in the Netherlands, in case you fail your practical driving exam three times you still get a license but you can only drive cars marked with special yellow number plates.
They're pretty common in the US as well, but it's just a sign that says "student driver".
I've also seen orange triangles used in vehicles like horse-drawn carriages that can't go as fast as regular traffic, mostly in connection to Amish people.
The technology will never be ready if you don't test it.
And I would argue we DON'T need warning lights since, while imperfect, most self-driving tech is already vastly better than your average driver. We should have warning lights for cars that DON'T have self-driving.
This is ultimately why we will NEVER have self-driving cars en masse, because society isn't willing to take the necessary risks to improve the safety of everyone on the road.
Don't let random customers test it and instead use heavily trained, specialized test drivers
Require permitting and, e.g., an obstacle course before letting a company's software be randomly updated and thrown on the road?
Why is there this constant false dichotomy implying that the only way to test self driving cars is a wild west of no regulation?
And also who said that self driving cars are safer than humans? Tesla's numbers are all statistical lies (in fact Teslas were recently shown to have the most accidents), Cruise just shutdown in SF because they were a liability, and Waymo is heavily limited in its time/weather/areas for driving.
Sure. But we're jumping into the deep end by legally allowing the driver to be exempt from distracted driving laws. There's a big difference between testing the technology and relying on the technology.
Aye, credit where it's due; this is a great way to differentiate between human and machine controlled devices. It's detectable by both, and can help in cases where people blame the autodrive, or car companies claim human error.
On that note, can we talk about how shit a lot of reverse lights are? In addition to indicating that you're backing up, they're also supposed to function as a sort of rear-facing headlight so you can see what your backing up towards, but their size, placement, and brightness on a lot of cars makes them pretty much useless for that in a lot of cases.
I'm not saying they need to be as bright as your regular headlights, that would be serious overkill, but they should probably be noticeably brighter than a turquoise self-driving indicator light would ever need to be.
They're not supposed to be rear-facing headlights. You don't even have to have 2 of them (1 is acceptable as long as it's visible enough). And unlike every other light, there's no restriction on where it goes. It's almost like it was an afterthought when they were writing the regulations.
Even if this would be a good idea, you can't just put some non regulated lights on a car. This would need a law change in Germany to be approved and would probably take years of burocrazy until she get beards figured out the exact hue these lights need to emit.
But I guess Mercedes already wrote that law for our government to copy. How convenient.
How is this a safety feature though? Are they saying we have to be extra careful around self-driving cars? If so then the car shouldn't be considered to be self-driving. If not, then what's the use?
No law change needed, the StZVO is a mere decree. Also EU law takes precedence Mercedes probably isn't even going to bother getting it through German bureaucracy but will go straight to Brussels.
The point is that innovation should always come with regulations. This is not the wild west over here. We like to be alive and companies usually don't care about that but only care about profits. So it's a good idea that they can't just do whatever they want. If they invent something actually new I'm quite happy that a third party will have a look at it before it's mounted to a vehicle that kills me. I know that in the us this is handled the other way around but I guess the statistics for car accidents agrees with me.
This would not be illegal in the US, except some states forbid blue lights because they're reserved for law enforcement. I haven't seen any state regulation that rigorously defines "blue" like the NHTSA references to CIE 1931.
They would also have to be distinct enough to not cause confusion with the existing lights.
He's referring to a group of people they intentionally cut others off and slam on the brakes to induce an accident that they can sue over. And it happens a lot. Dash cams are saviors.
Scofflaw - Why does the person in the self-driving car care? They're just chilling. Zooming ahead of other cars doesn't get you more than a few minutes ahead. If that's really important to you, you should have left your house a few minutes earlier.
Scammer - These cars are covered in cameras and radars. These are the opposite of the cars you want to jump in front of (except Tesla, which sucks). They'll probably just film you launching yourself from the curb and stop before they hit you. I guess you can get on America's Funniest Home Videos?
I was just thinking, gosh, it's been awhile since a new car signal dropped. This is a super interesting idea - not sure if it's a GOOD idea but seems worth exploring
I think it's a pretty good idea, at least for this period of transition towards self-driving vehicles. I think it's useful information for other drivers to know that the vehicle is being controlled by a computer and not a real human.
Kinda disagree, at least in the US the trogs are going to purposely mess with these vehicles as they already do but easier to target. But at least other countries don't have lowbrow coal rollers.
My aftermarket Openpilot setup does this with a camera pointed at the driver. I'm good about paying attention but apparently if it alerts too many times that you're distracted it will disable itself until you restart the car.
The reason for these lights is that Mercedes has Level 3 autonomy, so the car can self drive without the driver taking attention - for example here in Germany it is illegal (and there are photo traps) to use your phone on while driving. The lights are a solution to the exemption that you are allowed to use your phone while your car is on Level 3 autonomy.
On level 3 you need to be able to take over again within 30 seconds after the car actively asks you to do so.
As someone living in a country which haven't seen any self-driving cars I'd just be a lot more cautious/careful if I'd ever get close to anything with those lights.
That would be great for the driver himself. The amount of times I've had to play leap frogs with someone only to be given a dirty look when hes the one that constantly slows down and accelerates.
If only there was some kind of universal communication technology that didn't require line of sight, worked over distances out to say 100m and was reasonably inexpensive to implement...then we wouldn't need to communicate using the modern equivalent of semaphore.
The point of the lights obviously being to push the responsibility onto the drivers around the self-driven car, rather than the manufacturer who actually made the faulty autopilot.
And I live in California. Of course we're going to help rich people avoid all consequences of their actions. Because paying attention to where your 1 ton metal missile is going is too much to ask. But only if you can afford the turquoise lights.
Mercedes is a luxury brand. And as the article states, in California and Nevada drivers will get a legal pass on distracted driving if the system and lights are on.
So the drivers of these luxury cars are no longer responsible for what the car does.
Same reason at this point as "Student Driver" bumper stickers - so you know it's inexperienced and may behave weirdly, so maybe keep a bit more distance than usual or something.
That's what I thought. I can only imagine idiots will see it and try fuck with it. Anyone else be like, "Okay... So just keep doing what I'm currently doing."
It's marketing, if anything.
My theory on Audi bringing out animated indicators was that they were quickly getting a damaging reputation of Audi drivers not using indicators; a reputation their competitor BMW is negatively married to. To prevent this, they appealed to making them unique and special, no one else had them, so the drivers would want to use them. Thus actively mitigating brand damage on BMW levels.
I would love to have an indicator for adaptive cruise control because the way it only reacts to the car right in front of you rather aggressively means it causes shockwave traffic jams unless the human driver behind you keeps enough distance.
The ACC in my car maintains a good bit of distance to the car ahead and doesn't respond suddenly to things coming closer than that distance. I've rarely if ever seen it brake inappropriately.