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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

Dooring is so incredibly preventable with simple computer vision and some kind of actuator that adds an audible alarm and mechanical 3x resistance to the door opening when a cyclist is detected. The door should still be openable in emergency but should be hard to open until the cyclist passes.

(For cars that have both a normally-used electronic door open button and a manual emergency release (e.g. Teslas), the electronic button can use the car's existing cameras to detect cyclists first before actuating the door to open. This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas. The only thing I dislike about the Tesla setup though is that most non-owners are unaware of where the mechanical emergency release is; it is not obvious and not labelled.)

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> This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas

Tesla already has dooring prevention. If it detects a bicycle or something coming, it prevents you from opening the door the first time, and shows a warning. You can override it by trying to open it the second time, if you are sure.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1gwjq4v/new_an...

Waymo already warns you if it detects road users when you open a door. They just don't actively prevent you from opening the door, but they could implement it in their next generation vehicles.

They won't have to if they use sliding power doors (the geely cars have them). They should have had them for the jaguar generation :)

Dooring people aside, what do you do if someone just leaves the door open when they leave their ride?!

You charge such riders additional penalty fee on their account.

Waymo needs to have staff in SF anyway to pick up cars that malfunction (flat tire, or just close the door).

> Dooring people aside, what do you do if someone just leaves the door open when they leave their ride?!

Continue billing them for the ride and send an app notification or phone-call to their phone.

Other potential solutions: If the door is still not closed after n minutes, plead with passers-by, or offer a passing or nearby rider the chance to earn credit by closing the door.

Oh, that's already a problem for them. There are videos of many Waymos stranded because the previous rider didn't close the door fully.

Haha yep! I meant that as a rhetorical question, it's just silly to not move to sliding power doors.

You won't hear the end of complaints about how cyclists are now making cars more expensive...

Health insurance companies should pay for it. Their costs would come down if they subsidize the full R&D cost of this system for all car manufacturers. It would work in their favor.

They're probably too stupid to think like that, though.

Health insurance generally has a fixed profit margin (state legislation). They have little incentive to reduce cost because then the entire pie shrinks. A nice example of where well meaning legislation can completely backfire.

Of course, passing costs to all insurance companies is really the same as passing it to all people paying insurance premiums, at which point you can just use tax money to get the same effect. At which point, it's probably easier to regulate it and have the cost passed to everyone buying a car.

That would lead to ridiculously overengineered car doors. It's already incredible how such a simple thing like a door can be so unreliable on newer cars, with handles that sink into the doorframe when not in use, or a locking system that only works with battery power. I'm not sure that adding more complexity would be a net benefit for society.

It's already there, my new fancy car has it. Push the lever to open with electronic help, pull the lever twice for mechanical release. The electronic help version checks for safety first (as long as you do it with a timeout from when the car was running/ready) We'll have to see how the fancy car does over time, but I did get one with handles on the outside that don't disappear.

You could just design infrastructure and road rules such that cyclists aren't encouraged/required to ride in the dooring zone, or even hold people accountable for their actions beyond just the cost of the damages they cause. Car based damages are so normalized that we allow reckless or negligent behavior around cars that we would never allow in any other part of our cities.

You could probably design the latch jaws to have an electronically controlled second catch. It would activate whenever a cyclist is present so if someone tries to slam the door open it would catch with the door slightly open and trigger a warning. A second pull then opens the door no matter what for safety.

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