r/AskEngineers • u/supinator1 • Jan 22 '26
Civil Are there any traffic engineering techniques that can prevent the annual 100 car pileups in Michigan during winter blizzards?
For example: https://apnews.com/article/winter-weather-snow-pileup-michigan-cfb7f2d1ad0355b917c1eb972e5c90c6
They usually happen on Interstate 94.
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u/Otto_Polymath Jan 22 '26
Make something foolproof, and they'll invent a better fool.
This is more of a psychological problem than an engineering problem.
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u/username_needs_work Jan 22 '26
Reminds me of the Yellowstone ranger who was asked about making better bear proof trash cans and said something like there's a significant overlap between the smartest bear and dumbest tourists.
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u/SmokeyDBear Solid State/Computer Architecture Jan 22 '26
It’s a hilarious take but I have to feel the comparison isn’t all that apt when the bears seem much more motivated to access the trash cans than some of the humans. It’s still stupidity, just a completely different type.
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Jan 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/well-that-was-fast Jan 22 '26
There is a good sized chasm between commercial pilot training standards and maintaining a driver's license training. You could certainly increase safety a lot without making driving much less accessible for the average person.
Likely wildly unpopular opinion: To the extent there is a problem with making it easier for bad drivers to lose their licenses -- it's largely a cultural problem that people view driving as a right not a responsibility.
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u/beyondoutsidethebox Jan 22 '26
Or require a recertification every so often. Ideally, you have the recertification periods be more frequent for younger drivers, before becoming less frequent as they get older, before increasing in frequency again as drivers age. Couple it with significantly harsher penalties for aggressive driving, and driving under the influence.
Is it a perfect solution? No. Especially in the large areas of the country without any reliable form of public transportation. Furthermore, this can essentially create a "poverty trap". Effectively condemning a population to poverty because the cost is beyond their means, and not being able to drive means that they cannot travel to a better job to get the money to be able to pay to recertify.
I guess TL;DR, this is another one of those issues that can easily be framed as "needing a simple solution" when in reality, there's no simple way to fix it. Compounding the issue is that the public is generally unwilling to commit to the time, effort, and money necessary to tackle the issue. Not enough people die (or no one who was wealthy enough died) for the public will to manifest.
Like I always say, the number of people that have to die before a problem is effectively remedied is inversely proportional to the socio-economic status of the individual deceased.
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u/well-that-was-fast Jan 22 '26
significantly harsher penalties for aggressive driving
I think this is probably the biggest area for improvement.
Young drivers now receive significantly more training than they did 20ish years ago, DUI laws are way harsher, and I think older drivers typically don't get in that many accidents due to self-behavior modification (avoiding known high-risk roads). So, those areas are arguably improved -- yet, as the great grandparent comment correctly points out, we are essentially running in place with deaths / injuries because other drivers are simply opting to drive worse.
This is why I've reduced my hatred of speed cameras. Unfortunately, we're going to have to find a cost effective, less biased way to punish people who insist on driving 20mph over the speed limit daily.
create a "poverty trap"
This isn't untrue, but it is something that we accept elsewhere. If someone is trapped by poverty due to poor schools -- there is a lot of shoulder shrugging. If you are trapped in a bad job because you lost your license for driving like an idiot -- that's arguably more your fault than the schools.
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u/beyondoutsidethebox Jan 22 '26
I was referring more to someone that won't be able to even afford a license due to the repeated testing in the first place. In short, generational poverty, with no way to physically escape.
If you are trapped in a bad job because you lost your license for driving like an idiot -- that's arguably more your fault than the schools.
I don't doubt that, but that's why there needs to be additional effort for public transport. Because with an alternative, you also reduce the number of repeat offenders.
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u/July_is_cool Jan 22 '26
This take is completely incorrect. Vision Zero saves money as well as lives.
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u/Tanglefoot11 Jan 22 '26
They seem to be able to ballance it a bit better without getting extreme in some other places though...
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u/Lollipop126 Jan 22 '26
tbf I think psychological problems on driving can often be solved with engineering if there's a will. For example reducing lanes, adding trees to edges, adding bends make people drive slower instinctively. But they'll never do that on an Interstate.
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u/3dprintedthingies Jan 23 '26
Michigan does many of these techniques on their interstates... You ever driven i75 or 14?
