Turquoise taillights tell you this Mercedes is driving autonomously
arstechnica.com
Turquoise taillights tell you this Mercedes is driving autonomously::California and Nevada have approved a test of the new light color.
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I’ve been asking why cars don’t have more obvious visual indicators since I was like 8 years old.
It’s pretty weird that we’re basically just working with 2 sets of lights and blinkers at this point.
For AV’s specifically, a pretty significant/obvious missed feature is some indicator that the car “sees” you. Pedestrians make eye contact with drivers to check if crossing is safe. How is there no equivalent for AV’s??? It’s such an obvious miss.
From a usability standpoint, you want to keep emergency signals simple and VERY consistent. Brake lights need to be a solid red for a very good reason.
On a similar theme, every time I get caught in stop and go traffic I wish we had tail lights that indicated letting off the gas. Like an orange light to say, "I'm no longer accelerating but I haven't applied the brake yet." I feel like everyone could coordinate traffic flow better with a little extra information, but I fear (much like these turquoise lights and adaptive cruise control) assholes will just game the system anyway to ruin everything.
Especially with a lot of new EVs on the road that use regenerative breaking if your foot is off the gas.