Mercedes-Benz debuts turquoise exterior lights to indicate the car is self-driving | A visual indicator for other drivers::undefined
If we need warning lights for self driving cars, the technology is not ready.
As a Level 3 system, the driver is permitted to take their hands off the wheel, their feet off the pedals, and divert their attention away from the road. […]
The turquoise markers will alert other drivers to the fact that your vehicle is driving itself, so hopefully they won’t be alarmed if they see you doing other things while behind the wheel.
Okay that is the first argument for it I’ve read that actually makes sense
warning lights
Lol, this is like calling the turn signals warning lights. Letting others know something about your driving isn’t a warning, it’s just an indicator.
If we need signs saying student driver, the driver is not ready
If we need signs saying “Baby on Board”, the driver isn’t ready
To play the devil’s advocate: early cars needed a guy with a flag im front of them because people were used to horses and carriages and not automobiles. After a while that stopped being a thing.
But yeah, self driving cars are not really ready.
Id argue that motorized carriages back then werent ready for the public.
I havent seen a lvl 3 yet, have you? Id like to know your actual thoughts on driving one. I only see Teslas and such, and they don’t have them yet.
Well, theirs probably isn’t.
🤦
if we need warning lights for ANYTHING, the humanity is just not ready.
One could argue that brake lights are a warning light 🤔.
Turn signals are literally called warning lights in my language.
No, they literally are warning lights, warning you the car is slowing down. It has no other purpose than to provide information (warning) to others about what you are doing.
Best keep away from rail crossings then.
So we aren’t ready for anything. Got it. 🚨🚦🚒🚑🚓🚧
Same purpose as warning labels: to keep ding dongs alive so they can spend more money
I for one would like to know when another car isn’t being driven by a human.
I’ll just stick some turquoise lights on my car
If your car is obviously old and you just bought some shitty magnetic tow lights and simply swapped the color it would be extra funny.
Seems like a bad idea - you know someone is going to figure out how to take advantage of that.
- Scofflaw - ai has no pride or ego so I can cut them off at will and they will always back down
- scammer - manufacturer has deep pockets - where’s my neck brace?
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Scofflaw - Why does the person in the self-driving car care? They’re just chilling. Zooming ahead of other cars doesn’t get you more than a few minutes ahead. If that’s really important to you, you should have left your house a few minutes earlier.
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Scammer - These cars are covered in cameras and radars. These are the opposite of the cars you want to jump in front of (except Tesla, which sucks). They’ll probably just film you launching yourself from the curb and stop before they hit you. I guess you can get on America’s Funniest Home Videos?
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Do the same thing, but hook it up to a camera that detects if your eyes are on the road lol.
Most FSD cars have that. People just ignore the warnings and popups.
The car should pull over then. Lol
Should, but when has that ever stopped businesses from doing what is cheap/easy?
My aftermarket Openpilot setup does this with a camera pointed at the driver. I’m good about paying attention but apparently if it alerts too many times that you’re distracted it will disable itself until you restart the car.
The reason for these lights is that Mercedes has Level 3 autonomy, so the car can self drive without the driver taking attention - for example here in Germany it is illegal (and there are photo traps) to use your phone on while driving. The lights are a solution to the exemption that you are allowed to use your phone while your car is on Level 3 autonomy.
On level 3 you need to be able to take over again within 30 seconds after the car actively asks you to do so.
30 seconds is a LOT of time.
Yeah that last bit. That’s unacceptable for at least another decade. Drivers should be responsible for their vehicles at all times.
The level 3 autonomy is under extremely limited circumstances, which are basically on the bighway under 40 mph. These are basically the safest possible conditions to have level 3, and it is the right place to start.
I’m not against them starting it. I’m against them telling the drivers they can take their hands off the wheel, their feet off the pedal, and watch media on the center console. We aren’t there yet.
Level 3 autonomy is exactly that. Mercedes allows you to do other things than driving in specific situations like specific (!) highways etc.
BMW also has Level 3 on low speeds on specific highways.
This is not autonomy in all situations but only during the day, no rain etc.
For limited situations the car fully takes over and in case of an accident it is legally Mercedes’ or BMW’s responsibility not the driver.
That specific situation is indicated by the lights.
It will not drive autonomously in a city or so or where pedestrians are.
Brb, wiring up a set of these so I can blame the car for missing a speed sign
… the ticket would still exist. Are you thinking you would be able to send it to your car manufacturer so they can look into what happened?
I think it would be also cool to have an indicator if the car in front of you has cruise control on
That would be great for the driver himself. The amount of times I’ve had to play leap frogs with someone only to be given a dirty look when hes the one that constantly slows down and accelerates.
Watch this turn into a status thing that starts trending.
As someone living in a country which haven’t seen any self-driving cars I’d just be a lot more cautious/careful if I’d ever get close to anything with those lights.
AI with all those sensors prob drives better than many city drivers I interact daily changing lanes and doing parallel parking.
And don’t forget the human panic response. One of my primary reasons to only allow ai driving. People that kick on the gas in an emergency situation should not be allowed to drive ever, unless hitting the gas was the right choice of course. But seeing people not stop but hit the gas in a panic is the worst thing to see happening.
Years ago (maybe 2009ish) my mother got rear ended 4-5 times by the same person at a red light. They hit her, and kept accidentally hitting the gas instead of the brake over and over. It probably happens more often than we think… but there will always be people lying to themselves and others that they are good drivers.
California has had several high profile problems with self driving cars. This is going to be a disaster, physically and politically. This is literally just rich people buying a legal defense for hitting pedestrians. There’s going to be outrage the first time it happens and it turns out the driver wasn’t even looking at the road, or was drunk.
Ofc there are gonna be issues but I kinda asume drunk driver and person who lack observation has lower chance of hitting someone with car that has any kind of assistance. There are prob more times driving assistance helped than caused problem.
Sure, but that shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility. They should still be required to pay attention and apply the brakes or take control if required. These systems do not have a 100 percent safety record. So to say we don’t need the human as a check anymore is bonkers.
Wow I’ve been thinking about that for a while now. We should be able to tell when someone is driving or an Ai is.
This could be useful as a communication medium where the car transmits data through the light to the neighbours.
If only there was some kind of universal communication technology that didn’t require line of sight, worked over distances out to say 100m and was reasonably inexpensive to implement…then we wouldn’t need to communicate using the modern equivalent of semaphore.
dang, maybe something related with electricity and this crazy magnets we have?
But what about the IOT? The 5G! Connect all the things!
Blue bubbles?
And I live in California. Of course we’re going to help rich people avoid all consequences of their actions. Because paying attention to where your 1 ton metal missile is going is too much to ask. But only if you can afford the turquoise lights.
I don’t think I understand how adding safety indicators to elevate awareness of self driving vehicles helps rich people avoid all consequence.
As a poor person, I’d like to know if a car I’m driving by is self driving.
Mercedes is a luxury brand. And as the article states, in California and Nevada drivers will get a legal pass on distracted driving if the system and lights are on.
So the drivers of these luxury cars are no longer responsible for what the car does.
The article says they are allowed to test the new indicators in those States, not that they get a legal pass…
In California, the permit will let Mercedes-Benz trial turquoise lights on test vehicles for two years. In Nevada, the automaker can start adding the feature to 2026 year production vehicles
Do you think it’s a better scenario for less awareness of self driving cars? If self driving is part of the future, this seems like a reasonable step imo.
Go read the article again then. There’s a whole section about distracted driving.
Ive read those 7 paragraphs a couple times now, and I don’t see anything about getting a legal pass. Maybe you could quote it for me?
I have missed things due to ads covering things up on mobile on the past.
As a Level 3 system, the driver is permitted to take their hands off the wheel, their feet off the pedals, and divert their attention away from the road. Most other driving systems require you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention. With Drive Pilot engaged, users are free to browse the Internet or watch videos on the vehicle’s central display.
To be fair I’ve had that happen with ads too and it’s infuriating.
Oh my bad. I somehow thought you were implying the light was going to give them the pass… You are talking about self driving cars in general though.
That’s been a thing though, would you like that progress to stop? I guess /fuckcars is a real popular movement online so we can have different opinions on that.
That isn’t at all what you were saying buddy
why would i need to know another car is self driving though?
Same reason at this point as “Student Driver” bumper stickers - so you know it’s inexperienced and may behave weirdly, so maybe keep a bit more distance than usual or something.
So you don’t call the cops when you overtake them and see then eating a bowl of cereal, jerking it, while watching Flinstones.
Now that’s multitasking!
That’s what I thought. I can only imagine idiots will see it and try fuck with it. Anyone else be like, “Okay… So just keep doing what I’m currently doing.”
It’s marketing, if anything.
My theory on Audi bringing out animated indicators was that they were quickly getting a damaging reputation of Audi drivers not using indicators; a reputation their competitor BMW is negatively married to. To prevent this, they appealed to making them unique and special, no one else had them, so the drivers would want to use them. Thus actively mitigating brand damage on BMW levels.