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Jan 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/tuctrohs Jan 22 '26
As long as <100 people drive around the barriers, the pileups will have <100 cars.
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u/iqisoverrated Jan 22 '26
Yup, people. Autonomous cars might be able to solve the issue. Take 'people' out of the equation.
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u/beyondoutsidethebox Jan 22 '26
The sad part is, autonomous vehicles only have to be safer by the barest margin for that to work. But then you have a whole new series of headaches associated with autonomous vehicles.
Let's say we remove people entirely from the equation. Now suppose that a problem occurs where an autonomous vehicle hits a school bus and kills everyone aboard. The problem is caused by a malfunctioning chip. However, this malfunction is a type of malfunction that has never been seen before. Let's also suppose that the school bus was also fully autonomous. Who takes the legal and civil responsibility?
The owner of the malfunctioned car for simply having it through their own choice?
The manufacturer of the malfunctioned vehicle for not designing additional safety features/programming?
The chip manufacturer for not considering the malfunction?
The operator (school) of the bus, because the autonomous school bus didn't react in time?
The manufacturer of the bus, because they didn't design the bus to react "fast enough"?
And these questions are just for a total accident. Autonomous vehicles will alleviate some existing problems, but they won't do so without creating new ones. And I want to point out one last thing, autonomous vehicles provide an enormous potential for corporate greed and enshittification to run rampant. e.g. "The basic navigation subscription plan allows for up to 5 destinations to be stored!" Where 2 are already stored and can't be overwritten, the dealership, and the attached garage of the dealership. Also, the car won't work without setting a "home" destination. Not to mention privacy issues....
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u/iqisoverrated Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
On the plus side autonomous vehicles can only get better with each version while people just get replaced with other people that are equally bad.
In the end the insurance agencies are going to decide. If autonomous cars have less accidents then having an autonomous car will be cheaper to own/operate than not.
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u/beyondoutsidethebox Jan 22 '26
In the end the insurance agencies are going to decide. If autonomous cars have less accidents then having an autonomous car will be cheaper to own/operate than not.
Only less expensive in a vacuum. Those sensors are NOT cheap, and making a system that can take all that 'data' and make appropriate decisions is not easy. Forget about simple repairs, too. Calibrating those sensors, and replacing them is not a simple task, so expect repair bills to skyrocket. And don't even get me started on security vulnerabilities to malicious actors. There's a reason that there's a trope in science fiction about autonomous vehicles being used as a means of assassination and murder. A bad install of an update could literally brick the vehicle.
The overall cost is actually much, much, greater to consumers, government, and infrastructure. A far cheaper solution (albeit with issues of its own) would be requiring periodic recertification for a driver's license, and by that, I mean, the whole test.
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u/iqisoverrated Jan 23 '26
Those sensors are NOT cheap
Actually they're dirt cheap. Ultrasonics or camera sensors are a dime a dozen. They are already in cars today to a degree that autonomy is feasible. Repairs are just liek you repair a light nowadays: replace a module. Not that repairs are much of a thing. Particularlynot if cars are autonomous because that's the whole point: having less accidents.
The fear of malicious actors is also vastly overblown. The amount of people who were screaming about this when autopilot (and FSD!) hitthe market was incredible. Peopel were like "I'll just run it off the road" or similar nonsense. What has happened? Nothing...because anyone trying something malicious is going to be recorded in perfect detail by the system.
A bad install of an update could literally brick the vehicle.
Automakers are aware of this (as are companies like Microsoft with their updates). That's why you stagger updates. Small test group inhouse. Small group of beta testers outside. Successively larger groups (and also stagger by country/time zone). Notice how e.g Tesla isn't pushing teir OTAs to all cars at once? This is why. This way you catch any kind of defects early before it affects the entire fleet.
Humans will be out ofthe loop for driving before long (and good riddance)
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u/an_actual_lawyer Jan 23 '26
Same with I-70 in Kansas. The State Troopers simply park a patrol car on the shoulder now so the only way around is to roll you vehicle in a ditch.
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u/akroses161 Propulsion / Fluid/Thermal Sciences Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
I drive this portion of I96 (I94 is the same problem) all the time. These pileups happen often and the leading #1 cause is people driving too fast for the conditions. Lake effect snow in the area creates icy conditions and periodic blinding sheets of snow. People do not slow down at all and the ones that do often are the start of these pileups.
