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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!"
This will be a major improvement... most of the studs I meet on the street are idiots.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
...as in intelligent road stud.
Or something.
Too many hosers with a liscense already treat driving like a video game. And when people start paying too much attention to the blinking lights embedded in the roads ... watch out.
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
Err, I meant "faster traffic to the left" in that first sentence, oops :)
11*43+456^2
Cars, too, are being designed with more and more impressive technology, many are capable of noticing that you are tailgating, some may even begin to slow the car automatically soon (a system I'd be quick to disable... having the car take over unexpectedly would quickly cause me to froth at the mouth).
If the studs were ever cheap enough per-unit, though, I can imagine all kinds of other uses for them... an array of 'em would make things disappear nicely to a casual glance if they merely changed color to match their surroundings...
Any generalization is a stupid one.
"...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..."
I'm sick of you slowboat assholes lambasting brave souls like me and my fellow tailgaters, who selflessy put ourselves in danger every day to eliminate the wasted space you "safies" use to create those awful traffic jams. We're heros, and we know it, quit oppressing us.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
It would be nice if folks would override their cruise and PASS, instead of inching by the vehicle in the right lane.
And yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. "I like to Duel" Semi Driver. Nothing worse than dueling semis on the interstate.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Ever notice there are two types of drivers? The morons in front of you and the idiots behind you? The morons are going too slow and the idiots are going too fast. Trouble is, to the moron you're an idiot, and to the idiot you're a moron.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
your own car to leave a trail of lights behind it, the length of which related to your speed
Simple design: each light stays on for two seconds after you pass it. This enables drivers behind you to obey the "two second rule". If you come upon lights before they go out, you know you're following too closely.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Finally! This innovation will put a stop to the cruel extrication of real cat eyes for roadway use.
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
'round here, they can't even keep the little reflective bevels in the road. Snowplows tend to rip them up, though it takes a few snowfalls.
So expensive little sensors, they're just snowplow bait. Roads take a tremendous amount of abuse.
A.
Perhaps intelligent road studs with assault weaponry to take out bad drivers would be more useful!
:-P
I believe we've had those for a while. They're called "mines."
~UP
Eat the Path.
Fog prone areas could definitely benefit from the trail of lights based on speed idea, since you wouldn't actually have to see the person in front to know they were there and how far back to be. Well, really if it's that foggy you probably shoudn't be scooting down the highway, but that never stops folks.
I hate tailgaters too...but what REALLY bugs me is when you get right up on somebody and they wont move over!!!!
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
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.
I've actually come up with a plan for how to do it to maximize the likelihood of fatality to the SUV-driving tailgater behind me. Here's how it goes:
- Hit your brake, while moving a little to the right. They'll instinctively brake and move to the left.
- Now, brake a little harder, but cut back to the left. They'll either swerve off the road, or cut back to the right. If they go to the right, they'll be maximizing pressure on the front left wheel. That is the way SUVs are statistically most likely to roll.
Now, technically doing this is premeditated murder, but who's to say you didn't see an animal in the road, and were avoiding it?Disclaimer: make sure they're paying attention if you do this... otherwise they might just hit you without braking at all.
Oh, and yes, I'm a professional bastard. >:-]
I've heard that in some European countries the custom is to only use the right lane (or left if it was the UK) for people that are merging on or off the freeway, making things much safer overall.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
Hmmm. A trunk-mounted proximity detector coupled to a pair of M2s would be simple enough... wouldn't leave much room for the groceries, though.
"Unless you're in the process of passing someone, you should never be in the far left lane of a 3-4+ lane highway..."
The exception being that you're on Route 128 around Boston, and you have a Rhode Island plate, in which case you are expected to move from the on ramp to the far left lane (even when there is no other traffic) and stay there at a stately 50MPH.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
I have an even better solution:
I installed oversize discs and drums, plus a vacuum booster and master cylinder from a duece and a half into my 1 ton Suburban.
When idiots tailgate, my truck outstops them in a hurry. Two W5x25 I-beams plus three railroad ties prevents damage to my vehicle. I let them hit, and then I drive off without a scratch, leaving them sitting in a puddle of antifreeze.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
You lie. I drive 2-3 seconds behind the car in front of me, and cars to not constantly pull in filling the gap. One will here and there, but not constantly. In a 10 mile stretch today it amounted to 3 cars. This in stop an go traffic. That is one reason for the gap: leaving room for others, and those who did switch in front of me stayed in that lane for miles.
The gap has 3 purposes. First, safety, you can't react in under 1.5 seconds, so 2 seconds is minimun time distance. (You can fake it when closer by braking hard, but that will only work when the car in front of you isn't braking as hard) Second, politeness: let the other guy get into your lane when he wants to. Third environment, when the car ahead of your brakes, you can often just let off the gas to slow down enough. (Brakes trade speed for heat, letting off the gas does not, it would be a big difference if everyone did it.
Drive safely. Nobody else will, but you can still make a difference. You will at least get in less accidents.
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.
"But then again I drive fast and I respect the whole "faster traffic to the right" thing, so I'm never really in anyone's way. "
On any freeway, highway, or large motor way I've been, they have large, bold signs saying, "slower traffic keep right " as that's both the entry and exit lane. It makes more sense for the traffic there to be slower.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I prefer a long towbar, rated for a couple of tons.
Normally, with sudden enough braking, I can punch a hole right through into their engine block without any hassle. Of course, the bumper on my 1968 landrover is a solid chunk of steel spanning the whole width of the vehicle, so small irritants like the headlights,grill and front bumpers of modern vehicles barely scratch the paint off it.
The best part of it is when, after you exchange details, you say "Well, I gotta go... mind putting your foot on your brakes for a second?" and then casually pick low range and oh-so-slowly-and-painfully drive out of the front of their car without even touching the accelerator. Sure , you could use high range, but then you'd have to rev the motor a little and that'd spoil the effect.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
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.
A Taurus is pretty much bottom-of-the-line transportation short of a cheapy import like a Kia or whatever, so take that into account. It's the car you buy when (1) you don't much like or pay attention to cars, and (2) both of your jobs involve the phrases "sales associate" and "department store". Or (3) you work for Ford, and they just give you one.
Additionally, Detroit has a well-deserved reputation for having some of the worst roads in the country. This is ironic considering how important it's supposed to be to our auto industry, but there you have it.
There are definite (and sometimes extreme) regional differences in driving habits, too. For several years my work required that I do a lot of traveling, and being a car guy, I always found these differences very interesting.
In short, what you saw riding in a crappy Ford on a crappy Detroit road really doesn't give you a clear picture of what things are like across the other 160,000 miles of highway in this country...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
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.