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Comment by mauvehaus | Hacker News Reader

Parallel parking just isn't hard enough to justify the expense and complexity (same thing, really) of adding this device to a car. This is a lot of gizmosity to solve a problem that can be solved with a couple hours of practice on a quiet street.

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Nowadays automated parallel parking is a relatively commonplace thing ("it's got smaht pahk!"[1]) and we have come full circle. Hardware complexity superseded by software complexity. Kinda neat.

Interestingly, automated parallel parking systems are allowed to be used during road licensing tests in the area where I live, to demonstrate parallel parking competency. Same goes for all driver aid systems, including Tesla FSD Beta etc. Bit of a head scratcher for me.

[1]: https://youtu.be/WBvkmWDjsYc

BMW has automated parallel parking, but I never use it because it is so slow. I love gadgets and automation so I tried, but I can’t in good conscience make everybody behind me wait while my car backs in at 2mph.

So I think it just depends. I had a 2016 Mercedes with it, and it was the slowest thing in the world - I would parallel park myself twice in the time it took to do it once. But now I have a 2020 Volvo XC60 and it's very fast and reliable, I have no issues using it even in heavy traffic , it doesn't feel like I'm holding up people while parking.

Get a Tesla, my 2015 Model S is easily faster then me, especially if the space is only just big enough. The first time I tried it I was so surprised by how quick it was that I stamped on the brake!

That's such an awful thing to allow in that context

Symptom of a car dependent society I guess. Driving is a prerequisite for being an autonomous adult here (a state in the northeastern United States) so licensing requirements are mind bogglingly relaxed, and once you've passed the test once you can renew your license infinitely until you die.

This approach really shows when you use our public roads. People largely either do not know all the rules and best practices, or don't care to follow them.

Watching Russian dashcam videos you'd think people found their licenses in a cereal box yet it requires a stern test with theoretical questions of the form "Here is an intersection, one street has a rail line, there are an ambulance, a fire truck, a military column and a bus on each side, who has the right of way?" (and the answer is that it's a bus because even though the fire truck would have a right of way normally it loses it because it would need to cross the rail line as specified in the Chapter 8.19.75 of the Federal Rules of the Road). And the driving part involves driving a manual transmission vehicle without power anything through an obstacle course.

So I would not correlate the driving test difficulty with the behavior on the roads.

Interestingly the Russian dashcam phenomenon is similar to "florida man" - it's availability bias. Florida has more published wacky crime stories partly because of their public records policy, and Russia has a lot of dashcams due to there being a lot of insurance fraud with pedestrians being "hit" by cars.

I'm assuming everyone just bribes their way through the test?

I don't think that's right. In Poland the theoretical test is just as stupid as OP said, with a lot of "gotcha" questions designed specifically to catch you out, and yet people pass without bribery and then drive like bellends on the road. Having said that, people drive very aggressively and frequently are inconsiderate, but I'd say they absolutely know what the rules are - they just choose to ignore them because they think they can.

In my US state (which is nationally renown for its authoritarianism) you only ever have "gotcha" questions for stupid stuff that doesn't actually matter on the road. Like "what is the maximum sentence someone with one DUI 366 days, but not more than 24mo ago can receive", as if that actually matters on the road. It would be a lot more palatable if it was some obscure questions about a 5-way intersection with a light only controlling a fraction of the streets or something about a rail crossing and a drawbridge.

A different country, similar test. I remember you would just memorize the questions and their right answers. There was a limited set of questions, publicly available.

Most definitely, which would be the same if something like that had been enforced in the US. We'd have some "Driving Schools", which would "guarantee" your license or something like that. Though people would have likely voted the government out first, but looking at the building codes I am not 100% confident.

Quality depends heavily on how corrupt your government is — in Germany, these strict tests are actually that strict and work well. But obviously not everyone can get a license due to this. (e.g., I opted not to spend the 2000€ that a license would cost).

Is it the license fee or a "driving school" tuition?

More the latter. There are mandatory hours of training in specific conditions before being allowed to take the actual exam. Driving hours with the instructor aren't cheap.

Don't know about russia, but in my country plenty of people driving without a license or with a suspended one. Also, no limit on how many times you can take the written exam, so someone maybe had to take it ten times, got lucky with the questions or memorised all intersections and passed. The more academic folk ace the written exam, but then struggle with the driving part. And when you fail the driving part, you don't need to revisit the quiz portion, just the driving. Someone who passed their driving test after 5-6 attempts rarely tends to be a good driver.

Is there actually a strong correlation between what people intuitively think of as a good or bad driver and that driver's accident rate or accident severity?

Outside the obvious extremely bad drivers (old people who are practically blind, people who habitually text and drive, people who drive at huge speeds above other traffic even in traffic to dense to really be doing that effectively, etc), probably not.

Imagine if a few had gone mainstream though: it looks like they could parallel park so tight that cars in front of or behind might be unable to get out.

In my experience cars that have that system can both get in and out for you.

He means cars that do NOT have the feature may be unable to get out, as they may be trapped by cars that have the feature and park extremely close

That happens all the time without the system though. People who drive tiny little cars that turn on a dime routinely underestimate the space it takes for a big van or whatever to get out.

Does he? He said imagine if that feature is mainstream - so I'm assuming other cars also have this system.

Also, I don't understand why you'd blame the system if anyone gets "trapped" - you have your own eyes, no? Even when you park manually you have to judge if others can still leave. If the computer parks for you in such a way that makes others unable to leave.....then park somewhere else????? What is it with absolving people of personal responsibility all the time.

how can he know that guy do not have car with new function?

> This is a lot of gizmosity to solve a problem that can be solved with a couple hours of practice on a quiet street.

Or you can just live in a less crowded place so you don't need to parallel park :P

If it had multiple wheels or would allow you to turn the wheels 90deg so that you can slide sideways into a parking spot there might be a case for a system like that. I guess about half a cars length is needed as padding for a parking spot, so having a bumper to bumper system would unlock an extra 33% parking spaces which would be huge.

Unfortunately the system in the video still requires a significant bit of space.

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