100% driverless Wonka-wagon toy cars? Oh Google, you're having a laugh Google may have underestimated the difficulty of driving in Europe, and yesterday’s announcement about its driverless cars is evidence that it has. A photo of the new Google self-driving car But Mr Insurance man, the Google Noddy Car bumped me! Mountain View's Chocolate Factory unveiled a very Willy Wonka-esque two-seat …
Hemel Hempstead's Magic Roundabout (The Plough) would be enough to see Johnny Cab off, I reckon.
Americans have so little idea of roundabouts. In Vail, Colorado, which has two roundabouts, they have a public information film on the local tourist info TV channel telling them how drive around them.
I've also seen americans shortly after they have encountered Swindon's magic roundabout for the first time. Its much more amusing that any cat vid on youtube.
While not an American, I have to admit the first time I encountered Swindon's Magic Roundabout, I'd successfully negotiated it before I realised what it was I'd just passed though.
Personally I'd set the Wonkamobile on the A421 heading through Milton Keynes. Before they built an extra roundabout on the east side, it was 13 roundabouts, 6.7 miles, 7 minutes, not exceeding the speed limit either.
Is it a Sinclair C5 with a roof on?
They will be impossible to insure, that's for certain. No insurance company in their right mind will insure them. And Google will not be allowed in the U.S. to self-insure unless they offer insurance to the general public at the regulated rates.
I worked in the automotive industry in Detroit in the 90's. Back then the argument against electric cars was insurance. The perfect storm was this: man has his electric Chevy poorly charged sitting in his garage. His pregnant wife goes into labor, he stuffs her into his e-car which runs out of juice after ten minutes. Wife dies, so does the baby. What damages can a court award?
Answer: the man can end up OWNING General Motors (I am not exaggerating).
Think that's silly? True story: drunk kid drives his Pontiac Firebird at 120mph, drives over railroad tracks, gets airborn, rear ends a truck, truck's Mansfield Bar shears off the battery cables causing the airbag to not inflate - not that it would have saved his life - gets himself dead. Family sued and got $150M.
Sure there are plenty of wide and straight roads, but - as someone who has driven on both sides of the Atlantic - the idea that all US roads are like this is tosh. Even San Francisco which has a nice grid system, also has hills and windy roads. Head east and you hit a mountain range.
As for everyone driving at the same speed with cruise control, it's no different to the UK. Sure if you're on the interstate/motorway you can probably use cruise control for lengthy periods, but then you'll hit a lorry passing another lorry with both lanes suddenly slowing from 80mh to 45mph in the blink of an eye. Then the two lorries - non speed limited - will reach the top of the hill and accelerate to 80mph on the descent before repeating.
Now the Google Car might not be prime time ready yet, but anyone who thinks UK roads are somehow special and that UK drivers somehow excel over and above all others is the type of person still buying stock in buggy whip manufacturers.
Then the two lorries - non speed limited - will reach the top of the hill and accelerate to 80mph on the descent before repeating.
They probably are speed limited; but if there is sufficient weight in the back, the driver can push the clutch in, coast down the hill, and achieve interesting speeds. It's not especially safe; but it's amazing how bored it is possible to get when you're on motorway limited to 56mph all day. Just FYI, not all limiters are equal...they range from around 54-58mph which is why you get one lorry inching past another on the flat. Uphill speeds depends upon how much weight is in the back, plus the power of the lorry in question. Lorry drivers don't do it to be dicks...as a rule of thumb every single one of them has the accelerator floored...the rest is just physics.
Nope, they're not. I remember being surprised when I visited the UK to learn that all semi trucks (lorries) had speed limiters. Having lived my whole life in the USA I'd never heard of such a thing. It's not uncommon to see them going 70-80 mph on flat ground in some areas if they can get away with it.
Having also driven on both sides of the pond I can say that aside from the bizarrely disorienting experience of driving on the opposite side of the street as I'd done all my life, it's really quite similar. Go a bit South to Los Angeles and aside from driving on the right, you could just about be in London. The locals seem to think that the accelerator pedal is an on/off switch and indicators are optional.
They don't do it to be dicks? Of course they do, if not on purpose, but their inability to do anything but put the accelerator flat to the floor. If they range between 54 and 58 then there isn't a requirement for them to overtake, just sit behind the one doing a couple of miles an hour slower and you know, ease off the bloody accelerator, its not an on/off switch for a reason!
Tell me about it. I live in San Diego, California and when I read, "In California, where the project was conceived, driving is already semi-automated – you can practically drive with your eyes closed. Everyone (well, almost everyone) obeys the speed limit, and most cars are on cruise control most of the time", my keyboard got a good dose of semi drank tea just before I fell to the floor laughing my ass off.