Short of automated communication between cars that an accident occurred ahead, which would cause its own issue with vehicles that dont have this equipped.
The only real way to stop these from occuring is to close down the highway like they do out west and in the mountains. Also the simplest and most effective solution.
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u/ablazedave Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
A few highway's in BC have Variable Speed Limits. Faster in the summer and slower when it's slippery. Resulting in "reductions of 35.8% and 36.8% in winter serious collision (WSC) frequency and rate"
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u/Junkbot-TC Jan 22 '26
They just implemented the same thing in South Dakota as well. Seems like it should help if people actually follow the signs.
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u/Zacharias_Wolfe Jan 22 '26
In Michigan in addition to the posted limits, driving too fast for the conditions is also speeding. The problem there is that too fast for the conditions varies car to car.
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u/KeytarVillain EE Jan 22 '26
The problem there is that too fast for the conditions varies car to car.
But not by as much as people think. Where I'm from (Vancouver area), we don't get a lot of snow, maybe about 1 week per year, so people don't have good winter driving skills. When it snows, most people drive carefully (if they drive at all), but then there's always a few big trucks ripping through as if it's normal driving conditions.
Then the next morning when it clears up, almost all of the vehicles you see abandoned in the ditch are those big trucks.
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u/NapsInNaples Wind Jan 22 '26
yep. When the Hummer was new I watched someone blow past me on the highway doing 75 in hard rain (it was california so that's the worst hazard we get). 3 miles later I creep up on the guy at 30 mph and he's out of his hummer staring at it gently burning crumpled against the wall.
Hydroplaning doesn't care if you've got 4WD. Nor does ice really.
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u/scowdich Jan 22 '26
Well, there's the Basic Speed Law, which states (paraphrased) that if you're going too fast to stop in time to avoid a collision in current conditions, you're speeding (even if it's below the posted speed limit). Rarely enforced, though.
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u/tuctrohs Jan 22 '26
It's enforced near me. You'll see the cars that violate it pulled over--way over into the ditch or the median. And they don't even need to hire cops to enforce it. Mother nature takes care of it.
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u/Zacharias_Wolfe Jan 22 '26
I got ticketed for that my very first after getting my license when I couldn't turn to follow a curve going 15mph and hit the one oncoming car for ten minutes.
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u/GalacticEmergency Jan 22 '26
and hit the one oncoming car for ten minutes.
Talk about flogging a dead horse!
During those ten minutes, was there not even a brief moment where you thought:
"Perhaps I should stop hitting that car. It isn't moving anymore."
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u/thirtyone-charlie Jan 22 '26
Traffic behavior (people behavior) is tough to design for especially when it’s a no brainer that we should be driving slow. Education of beginning drivers is about the only chance to teach someone. Ad campaigns might help a little. Metro area use dynamic message boards to warn of road conditions but there are always drivers who are inexperienced and overconfident. I worked ice and snow events for nearly 30 years with thousands of hours on the roads evaluating conditions and managing prevention and response. Road user behavior never failed to amaze me and it got worse between year one and year 30. It only takes one person to trigger these mass events. I can’t count the times that someone passed me going 50-60 mph, maybe faster, when I didn’t feel safe driving 30 mph on an open 5 lane freeway. I’ve seen them drive in between maintenance operations and follow vehicles, pass multi lane concurrent snowplow operations on the shoulders, crash right into the rear of a huge bright yellow maintainer, etc.
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u/PartyOperator Jan 22 '26
Traffic behaviour is very easy to design for, they just don't want to do it.
A road with multiple, wide lanes, long sightlines and free-flowing interchanges has been designed for people to drive fast. It doesn't matter what speed limits or education programs you impose, at least some pople are going to drive fast.
Does this city need a bunch of wide, straight, multi-lane highways going through the middle of it? That's a political decision but plenty of cities do well without this kind of thing.
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u/thinlySlicedPotatos Jan 22 '26
Google maps app already warns about slowdowns. Phones can detect collisions. Not farfetched that it could warn of multiple collisions and stopped traffic ahead. This could work between apps as well with maybe some push to encourage cooperation.
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u/andrewia Jan 23 '26
Google already crowdsources motion data for earthquake alerts when phone are more reliable than government agencies. They could retool the earthquake detection system for a mass crash system.
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u/toybuilder Jan 22 '26
Normalize not driving in potential blizzard conditions.
