... and that's what I actually took away from this article.
It's not that front brake lights are necessarily a great idea, but that safety is improved with the communication of states and state changes are entirely automated.
Imagine a future car that knows that you're about to change lanes because you just checked your mirror, glanced over your shoulder, and repositioned your hands on the wheel -- so it turns on the turn signal the moment you begin to move the vehicle toward the other lane. Maybe it even has multiple states - what we have today for "I'm definitely turning/merging", and a dimmer or less saturated pulsing light for "the car thinks the driver is probably about to turn".
That could get too complex to be practical quickly. AI/FSD systems have a lot more "input bandwidth", though, so maybe make those partial/inferred indicators IR so humans don't see them but it communicates to FSD systems.
Actually, scratch that. In addition to signals that don't require manual activation, add a 360º IR emitter on top of the vehicle that constantly streams real-time telemetry. FSD could then integrate the actual, specific state of the vehicles around them into its sensor suite.
If it's bidirectional, you could even have a situation where two FSD systems meeting on a narrow road could silently and nearly instantly negotiate a plan to pass one another with minimal disruption.
This is one of the reason that lane detection is great. My Dad was an inconsistent user of the blinker but then changed when he got a car with that feature ; in his car there's feedback if you switch lanes without signaling which ends up being a tool that teaches signaling.
Between that and the implementation of momentary signal activation - when you push the stalk just a bit, but not enough to "click" into place and stay there; it blinks ~3 times and stops - you have a nice carrot/stick pair.
It's annoying when the warning goes off when you change lanes without signaling AND it's easier to signal because you only have to tap the stalk once instead of twice.
Everywhere I've ever lived or driven, the vast majority of people use them consistently - at least when appropriate. The most common place I see people not using them is when changing lanes, and then usually only if there's a vehicle in their target lane close enough that it would matter.
Do bad drivers exist? Obviously.
Actually, now that I really think about it, there are two places I've driven where I can recall seeing people merging and turning frequently without signaling: New York and Los Angeles.
In those cases, my guess is that it's partly cultural but predominantly driven by task saturation. When you're operating a vehicle at 80 MPH surrounded by other cars in rush hour traffic on a six-lane highway, sometimes you have to focus on staying alive.
Aviation has a saying that describes this: "Aviate, navigate, communicate". Basically, your first priority is to ensure the immediate safety of your vehicle. After that, you focus on identifying a clear path that doesn't conflict with the path of other vehicles. Only after those things are done do you worry about telling others what's going on. In the air that's the radio; in a car that's your turn signals and horn.
If task saturation is actually what's happening here, then I would expect to see turn signal usage decrease as traffic density and speed increase. I bet, given the access to data like live traffic cameras that we have today and the current generation of multimodal generative AI models, I could whip up at least a first pass at measuring this without much time investment.
> I mean turn signals work great (oh wait no one uses them)
That's a very culture-dependent thing, it's much more unusual for me to see someone not using turn signals in Sweden than it is in the USA or Brazil. If no one around you uses them I'd blame driving licence requirements, enforcement, and training for it.
Even in the US, there are large regional differences. In my part of the US, people use their turns signals probably 80-90% of the time, but I've been in several parts of the US where they don't.
OTOH, there are other bad driving habits that more common where I am than in many other places, such as running red lights.
yCombLinks|9 months ago
Ancapistani|9 months ago
It's not that front brake lights are necessarily a great idea, but that safety is improved with the communication of states and state changes are entirely automated.
Imagine a future car that knows that you're about to change lanes because you just checked your mirror, glanced over your shoulder, and repositioned your hands on the wheel -- so it turns on the turn signal the moment you begin to move the vehicle toward the other lane. Maybe it even has multiple states - what we have today for "I'm definitely turning/merging", and a dimmer or less saturated pulsing light for "the car thinks the driver is probably about to turn".
That could get too complex to be practical quickly. AI/FSD systems have a lot more "input bandwidth", though, so maybe make those partial/inferred indicators IR so humans don't see them but it communicates to FSD systems.
Actually, scratch that. In addition to signals that don't require manual activation, add a 360º IR emitter on top of the vehicle that constantly streams real-time telemetry. FSD could then integrate the actual, specific state of the vehicles around them into its sensor suite.
If it's bidirectional, you could even have a situation where two FSD systems meeting on a narrow road could silently and nearly instantly negotiate a plan to pass one another with minimal disruption.
hackeraccount|9 months ago
Ancapistani|9 months ago
Between that and the implementation of momentary signal activation - when you push the stalk just a bit, but not enough to "click" into place and stay there; it blinks ~3 times and stops - you have a nice carrot/stick pair.
It's annoying when the warning goes off when you change lanes without signaling AND it's easier to signal because you only have to tap the stalk once instead of twice.
Ancapistani|9 months ago
Everywhere I've ever lived or driven, the vast majority of people use them consistently - at least when appropriate. The most common place I see people not using them is when changing lanes, and then usually only if there's a vehicle in their target lane close enough that it would matter.
Do bad drivers exist? Obviously.
Actually, now that I really think about it, there are two places I've driven where I can recall seeing people merging and turning frequently without signaling: New York and Los Angeles.
In those cases, my guess is that it's partly cultural but predominantly driven by task saturation. When you're operating a vehicle at 80 MPH surrounded by other cars in rush hour traffic on a six-lane highway, sometimes you have to focus on staying alive.
Aviation has a saying that describes this: "Aviate, navigate, communicate". Basically, your first priority is to ensure the immediate safety of your vehicle. After that, you focus on identifying a clear path that doesn't conflict with the path of other vehicles. Only after those things are done do you worry about telling others what's going on. In the air that's the radio; in a car that's your turn signals and horn.
Here's the Wikipedia article talking about this in the context of aviation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airmanship#Principles
If task saturation is actually what's happening here, then I would expect to see turn signal usage decrease as traffic density and speed increase. I bet, given the access to data like live traffic cameras that we have today and the current generation of multimodal generative AI models, I could whip up at least a first pass at measuring this without much time investment.
Great. Now I have yet another project :P
jalapeno_a|9 months ago
piva00|9 months ago
That's a very culture-dependent thing, it's much more unusual for me to see someone not using turn signals in Sweden than it is in the USA or Brazil. If no one around you uses them I'd blame driving licence requirements, enforcement, and training for it.
JohnFen|9 months ago
OTOH, there are other bad driving habits that more common where I am than in many other places, such as running red lights.
Larrikin|9 months ago