Barely any city in the UK has a nice logical system (though Milton Keynes springs to mind) as most layouts go back centuries.
Most US highway junctions are nice sprawling affairs with pretty logical lane markings. The UK equivalent are often, shall we say, at best 'space constrained' and at worst confusing/dangerous. This is combined with lane widths that aren't generally as wide as the equivalent US roads, putting cars in closer proximity. The density of traffic in the UK is very high (it is a surprisingly small island, in case you hadn't noticed).
All this is not a good recipe for automatic, self drive robo-cars.
Oh, and trust me, UK drivers are in no way better than anywhere else (many should probably be using a white stick and a guide dog, while others will never go shopping for indicator bulbs).
The UK equivalent are often, shall we say, at best 'space constrained' and at worst confusing/dangerous.
And in some places like Banbury the road engineers have chosen to 'clarify' things by painting lane markings on roundabouts. Except that they are for the most part impossible to adhere to
What, no vehicles actually using the outside 'straight ahead' lane? You'd like to think that was just lucky timing by the photographer, wouldn't you? But no. The yellow routing line drawn by Google maps is how everyone negotiates that roundabout.
"Sure if you're on the interstate/motorway you can probably use cruise control for lengthy periods, but then you'll hit a lorry passing another lorry with both lanes suddenly slowing from 80mh to 45mph in the blink of an eye"
My Cruise Control unit detects this and adjust speed accordingly. Are there any cars left with "dumb" cruise control anymore?
... and let's see how it deals with 250 km/h traffic. Don't get me wrong, I like the assistance systems of my Audi very much, and it handles stuff like accelerating and breaking on the Autobahn very nicely. But I'm not buying into this hype at all. And that's why: To make this work on a grand scale efficiently, a lot of cars must become Wonkacars (I like this term).
If a Wonkacar is in "normal" (i.e. human operated) traffic, it will drive very defensively, if only for insurance reasons. So it will be like a driver who follows EVERY rule, ALL THE TIME. We know these kinds of people. They are a nuisance and break down the system.
Only if Wonkacars make up the majority of traffic on the road, they can operate smoothly, by communicating with each other, speeding up the same time at the traffic lights, for example, or forming "road trains" of several cars having the same destination, stuff like this. But even then a few human drivers have the potential to bring down chaos onto this choreography of Wonkacars.
There will be useful applications for Wonkacars, for example in door to door delivery, or for supporting drivers in a way my Audi already does in a rudimentary way, but unless you replace all cars with Wonkacars by government order, and make "human driving" illegal, the whole concept will not fly for the average motorist.
The whole idea also upsets me on a completely different level, and that is it's impact on society. Thanks to the health and public safety delusion we are now considering making people wear helmets on a bicycle. I'm not against wearing such things in general, actually, this makes a lot of sense for a lot of people, kids for a start, but making this mandatory is preposterous. Few days ago a kid in our area was very severely hurt at the skull when being run over BY a guy on a bicycle. So let's make kids wear protective gear all the time? All playgrounds here in Germany are now being "upgraded" to prevent kids from being hurt by falling down. So, they are having cushy floor mats now, etc. I don't advocate having playground which are by design dangerous, but falling down a tree and hurting your knee is also a very valuable lesson and experience. We are raising a generation of, well, sissies, who are afraid of life, and who are putting safety before freedom.
Whoa, this became a sermon. Sorry for this.
'Oliver!!!!!' (TG meme, for those that might enjoy such a thing) wrote: "Don't get me wrong, I like the assistance systems of my Audi very much, and it handles stuff like accelerating and ***> breaking <*** on the Autobahn very nicely."
Your Audi *breaks* on the Autobahn? Terrible. You should get that fixed.
"Oliver!!!!!' (TG meme, for those that might enjoy such a thing)"
I'm not an Opel Kadett A, though. :-)
"Your Audi *breaks* on the Autobahn? Terrible. You should get that fixed."
Yes, and this happens all the time! I seriously consider getting a Jag as my next car, so that it only breaks occasionally while still on the motorway access :-)
Well, I better blame the spellchecker then.
I'm assuming by 'spellchecker' you're referring to yourself, yes…? An automated spellchecker will only pick up obvious misspellings, it ain't gonna identify where the numptie operating the computer has substituted a homonym for the correct word.
Personally, I believe it's bad practice to rely on spell/grammar checkers, you should learn to proofread your work; an automated tool is no substitute for a human brain, it can't know that you've used the wrong word, all it can do is check spellings according to its internal dictionary. At most newspapers - the ones worth bothering with, at least - mags et al, Word (or the WP of choice) is 'locked down' so that the spelling and grammar checkers CANNOT be turned on, and the journo must learn to proofread his/her copy.