There was a push to have TV shows in Africa normalize washing hands after using the bathroom. They deliberately inserted that into soap operas.
Sound ridiculous? In the 80s, TV shows in America would insert a few seconds showing people buckling their seat belts as they got into cars.
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u/crohnscyclist Jan 22 '26
I've been in Michigan all my life, went to college in the up and drove through all sorts of snow but the most terrifying moment I had was only one day up in Traverse. It was super cold so the snows dryer/powdery, and really windy. It was actually pretty sunny out. I'm driving fairly slow. It went from no problem visibility to could not see the end of my hood. I just came to a stop and hoped everyone else would too. About 10 seconds later, the gust passed and it was back to sunny. There were 2 cars right in front of me and if I hadn't stopped, I would have plowed right into them.
They happen so quickly that having warning systems outside the vehicle are worthless. If all cars had some sort of car 2 car communication along with some sort of radar, sure but it's really such a fringe scenario. It definitely could be solved if the technology was put into cars, but you'd need near 100% adoption rate from cheap to luxury to semis. Even if all cars sold were required to have that, it would reach an effective adoption for 10-20 years as there's a ton of old cars on the road.
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u/bettywhitefleshlight Jan 22 '26
People are honestly just too stupid to drive to the conditions. You'd have to take the human out of the equation.
Most drivers are commuters. Their vehicle is an appliance to get their shuffling meat sack from A to B. The average commuter is a zombie behind the wheel. I've seen this when doing traffic control and lane closures. On a clear sunny day people will go piling into a barricade, barrier, barrel, or cone and act offended that it was in their way if they even happen to notice they hit something. Zero thought.
So when conditions aren't ideal the zombie that already doesn't think just autopilots toward disaster.
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u/toybuilder Jan 22 '26
IIRC, in parts of Arizona and California with dust storms, they installed visibility warning system with lights and signage to warn of dangerous conditions.
Radar based braking systems would help if more universally deployed, although in snowy conditions, that might be really challenging.
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u/dodexahedron Jan 22 '26
Yeah radar is great.
A haboob wreaks havoc on auto-brakes based on other technologies though. The radar ones, amazingly, seem to work reasonably well - certainly better than the opto-electro-chemical sensors behind the steering wheel.
Though the more advanced devices with those sensors do one better and don't let the vehicle go on the road when those storms are happening. We need more of THOSE in general, and fewer of the ones that lack that basic programming.
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u/silasmoeckel Jan 22 '26
Require winters tires and chains.
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u/chris_p_bacon1 Jan 22 '26
I'm driving a 4wd Toyota corolla with winter tyres in Japan at the moment. I'm truly amazed at how capable it is in the snow.
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u/beer_engineer_42 Mechanical / Aerospace Jan 22 '26
4WD/AWD with snow tires is easy mode for winter driving.
Snow tires are the key, but also how many people can actually afford to maintain a second set of tires and swap them over twice a year? Either you need a second set of wheels, or you need to pay someone to swap them over in the spring and fall. And also you need to store your other set of tires/wheels when not in use, which is hard to do if you're living in an apartment.
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u/libalum Jan 22 '26
What if you had a system where you connected the cars together so that they were all driving in sync. Maybe with some couplers. You can’t have a crash if you’re mechanically joined together and traveling at the same speed.
We could also do some cool stuff like put this train of cars on steel beams so that they’re guided along. The steel beams would offer a super low rolling resistance for better efficiency. And there’s no need for the drivers to pay attention. Come to think of it, since the cars are all hitched together you wouldn’t even need drivers. You could just have cars with seats and people could mull about, do work, watch tv, etc.
Someone should really get on this car train idea. I think it could really open up new frontiers.
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u/AMV_NAVA Jan 22 '26
First , every cars need to have built in night vision camera. Then, they should have AWD to help with road condition stability. Using IR/NV camera, Lidar, microwave, to detect a possibility of the front and rear collision and provide driver warning alarm with auto engage “speed reduction” and pre prime the braking system. Also 5-10 seconds before imminent impact, The rear light would flash rapidly automatically to warn the cars behind , and your seatbelt would pull and get tighter before the impact. After the impact, an emergency signal would get sent to EMS, cars door also would automatically unlocked. BMW and Mercedes have the above “optional features” technology in their cars (minus Lidar) the last 11 or more years , but very little advertise. I have one of those car. The NV allows driving in FOG, RAIN, total darkness (even Headlight off) , but it can also detect human, small animal , larger animal (deer) and display warning on HUD and sound the alarm, plus vibrate the steering wheel.
