This sounds too similar to victim blaming. In my opinion any action taken by someone who is about to be hit from behind in a low speed crash is likely to make the problem worse. I don't think that is the time to have a quick jerky motion into the shoulder of the road. Even honking the horn could distract or panic another driver that then causes a crash.
To me the solution is to eliminate distracted driving.
It knows the distance to the car in front and has a good idea of the rear car's speed. The only real variable is the weight of the approaching car but a pessimistic estimate could leave more margin to avoid touching the car in front.
When stopped in a place other drivers might not expect, just flashing the brake lights does wonders. Probably because human eyes and brains notice change much more readily than a solid light.
You should expect drivers to stop at intersections. You should normally leave enough space between you and the car in front to avoid rear-end collision, even if that car stops suddenly. And there's already a signal the car in front has slowed - their brake lights come on. (Maybe that's not a US thing though?)
The second point is completely off-topic, as the car in question had plenty of space between them and the Google car's rear-end. It just failed to notice it was not moving.
The last point is already addressed in my previous comment: a solid brake light is much less noticeable than a brake light coming on. In some countries in Europe it's relatively common to have blinking brake lights, but I don't think that's the case in the US.
These points are just basic human behaviour, and they aren't going away, no matter how contemptuous you are and how much you look down on other people.
This is bad driving. You use the brake lights (and if you haven't seen the break lights working, you use the visual speed til you confirm the break lights are working) to determine of a car is going to stop. You should never put yourself in a position where any other factors are involved in if the car in front of you will stop or not.
> a green light is a strong signal that makes people assume the other drivers are moving or are going to.
And such drivers are to be held responsible for crashes and should be educated when found. Those who do not change should lose the privilege of driving.
Roads signs are like compiler warnings, it's all cute and nice, but it's just characters on the screen anyone can physically ignore. Let's have roads with nasty speed bumps before all intersections, which are all annoying, impossible to cross fast, roundabouts. #haskell
er:
> The lane to the left of the Google AV was a left-turn-only lane. The vehicle waiting immediately behind the Google AV in the straight-only lane began to move forward when the green arrow left turn signal appeared (despite the signal for the straight-only lane remaining red) and collided with the rear bumper of the Google AV.
Are you talking about a different incident?
Watch the video. The self-driving car braked because the two cars in front of it did.
The car behind the self-driving car didn't stop though, which lead to the incident. Presumably because it didn't pay attention to the fact that the cars in front were not moving despite the green light.
I'm not sure I understand where this thread is leading.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
> GREEN means you may go on if the way is clear. Take special care if you intend to turn left or right and give way to pedestrians who are crossing"
You seem to be saying that people are shitty drivers and that we need to either just put up with it, or fit our cars to stop some careless inattentive idiot from driving into us.
Fuck that.
Bad drivers should learn to drive.
Lots of non-shitty drivers do not follow every road rule to the letter under every circumstance and, indeed, it's not always possible to especially without pissing off everyone around you.
I actually agree with the basic point that it's the following driver who has 99% of the responsibility not to run into the car ahead. That said, there are plenty of behaviors like coming to unnecessarily abrupt stops in unexpected places (which I'm not saying is the case here) that will absolutely lead to people running into you.
But that doesn't mean that Google is somehow off the hook. Google could invent a car that never causes crashes, but yet is still more dangerous than a human driver based on the inability to avoid crashes that humans easily avoid.
And, really it isn't hard to envision such a car being built. If it randomly hits the breaks to avoid phantom sensor readings, then the cars might be stopping in unexpected places an order of magnitude worse than a normal driver.
I'm sure driverless cars will eventually be safer than human, but I'm not convinced they will be.
In the video, there appears to be a shoulder with plenty of escape room.
Is there any attempt made to un-distract the driver? Flashing brake lights? Horn?
The June report from Google (http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/) contains some interesting language:
"The Google AV had been stopped for about 11 seconds at the time of the impact"
The cynic in me thinks they are intentionally avoiding technology to address these types of accidents so that they can unequivocally prove the the AV had no fault (i.e., had been stopped for x seconds).