But, if English isn't your native tongue, I'll let you off with a warning… ;oD
This becomes an IT thread again. :-)
"An automated spellchecker will only pick up obvious misspellings. Personally, I believe it's bad practice to rely on spell/grammar checkers, you should learn to proofread your work; an automated tool is no substitute for a human brain, it can't know that you've used the wrong word, all it can do is check spellings according to its internal dictionary".
Well, actually, yes and no. I guess I typed something like "braeks" and the spellchecker "corrected" it without me noticing it. Proof-reading, yeah, point taken, but here we enter the reality of the way the human brain works: Often, we do not read what is there, but we expect to be there. That's why it's always a good idea to wait a little bit between writing and proof-reading. But of course, that's tricky in a "fire&forget" medium like reader comments :-)
You're right, though, English isn't my native tongue...
While I agree with most of this, bicycle helmets have been required over here for decades and it's not a big deal, same with seatbelts in cars. IMO it'd be idiotic to ride a bicycle without a helmet, I've personally known two people who ended up with serious brain injuries by doing so and I myself have been in a bike accident where the helmet saved me from cracking my head on the pavement.
Except Flying Cars. They'll *NEVER* be practical. Remember automatic facial identification and all the utterly false claims made (pan a camera across the Superbowl crowd to ID crims - nonsense)? Well, now - 20 years later - the tech is just beginning to become practical.
Driver-less cars are impractical for many reasons. They're also inevitable in the long run.
Flying cars would be practical with a future generation of the same tech that auto driving cars will eventually be using, be a few hundred times more advanced, but one day why not? If you take humans out of the equation then there is no reason why auto pilot can not avoid other flying objects.
(Other nightmare locations are available).
I can't see it for a long time to come. Driving, say, down the A10 near Enfield, three lanes of traffic. Keeping left, as you should. Which as well as being what the Highway Code says you should do, keeps you away from the nutters trying to push ageing BMWs etc. to the limit across on the right.
Then. suddenly the left ane will suddenly turn into a filter., and vanish. OK. Technology can deal with that. Easy Peasy.
Then, across the junction, the lane on your right suddenly vanishes. And a new one opens on the left. This is when you realise that magically you are now in the right hand lane and there's a 4x4 overtaking on your left and a BMW is trying to occupy the space you are already using.
Now, you might want to be an early adopter of a small driverless car in these conditions.
I look forward to reading the coroner's verdict.
Oh yes indeedy! Keep right unless you want to end up in Sainsbury's or B&Q car park in Enfield. The other direction you end up on the M25 to Watford and a 10 mile round trip to get back to junction 26 where you started.
If you keep going and head over the North Circular, head into Finsbury Park area and the same thing happens again, only this time it's even more fun as no bugger will give way to anyone! You want that space in front of the car, slam down on accelerator, squeeze in with 2 inches to spare then immediately slam on the anchors before the next 30 mph speed camera catches you!! I've driven into London down through Finsbury at 4am on a Sunday morning and it's just as busy as 5pm on a Thursday afternoon, only at weekends is unlicensed cabbies picking up the clubbers who are wandering all over the bloody road absolutely pissed as newts!
Weston-Super-Mare always got me. It seems whichever road you take you always end up going under that single lane width railway bridge at the bottom of a downhill dogleg heading towards the coast.
And of course most gyratory systems seem to require you to go round and round faster and faster until you reach some sort of escape velocity which flings you off in some random direction.
Also, the preferred method of turning right in London goes as follows. In order to turn right, you need to block the flow of oncoming traffic. To achieve that, you indicate left so the muggins behind you pulls out right to overtake you, providing the blocking piece and enabling your right hand turn.
The A43 at Brackley has another shining example of foolishness. Well two actually.
Firstly the lane advisories visible to the right are the only ones. So you basically get 100 yards warning. Then there's the weird lane route they want you to take if going 'right to left' as shown in the picture. You're supposed to approach in the right hand lane then swerve over to the outside (leftmost) lane (making yourself pretty much invisible to traffic coming down the hill) then hang a tight left to leave the roundabout.
I've only occasionally seen people doing it and I'm pretty sure they are visitors. No-one who uses the roundabout regularly would attempt to follow the lane markings. We all straight-line it. It avoids the need for swerving and means you are fully visible to the traffic trying to enter the roundabout coming from the north-bound A43.
"......if I were a lawyer, I'd probably step out in front of one just to be able to sue everyone from the owner / 'not driver' down to the programmers." Hmmm, a device that promises to monetarily cripple Google and at the same time prompts lawyers to commit suicide? MAKE THEM NOW!!!
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