[joshspankit]

I’ve been reflecting on Musk’s “roads are designed for two eyes” quote. I’m not sure on the exact wording but he used it to justify dropping lidar and focusing on front-facing cameras.

What got missed, I think, is that there are many cases where having only two eyes fails drivers. The most dangerous driving most of us will ever do is because of some quirk of the landscape, or some long-forgotten legal battle over where the road should be, or because people are cramming more and more in to very limited space.

An excellent example that comes to mind is a steep hill leading up to a dense downtown. At the very top of the hill is an intersection with a two-way stop sign. You can’t see to the left because of the edge of a building, and the hill is steep enough that you have to kind of stomp on the gas to get up it after you stop. “Two eyes” utterly fails us here. If there were cameras facing left and right on each corner of the vehicle the problem would be solve as you could watch the oncoming lanes while stopped.

Here too, two eyes fails us. You have to already know about the train crossing, or hear it, or intuit it’s presence some other way because once you see it it’s so late that you need to slam the brakes to avoid hitting it.

[Symbiote]

The red lights off the crossing are very clear, even in the fog.

In any case, one should never drive so fast they can't stop within the visible distance.