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Intelligent Road Studs
Copley writes "The BBC have a short story about 'intelligent' cat's eyes (reflective road studs). I remember reading about the principle of these years ago. It seems that they've reached the real-world trial stage. The whole concept is pretty cool - the studs monitor weather and traffic speeds and change their colour accordingly. As you drive along, rather than see your own headlights reflected, you see a line of active lights indicating what you can expect ahead of you: stationary traffic, ice, etc. As I recall, one idea proposed was for your own car to leave a trail of lights behind it, the length of which related to your speed. The trail thus indicated the 'danger-you-are-too-close-you-moron' zone behind you. Drivers could then avoid driving within another car's trail. Neat idea, but I somehow doubt even the most technical of safety systems is ever going to change the driving habits of some of the brain-dead, tail-gating idiots I often have to share the roads with... Perhaps intelligent road studs with assault weaponry to take out bad drivers would be more useful!"
I prefer to give a good hard hit on the brake pedal to wake them up
At least here in the US, a lot of highway troubles would be eased if everyone would remember that striated traffic flows smoother for everyone, and that you should always have faster cars on your left and slower cars on your right. Unless you're in the process of passing someone, you should never be in the far left lane of a 3-4+ lane highway (well, unless you're going pretty damn fast and you can't see anyone coming in your rearview in that lane, and you're being vigilant about it, in which case you're probably breaking speed laws anyways, but that's an entirely seperate matter).
11*43+456^2
Chips already regulate speeds in cars now. Police Crown Victorias are almost completely stock, just without the 'Guv chip. Automatic trannies have been taking over for years, as well.
Not that any of this is wrong, it's just up to you to decide how much control you want to give up to your car. Me, I'm a control phreak :)
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
The lights might help the ignorant ones, but I doubt it. My best friend's wife tailgates. If there is a car in front of her, she's always under 1/2 car length behind. The speed doesn't matter. I was riding shotgun and a guy in front of her drove on the shoulder to splash her with mud. When he did it the second time, she said, "He's doing that intentionally!" I said, "Maybe he doesn't like being tailgated." "Oh, that's not it," was all she said. Later, she totaled her car in the rain. She ran into the car in front of her. To her, it was their fault for stopping too fast. She still drive the same.
Would these lights make a difference? Probably for a few drivers. Enforcement would help, but on freeways I only see speeding enforced. I've seen people driving so close to a cop car, they are under two seconds behind the car in front to the cop. Yes, he's tailgating too.
Uhm. . .
Rant off!
Every road I've seen which expects snow-plow usage has it's cat eyes sunken below the road level (about half an inch) with little bevels on each side, to prevent the snow plow from tearing them up every time it clears the road.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
If you are willing to drive 10mph slower, except on the hilly parts, you can usually drive in the right lane on interstates around here. Just slip in between some semis and don't pass them unless a hill comes. Truck drivers are a usually lot nicer than the car and SUV drivers, in Virginia at least. Just remember they can't stop as fast, so give them some room when you get in front of them.
Yeah, it'll take a few extra minutes, but it's a lot more leisurely drive, most of the time. Since I have very little experience driving anywhere other than Virginia, this may not work where you are living.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
My job is collecting data about highways, mostly pavement quality. It's done from a platform (van) moving at highway speeds, and can involve a fair amount of erratic driving.
Tailgaters are a serious problem for me, as are all the other kinds of "me-first" assholes I have to deal with all day every single work day. I won't even start on drunk drivers (except maybe to point out that Tennessee and Georgia, among others, really need get their acts in gear w/r/t DUI). Thanks to folks like this, car wrecks are a fact of life for me, and there's little I can do to avoid it except take comfort in the fact that my van is heavy enough that it is almost guaranteed to clean house in a fight with most any other car on the road.
What I find most amazing about these people is that absolutely nothing can get them to change their driving habits. Even with the van blinking and flashing like a Christmas tree from Hell and a huge sign on the back warning people to stay the fuck back because of sudden braking and such, a lot of folks still like to ride my bumper.
Only they aren't even riding my bumper, because to get to the bumper you'd have to make it through all the equipment that bristles from the van. Which makes the whole tailgating thing really amazing to me. I don't expect people to know that rear-ending me would result in their being responsible for a six (possibly even seven, depending on what gets broken) digit repair bill, but I do find it amazing that there are so many people who are too stupid to realize that their front bumper is only a few feet away from something they probably can't afford to bang a car into. I'm especially perturbed by the fact that weather conditions don't seem to have much effect on their ability to come to this realization, either
(I also think that most people must be a whole to more rich than me, because there is almost nothing that rolls down the highway that I could afford to bang my car into.)
