this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
411 points (98.1% liked)

xkcd

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Alt text:

Speed Limit: 45 MPH / Minimum: 65 MPH

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How to segfault an autonomous vehicle.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Someone will at some point try this for sure

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Actually I'd think handling unclear situations like this would be one of the major things that makes autonomous driving systems so complicated and challenging to develop.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

You are completely correct. The "happy path" or what to do if everything goes right is fairly straightforward for autonomous cars. It's when it gets into exceptions or unexpected scenarios like this that it becomes a problem. It's a car so you can't just stop it in the middle of the road, but you cant tell it to ignore road signs either

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I knew printing your own signs would lead to interesting exploits, but this is just next level.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Putting it into reverse requires you to stop first.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

i think you could theoretically drift to maintain velocity in a different axis while accelerating in reverse to technically not ever "stop"

[–] Ashen 2 points 10 months ago

How would that work?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

Welcome to Germany

[–] Lucidlethargy 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'd just drive off the road to the right. Where I'm going, I don't need rules. I may need new tires, though...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

And suspension, shocks, axel, exhaust, undercarriage...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You could reverse down the road, or would there be a moment between forwards and backwards when you're stopped?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not a u-turn if you skid into a wicked 540

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Knight Rider vibes.

[–] wander1236 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You have to cross over 0 at some point

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Stopping isn't the same as driving at 0 speed.

A car is stopped if and only if its acceleration is also 0.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And velocity is 0. Otherwise Johnny 100kmph is technically stopped

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

That's why I put a sneaky 'also' in my comment

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Somewhat more sophisticated version of a one-way cul-de-sac.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

signs may only apply to the road after them, so you could validly stop just before it.

My thoughts exactly; problem solved. Just do what the first sign says before the others apply.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

What concerns me the most is the no uturn followed by road that says you can pass and in theory u turn

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Time to go off-roading.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Well clearly they want you to drive sideways

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Is this an auditor trap?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Sliiiide to the left!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

alt text is supposed to describe the image for people who are visually impaired, that's just a caption

edit: didn't know what I was talking about, xkcd has a specific thing called alt text that's different from what I was describing, my bad lol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Alt text on XKCD posts is the label that displays when you hover over the post on their website, it's not something that the user has added.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

oh dang my bad didn't realize it had an xkcd specific meaning, thx for correcting me!