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A comment on Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and that’s why they get hit’. Parent comment

Re:Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and t... by Bartweiss on Monday October 16, 2017 @02:15PM (#15485396)
Crossing solid lines (or crossing a gore, at least) is illegal in my state.

Meanwhile, a lot of highway on-ramps are painted with single-lane-width, high-angle merges that are dangerous to adhere to - they leave you making a ~30 degree turn while accelerating into traffic. As a result, everyone starts their merge early in the gore area, matches speed, and merges at a gentle angle.

(The road designers presumably know this, and keep the marked path narrow regardless so that drivers won't attempt to form multiple lanes.)

This is a pretty great example of what I'm describing - I don't think people make great decisions about violating driving rules, but I also don't think it's fair to call safe decisions "inadvertent". Not breaking that law is genuinely dangerous, and people violate it specifically to be safer.

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Re:Self-driving car accidents: Robot drivers are ‘odd, and t... by mikeash on Monday October 16, 2017 @02:44PM (#15485639)
I think you're attributing way too much thought and care to the average driver. I see people merge early like you describe all over the place where it's completely unnecessary. It's probably not a conscious choice for safety over obeying the rules, it's just random idiocy that happens to work better in this case.
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