When driving on surface streets, I do my best to track what's happening wherever in front, not just on the roadway. Given all the sensors on a self-driving car, why can't it detect all moving objects, including those off the roadway, but approaching?
Its all about what things are hiding behind the opacity. Blind spots are one thing, but if you jump right in front of a car out of nowhere from a place totally invisible to a sensor, its a totally different case.
Yes, of course. But that isn't what happened here, right? A woman and bicycle on a median should have been quite obvious. I don't even see substantial landscaping on the median.[0]
We can try. In theory, each self-driving vehicle doesn't have to drive in isolation; they can be networked together and take advantage of each other's sensors and other sensors permanently installed as part of the road infrastructure.
That would increase the chance a particular vehicle could avoid an accident which it couldn't, on its own, anticipate.
Also the fact that most people now carry tracking devices. And that more and more, there are cameras everywhere. So there's potential for self-driving vehicles to know where everyone is.
It would be much safer if all roadways with speed limits over a few km/h were fenced, with tunnels or bridges for pedestrian crossing. Arguably, we would have that now, but for legislative efforts by vehicle manufacturers many decades ago. Maybe we'll get there with The Boring Company.
"Most people" (which is, in reality, "most of my geek friends with high disposable income") shifts to "everyone" by the end of sentence. Also, my devices seem to know where I am...within a few city blocks: I do not like your requirement of always-on mandatory tracking, both from privacy and battery life POVs.
Even worse, this has major false negatives: it's not a probation tracker device - if I leave it at home, am I now fair game for AVs? And even if I have it with me and fine position is requested, rarely do I get beyond "close to a corner of X an Y Street," usually the precision tops out at tens of ft: worse than useless for real-time traffic detection.
Moreover, your proposal for car-only roadways is only reasonable for high-speed, separated ways; I sure hope you are not proposing fencing off streets (as would be the case here: 50 km/h > "a few km/h", this is the usual city speed limit).
OK, it was a dumb idea. Mostly dark humor. Reflecting my concerns about smartphones etc tracking location. But I do see that GPS accuracy for smartphones is about 5 meters,[0] which is close to being useful to alert vehicles to be cautious. And yes, it wouldn't protect everyone, and would probably cause too many false positives. And it's a privacy nightmare.
Some do argue that speed limits for unfenced roadways within cities ought to be 30 km/h or less. And although fatalities are uncommon at 30 km/h, severe injuries aren't. I live in a community where the speed limit is half that. But there's no easy solution, given how prevalent motor vehicles have become. Except perhaps self-driving ones.
