Driverless Car Making U-Turns, Maybe Bad Idea, But It’s A Needed Skill

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

U-Turns, generally considered dicey, but it’s a core driving task

It seems that the U-turn maneuver makes drivers do crazy things.

As an example, the other day I was driving northbound on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). There is a stretch of this highway that for several miles you are pretty much forced to continue in a straight line because there aren’t any viable turn-offs. There are some spots that allow you to enter into a beach parking lot, but otherwise once you’ve decided to get onto PCH at one end of the stretch and assuming you are trying to get to the other end of the stretch, you are at the mercy of whatever might happen on that stretch of road.

Well, the other day the northbound traffic got snarled due to an accident at the far northern end of the stretch.

This meant that hundreds of cars heading northbound were now sitting on PCH as though it was a parking lot. We were all waiting for that accident up ahead to get cleared and allow traffic to continue forward. You could see the look of exasperation and worse on the faces of the drivers that were wanting to get to work, or get their kids to school, or proceed to whatever seemingly urgent destination and not desirous of sitting around for the many minutes waiting for the stretch to open up.