other drivers will ask "is that a lane" and look to lane markings or some such. Boston drivers will ask "COULD that be a lane" and answer "yes, fuck your lane markings"
when I drove a lot I developed an elaborate theory of how to manipulate other drivers to minimize my travel time and risk of citation based on the principles of ninjutsu. if only I was kidding about this. it was also an important part of the genesis of the ideas behind my company.
well ok so first: cops are looking for outliers, so you always want to be the second slowest car on the road. therefore, you should find a car that wants to go fast and goad them into going faster and faster trying to pass you, so you can always be slightly slower than them
in order to do this you have to know what those other drivers want, which ones are desperate to pass you and can be goaded into accelerating ever faster even when that serves them no real purpose; thinking about that is how I realized that driving was primarily a theory of mind task
I should say that writing this up right now I really feel very bad about it. I was trying to fit in with california car culture and also was young and stupid, I blame society.
You should feel zero guilt about this.
A similar idea occurred to me while driving the length of the West Coast. The observational data seemed to validate the theory.
you can really figure out, with other drivers, what their theory of the road is. maybe they're just blasting through, but more often they have some cockamamie theory like "if I get in front of the cars I will get there sooner" or "if I have a car behind me cops can't see me"; it is obvious
anyhow what I realized is that if THAT is obvious we're really doing a LOT of theory of mind reasoning while driving, and the more I looked at it the more I realized that MOST of driving was that kind of thinking, which subsequently led to pondering how self-driving cars couldn't do that at ALL
I always remember the story of investors getting stuck in a Google self driving car in mountain view for maybe 45 minutes because it was programmed to follow the rules on merging and no one would let it into the road
Waymo just ungated its service so anyone in San Francisco can use it to go anywhere in the city. It is a much better option than using a ride-sharing service with some out-of-town driver who doesn’t know how to drive in the city.
These stories are both with respect to Cruise which currently does not offer service in San Francisco. Even then, how many people talk about the human driver who first hit the pedestrian, throwing her in front of the Cruise.
A human driver recently plowed into a bus stop in S.F. killing 3 people.
still trying to figure out how we get behavioral cues from cars when we really can't see drivers
even weirder is that basically none of that transfers to bike commuting from my experience -- i routinely don't get what drivers are trying to do and they have fuck all idea what i'm doing
