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Road Marker Marks You
If you could make a reflective road marker (a "road stud", in the jargon) that contained a small solar cell and battery, you would be able to: A) power a LED at night to provide lit lanes, not just reflection; B) monitor for fog or water on the road surface; C) monitor the temperature to detect ice; D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road; E) All of the above. If the company can make them cheap enough, they'll be everywhere in a few years.
Here come the "Soviet Russia" jokes.
In Capitalist America, Road Marker Marks YOU!
5mm? 70mph? What if I'm driving in a quarter inch of water at 115kph?
Mom says my
F) Drive along with a truck and a shovel, collecting enough solar panels and batteries to power your house.
Here.
Lets just get it out of the way
F) CowboyNeal
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Snow plows. Granted, you can embed them in a track in between lanes but that gets expensive over large sections of roadway. Cool idea, though, will probably be most useful in areas that don't get enough snow to warrant plowing.
Quintus malus puer est.
this
In a Road That's All Eyes, the Driver Finds an Ally
By IAN AUSTEN
ABOUT 12 years ago, Martin Dicks was trapped in dense fog during a harrowing four-hour commute to his job as a firefighter in central London.
"Virtually all I could see on the road was a cat's-eye reflector every now and then," Mr. Dicks said, recalling his trip down one of Britain's major highways. "I figured that if I could make the cat's-eyes more visible, I could probably save more lives than I could in the fire service."
A back injury forced Mr. Dicks out of the fire department shortly afterward, giving him the time to pursue that goal. His training as an electrical engineer provided the necessary skills.
Now, after perfecting illuminated markers that are embedded in the road surface to guide motorists through bad weather or warn of dangerous conditions, Mr. Dicks's company, Astucia Traffic Management Systems, is going a step further. Its latest creation is an embedded stud equipped with a camera that catches speeders, monitors traffic for criminals or stolen cars and even checks for bald tires on the fly.
"Nobody knows it's a camera or a speed trap," Mr. Dicks said of his latest creation.
Mr. Dicks's original idea was quite simple in concept. He wanted to create an illuminated road marker containing its own power source, a solar cell. At night or in bad weather, light from approaching vehicles would generate enough power to light up the marker, which consisted of light-emitting diodes. An illuminated marker would be more visible than a plain reflector, and the idea was that a car passing over the markers would cause them to stay illuminated long enough so that they would provide a warning trail of lights for any vehicles close behind.
The trouble, at first, was the technology available in the early 1990's. Photovoltaic cells were not as efficient as they are today. And at the time, Mr. Dicks recalled, "the concept of a white L.E.D. was nowhere."
Working mostly with family members at first, Mr. Dicks produced a prototype marker within two years. He dodged the white L.E.D. problem by combining the glow from red, green and blue arrays. The group not only overcame the limitations of solar cells, but also managed to engineer markers that turned red to warn when the gap between two cars was dangerously small.
Mr. Dicks said the technology both impressed and alarmed British government highway officials.
"They were frightened about everyone using the product on roads from one end of the country to the other," he said. "They thought it would make their budgets disappear."
The first markers cost roughly twice the price of conventional embedded road studs. As a result, their use was restricted at first to especially fog-prone or dangerous sections of roads as well as crosswalks, including some in the United States.
Mr. Dicks was not the only person with a desire to illuminate to road markers. After a friend struck and killed a pedestrian in 1991 at a crosswalk in Santa Rosa, Calif., Michael Harrison developed a system that uses flashing L.E.D.'s in the road surface to make crosswalks more visible. The company he founded in 1994, LightGuard Systems, now has about 700 installations in the United States.
A study of 100 illuminated crosswalks by Katz, Okitsu & Associates, a traffic engineering firm based in Southern California, estimates that adding the blinking L.E.D.'s to crosswalks can reduce pedestrian accidents by 80 percent.
The original Astucia markers were glued onto the road surface. That left them vulnerable to snowplow blades and to constant pounding from car and truck tires.
Mr. Dicks wanted to put the markers into holes drilled into the road surface. The key, he said, was finding self-healing resins for the top lenses that would be flush with the surface and subjected to much wear and tear.
"It's like running your fingernail on a rubber sheet," he said of the plastics' behavior. "The mark it leaves goes away."