So yeah, I don't think that these smart cat-eyes will have any noticeable impact on the way people drive.
I can't see the true spirit of friendship and cooperation ever infecting the vast majority of humanity - at least not here in the USA - so I imagine the only thing that would make folks drive in a more sane manner is to create some sort of consistently enforced and difficult to avoid method of punishing bad drivers or rewarding good drivers. Cops and speed traps don't help much because there are very few of them and they generally can't easily catch stuff like tailgating and reckless driving. The only thing I can think of is some sort of omnipresent Big Brother system that can always see every car, at least on major roads.
I'd also like to see better punishments. Speeding tickets hurt a lot if you don't have a whole lot of money, but are little more than a slap on the wrist for other people. I'd rather see something that is directly related to driving (thus keeping a better associating with driving habits, which would hopefully increase the salience of the punishment for behavior-changing purposes). For example, folks who get two moving violations in a year could be banned from using the interstate highway system for 1 or more years.
I got a driver's recently (and I'm not that young) and this was one of the first things I noticed. Sometimes I just let car after car cut in in front of me, but recently I've decided that that is more unsafe than keeping a shorter distance. Because every time somebody cuts in in front, you have a very short distance to that car, and that car is more likely to brake since he is already moving sideways and what not.
The really dangerous thing with tail gating is whiplash. My next move will be to use a car with a proven whiplash protection. Normal headrests are basically useless, according to both research and crash statistics. New SAABs and Volvos have whiplash protection, and so does some of the new Toyotas.
The Autoliv company has developed a nifty whiplash protection that can be retrofitted into just about any car. It consists of two shear plates for each car seat. They are mounted at the forward mount points of each seat and shear in case of a rear end collison, making the car seat rotate backwards in a controlled fashion, with the shear plates taking up the rotational energy. This prevents the head from snapping back violently. Real life statistics based on cars mounted with these seem to indicate the shear plates get the job done and prevent whiplash injuries. They are not for sale as yet though...
Our company works for Ford. First trip to Detroit, having never driven on the right before, I rode with an American colleague to see what to expect. First ten minutes were a real white-knuckle job, but I hate back-seat drivers myself so I didn't want to say anything. Eventually I had to say tactfully, "People seem to drive an awful lot closer to each other over here." Reply was something like, "Oh yeah, we don't much bother with stopping distance over here. You get used to it."
:-)
And eventually I did get used to it. There were so many factors against me on that first trip: never driven on the right before; never driven an automatic before; in a strange car (Taurus) which apparently has no suspension, triggers its ABS at the slightest provocation, feels about 20 feet wide and accelerates like a slug (in spite of its V6 engine); on roads where the freeways are so badly potholed that even the worst, smallest country road in Britain is in better condition; don't know how US traffic systems work; don't know my way around town; and in a town which apparently thinks putting a signpost right on the exit to say "hey, you missed your turn, sucker" is a good method of traffic signing. It was a real thrill ride.
And IN SPITE of all that, at my very worst, with everything conspiring against me, my driving was no worse than what I saw every day from regular Detroit citizens!
Grab.
Actually we're *owned* by Ford, so we're (relatively) free to hold opinions... :-)
;-) but it's a pretty sharp bit of kit. Electric motors give a really good boost at low revs - no waiting for torque converters to spin up or stuff like that. Generally it's pretty nice to drive. And (finally!) electric power assist steering, which is the Right Way To Do It.
Everyone at Ford knows the Taurus was a dog - it's not news. The more interesting question (which they're still trying to answer) is how they managed to get the Focus handling so wrong on the US model, when they got it so right on the European version.
On the plus side, check out the Hybrid Escape when it comes out. It's not like earth-shattering performance (hell, it's an SUV, what do you expect?
Grab.
They all come out of the St. Thomas assembly plant, and all those things (including the lights and cages) can be installed from the factory.
There is no such thing as a gov' chip. It's factory programming in the PCU that determines maximum speed. A simple handheld microtuner can remove the speed limiting.
And, yes, all of the engine and suspension components are available in a factory car available to the public, called the Mercury Marauder (factory option M75). Actually, the Marauder is *faster* than a stock Police Interceptor.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain