Technology

60052 readers

2853 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

257

Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help. (www.forbes.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

151 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help.::Pedestrian automatic emergency braking (AEB), which may become mandatory on U.S. cars in the future, tends to not perform well in the dark.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The law says, regardless of the speed limit, you need to be driving slow enough to react to someone suddenly stepping on the road. If you can’t do that while driving at the speed limit, you’ll just have to drive slower.

Taken literally, that means that since you won't be able to stop if someone steps just in front of your vehicle, you should never drive faster than ~10kmph. Which can be a valid interpretation, but I doubt it's going to be a widely accepted one. For example at least where I live, if someone steps in front a vehicle within breaking distance driving at the speed of the road's legal limit, both pedestrian and driver will share responsibility (the exact ratios being determined by the exact situation).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you actually think about it, it's absolutely makes sense. The Autobahn has additional stopping lanes for broken down cars and several meters of grass to each side, which means you can safely drive hundreds of kilometers an hour while still being able to see obstructions early enough to brake in time.

Slower motorways have smaller setbacks, but still enough to keep their speeds.

City streets where you can't see people entering the road in time to brake usually have relatively low speed limits to reduce the braking distance as well as the damage caused by a collision.

But if the visibility or braking distance are affected due to weather or broken streetlamps, it's up to you to slow down accordingly. But even for situations like that traffic planners usually add additional signs, it's common to see roads with signs that say

/❄️\
(60)

to warn people to drive slower when the road is freezing or signs that say

/🦌\
(50)
[400m]

to warn of crossing animals in the next 400m and set a lower speed limit.

The same obviously applies when it's not crossing deer but crossing pedestrians.