A
is if the government started putting leds embedded into the pavement and they could send you messages (eg. accident up ahead, work zone, speed limit changed to XXmph, etc) to you while you're driving having the message pace with your car.
Also, you could make lanes that are dynamic during the day and night. (They already have those with changing street signs).
Real time stopping distance approxomations (are you following too close?). Lane change "handoffs" (the road infront of you goes orange because someone is turning into that lane.)
It's would be the same technology used for those rotating led clocks.
Of course, it'll all be moot when people finally let computers do the driving for them.
-- dK
As I say every time this subject comes up, I'd much rather have my car know the max speed on a given road for a given set of conditions and not be allowed to go over the max speed, than I want fancy electronics to check to see if I go over the max speed, and if I do, take my picture, and send me a ticket. I'd rather pay higher taxes than fund police through tickets (and we wouldn't need as much traffic police either if the cars were smarter).
I claim that if no one could go over the speed limit, traffic would flow much more smoothly, and if the limit is too low (because you are expected to speed 10 mph), we will all complain loudly enough to get it changed.
Other aspects of this project sound interesting though.
Dara Parsavand
In the upper states (buffalo, etc) and many parts of Canada, they have a great deal of trouble with things like these. Snow plows simply pick anything not level with the road off. Even if they're dug down a bit into the pavement, they still get damaged and eventually get picked out. I don't think that it's going to work to well up here.
Now, figure out how to do all that in a paint and then you're a kabillionair!
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
while people will really like these if they do only the 'safety' tasks (illuminated, warnings for fog, standing water, ...), there's no way they wouldn't be vandalized instantly if they were used for speed limit enforcement.
-- the cake is a lie
The theft of multiple road markers is therefore referred to as "compiling RPMs"
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
...ever since I saw embedded reflectors in the UK. Problem is, where I live, we get large amounts of snow and ice building up on the roads. Sometimes when I'm driving on the highway, my mind will turn to the notion of holographic lane markers... or some equivalent system that would interact with the windshield of the car to visibly plot lanes etc... How about it, physicists of /.? Any brilliant ideas?
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
sheesh, I'd accept a temporary increase in my vehicle registration for a couple of years to see these on the farm roads here in Texas.
You haven't lived until you've torn a chunk of the drivers seat out with your ass because of an unexpected turn.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of driving on a farm road in Texas, here's a brief description.
1.5 lanes wide
No shoulder
Painted lines optional
Random livestock
"Lame" - Galaxar
-b0s0z0ku
They'd have to be durable in northern climates because anything you put on the road has to be able to withstand getting scraped off of the road by a snowplow.
"We all break the law regarding speeding," Mr. Kerridge said. "The system may leave a bad taste in motorists' mouths at the beginning. But when their insurance starts going down and stolen vehicles start getting recovered, the benefits will overcome that."
My insurance has never gone down with the same company here in CA. I have to switch providers for a $100 break, then it goes up, up, then I have to switch again. Perfect record.
Is for them to flash in sequence, so you see little ribbons of light flowing down the freeway. Trouble is, for it to look interesting, the lights would have to appear to be moving at about three to four times the speed limit. Which would encourage a certain class of Stupid Person to try and keep up with them.
Actually, that's a very clever thought: if they could be set to sequence at exactly the speed limit, they'd be a great 'heads-up' speed (and speed limit) indicator - "if you're passing the little flashing lights, you're speeding."
Carthago delenda est!
Initial costs, reliability, expected lifespans. The conditions are:
1) Outdoors in extreme temperature ranges,
2) Very high humidity, and often corrosive atmosphere,
3) Physically very small,
4) Reasonably immune to physical damage (salt/sand sludge + snowplows do _nasty_ things to optical windows.)
Power has to come from batteries at night; what is the battery life under industrial temperatures (-20 to 150F, forex.) Concrete doesn't get quite that hot, but asphault does.
You can get away with powering LEDs with a supercap and a switcher, should have a better lifespan than a NiCD or SLA, but they're physically larger and not as robust (As well as pricey.) But that won't cut it for cameras or radios. So you have to replace the batteries every few years.
These are not traditional road studs. 5" wide?? These are huge; the normal installation methods won't work.
I'd like to see their business case. Almost certainly relies on questionable safety increases or revenue from being a speed trap.
My state is running a multi-year reliability study on more traditional road studs (including those nifty blue reflectors) on various roads around the area.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
is having all sorts of commercials follwing you around on the road.