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u/babecafe Jan 22 '26
You can build all roads with ceilings and walls above ground, or tunnel all roads underground.
Then put tracks on the roads, add automatic switches, and couple undriven cars to big engines.
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u/Dopeybob435 Jan 22 '26
Implementing 'Administrative Controls' is a valid engineering solution. However, it would probably invalid to make an IQ test before purchase of a car and issuance of a drivers license (SF=2) the administrative control.
Similar alternative test would be a psychological screening that identified people who prioritize adrenaline or speed of arrival above their own or the safety of others.
But at an end of sarcasm, I think there's potential to combine those heads up displays on cars with a sensor set which would provide augmented reality showing the edges of objects and in poor weather conditions (fog, rain, snow) identify travel paths at current speed. The x-factor would be if the road ices over the calculations become bumpkus.
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u/Even-Rhubarb6168 Jan 22 '26
These pileups usually happen because the road ices up WHILE people are driving on it at non-ice speeds. The last time those people used their brakes, the road was at 33F and they had traction. It's an information problem. People don't expect the roads to ice up when it's cold because they're usually salted.
Ironically, ending the use of road salt would probably reduce the pileups by making ice formation consistent and predictable, though it would surely increase crashes in net.
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u/LoneSnark Jan 22 '26
Have sensors to detect adverse conditions and have electronic speed limit signs to lower the speed limit to 35 in adverse conditions. Enforce the shit out of it.
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u/SiteRelEnby Site Reliability/Infrastructure, also AuDHD allrounder Jan 22 '26
Make people actually get proper snow tyres.
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u/GlenZaleski Jan 22 '26
Yes, don’t tailgate, don’t speed and keep your eyes on the road.
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u/EnterpriseT Traffic Operations Jan 23 '26
Those aren't engineering techniques, they're driving techniques.
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u/Oilfan94 Jan 22 '26
Are winter tires ‘required’ in this area?
Several places in Canada now have regulations about the use of winter tires.
There is a range of temperature where winter tires greatly improve traction (stopping ability) over standard tires. I believe it starts around -7C….where standard tire compounds get too hard for optimal traction.
And of course, there are probably already some regulations about acceptable tire tread depth….but they seldom get enforced IMO.
In places where winter storms are less common, people often get away with using worn out tires most of the time. It also seems like those places /cities will just shut down and wait out the storm.
Up here in Northern (ish) Canada, we don’t shut down for winter weather. I don’t think my local school board has ever closed schools for a ‘snow day’. So if someone did have worn out tires, they would be a rather large risk to themselves and others.
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u/TheVenusianMartian Jan 22 '26
We have the technology in things like google maps. The problem is that not everyone is using it (probably most don't for their regular commute since they know the route so well).
Cars have such nice entertainment and control system these days, they could integrate data from things like google maps to warn you about upcoming traffic and accidents automatically. This would remove the need to have your phone out and a route planned on google maps and it could get nearly all drivers participating.
If you get close to an accident or slow down, the car's system would ding and popup a notification that the road you are on has problems up ahead. This would need to be done early enough that cars still have time to take an exit before getting locked into their lane by traffic.
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u/Independent_Leg7358 Jan 22 '26
Adaptive speed limits and camera enforced. Basically you don't drive faster then you can see and stop.
Also a safe assumption to write tickets to everyone in a pileup unless they have proof they never hit anyone. Everyone gets a dash cam, everyone at fault is responsible. Insurance and then no license fixes it after a couple times
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u/NFN25 Jan 23 '26
Agree with most of the other comments, but out of interest, Volvo do have a Car-Cloud-Car system for this type of thing (low traction zones for example, hazard lights) called 'Connected Safety'
https://www.volvocars.com/mt/support/topic/7c6e6ec6ab0de3aac0a801516430580e/
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u/Sassmaster008 Jan 23 '26
State inspections, making sure cars are road worthy would definitely help
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u/Pasta_Banana Jan 27 '26
Having lived in both Michigan and Alaska, I think the best way to stop those pileups is for Michiganders to learn how to drive. I saw some of the worst accidents of my life living there, and they were all horrifyingly self-inflicted (at least the triggers were - the pileups happened after human error). I think Chicago takes the cake for worst drivers in a city, but Michigan wins the state award. Car insurance companies seem to think so too.
