We have often complained about the campaigns to shift the responsibility for hurting
pedestrians form the driver to the walker
, whether it is a "Do the Bright Thing" campaign or making pedestrians wave flags
when they cross the street. We are not supposed
to go out at night without reflectors, vests, and flashlights , or we deserve this.
Now Matthew Sparkes, who is writing for New Scientist , points to
a study out of Princeton University which proposes REITS to make
pedestrians visible to self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles.
AVs use various systems of cameras, lidar, and radar to detect humans
and other obstacles in the roadway, which has proven
to be a much bigger challenge than expected . Lidar doesn't work well
in the rain for fog, and radar works by detecting radio
waves bounced back from an object that holds up the beam ,and soft
human bodies do not a very good job of this.