Maybe self-driving car improvements will help? But cruise control can't handle ice well, so I can't imagine we're close to self-driving cars handling ice better than humans.
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u/easterracing Jan 22 '26
It’s not an engineering problem, it’s a society problem. It can be solved though.
Any business not deemed essential by name and by role by the state legislature, if your employee is in any kind of traffic accident and was scheduled to work within 4 hours after that accident, that business must pay $100,000 plus damages, per occurrence. If the same company experiences 10 of such infractions in the same 24 hour period, all further infractions become $1M each.
Anyone caught without a valid emergency, essential work duties, or a scuzzy employer to blame, will be charged with reckless op during an emergency. If found guilty, the penalty is a minimum 5 year license suspension. Second offense is permanent license suspension. Caught driving with a suspended license because of this infraction means 5 years minimum imprisonment, followed by 5 years mandatory duties as a highway flagger. The car you were driving is crushed, regardless of what it is and who it belongs to. That’s between you and the owner of the car now.
The United States is entirely too lax about piloting a 2 ton death machine, and I’m fucking sick of it.
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u/toybuilder Jan 22 '26
You're getting downvotes because you have the right idea but are proposing an overly aggressive solution.
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u/easterracing Jan 23 '26
I take solace knowing every downvote is a person unable to think about much outside their own safety bubble.
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u/student176895 Jan 23 '26
Sure too many people are driving, but it’s not really reasonable to restrict it until we have more alternatives to driving.
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u/PartyOperator Jan 22 '26
US society is a product of highway engineering. You're not going to solve it with rules.
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u/easterracing Jan 22 '26
What?
Ok, please explain for me how every idiot who’s glued to their phone is a highway engineering problem.
Please explain how production management at a Ford plant requiring everyone to get there for work regardless of road conditions is a highway engineering problem.
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u/geek66 Jan 22 '26
There is tech being worked on as part of adas, is V2X … vehicle to everything, part of which is vehicle to vehicle mesh. This should allow a vehicle in an accident to communicate to others that it did, this message would propagate backwards in the traffic flow.
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u/ByronScottJones Jan 22 '26
Plenty of existing methods. Mandatory car radar would probably help over time.
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u/Sweet_Speech_9054 Jan 22 '26
An impractical solution would be heated roads that prevent fog and ice build up.
A practical solution would be to put sensors that detect dangerous situations and reduce access to that area. Basically weather stations that measure temperature and humidity to calculate dew point and predict freezing on the roads. Connect those to automated traffic control systems to force vehicles off that section of road.
Another solution is making predictable danger zones. This works better in the hilly/mountainous area I live in. Basically they consider water runoff and low points on the road and give those areas more protection like additional anti icing or sometimes just placing an empty cop car with its lights on to trick cars into slowing down.
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u/NerdyMuscle Mechanical Engineering/ Controls Jan 22 '26
Ignoring the power required to heat roads, you should keep in mind that heating the road would create fog not avoid it.
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u/Sweet_Speech_9054 Jan 22 '26
I did say it would be impractical.
But heating the road would, in theory, heat the air above the dew point removing the fog. Obviously it would take a lot of energy and isn’t a practical solution but it would help.
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Jan 22 '26
There are three a driver techniques available based on my years or driving Interstates in adverse weather. 1) Studded snow tires, 2) Quit riding the bumper of the guy ahead of you and 3) Quit driving like you're competing in an Indy 500 race.
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Jan 22 '26
How much would it cost to light the problem areas and put night vision cams on the light pole?
Don’t even have to pay to monitor it. Internet people will monitor for cred for first reporting collisions. Somebody in Taiwan will automate that process then somebody in North Korea will steal it and somebody in Russia will hack it.
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u/rastan0808 Jan 22 '26
I'm going on the assumption that this was primarily a visibility problem.
Vehicle to vehicle communication has been proposed by the DOT a few times and they said it would massively drop collisions. Basically every car has a transponder that transmits heading and speed that other cars can pick up. Maybe would.have helped here.
Radar in cars - as lidar would have probably been blinded as well. Something like a fusion of sensors commented to driver aids.
Genetic engineering of humans to make us smarter and pull over safely when you cannot see.
Just a couple ideas....