I guess the better option would still be to have the messages sent by wifi to the car's computer and displayed on its screen, so you can read them easily. Reading stuff off the pavement while driving is not exactly convenient.
Interesting point though. It will probably happen, too (in one form or another), but not very soon.
Right. Force. Like pounds. ;-)
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road;
States rely too much upon the fines for speeding. They have optimized their income with the current system. If speed detection was made 100% reliable, no one would do it and the states wouldn't make any money off of it.
This is a part of the reason why interlock devices aren't placed on all cars at the factory. Everyone hates "drunk driving", but they make so much money off of it that they don't want it to completely stop.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Something that's prety much completely overlooked in these discussions of "auto ticketing for over the limit" is that setting one speed limit for all vehicles ignores the differences between vehicles that are based on physics and manufacturing quality.
:-> ) is the overloaded minivan going 85.
In my Z3, I can (safely) take corners at speeds far in excess of the posted "recommended" limits. Indeed, I frequently don't actually need to slow down for the corners. That's because the car's center of gravity is extremely low, the wide tires provide huge contact patches, and the car is almost perfectly balanced (50/50 front/rear). Add to the mix the outstanding OEM suspension, and it is completely safe to take the corner above the recommended speed.
In my sisters Ford Excursion, however, a speed below the posted recommended limit is necessary to keep the behemoth between the lines. It has a high center of gravity, a terrible contact patch/weight ratio, and bad front/rear balance. Plus, being made by Ford, the suspension feels like a pair of overstretched rubber bands. The posted recommended limit is too high for that thing.
Impossible, but I'd like to see speed limits take into account the physics that control how safe a vehicle is at speed. Much more frightening to me than a sports car travelling at 100 mph (not me
That'll probably arrive right after the IQ requirement for driver's licenses.
Dan D
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Perry county, central PA. Any given road that's not an Interstate will have any number of the following defects or problems:
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Since they can also form packs, they can turn into a revenue center for municipalities either by extorting money from homeless people in the neighborhood or by breaking them up for parts.
Version 2.5 will include the ability to self-assemble, leading the end of life as we know it. Personally, I salute our new artifically-intelligent speed bump overlords!
From my years of driving in 2M+ person cities, I've had time to observe what slows down traffic flow.
Three things: braking (slow spots), inattention/under-limit driving, and fear.
- Slow Spots
What slows down traffic flow most is people braking when they don't need to, or braking more than they need to. The problem is that in congested traffic, once one car slows in one lane, a wedge of cars behind him slows, and behind them everyone slows.
Then when that one driver speeds up (and it takes much longer to speed up than slow down), the next cars THEN speed up. They don't speed up exactly when the lead driver does because it takes them time to see the change. This carries on behind them.
This creates a slow spot on the freeway. Once a slow spot is created, it only goes away once a gap backwards in traffic is large enough to allow the slowed vehicles to speed up to normal speed before the gap is completely closed by the approaching traffic.
- Under-limit Driving
This is obvious. Left or center lane driver drops below speed limit, cars behind have to slow (often they use their brake instead of coasting down), and you're in the situation above (slow spot).
- Fear
Car needs in another lane. Most drivers, if there is room ahead of the vehicle beside them, will still brake and try to fall in behind the neighboring vehicle. The following vehicles in that lane may not be friendly, and may not allow that. So fearful driver brakes even more, hoping to eventually get over. I've even seen some fools come to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway so they can hopefully work across 3 lanes to exit. They should have either sped up and pulled in front, or if that took too long, gradually worked their way over, missed their exit, and looped back.
These things don't mean you should never brake, or that you should always drive aggressively, but some middle ground approach would surely improve things. The time cost for a full traffic jam is enormous. 5 minutes times 200,000 vehicles is 11 days of time. In a perverse way that's a really significant amount of power that one driver can exercise. Create a good traffic jam and you've just wasted 11 days of your town's time.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Speaking for myself I'd that the reason why so many slashdotters are wary of such technologies is because we know technology well enough to know that it's not a panacea to all (or really any) social problems and we understand the potential for abuse that comes with any complex, secretive technology controlled by a group or agency that operate de facto without public oversight/control. We're also, as a group, less prone to take sweeping promises about what a new technology can and will do for us at face value mostly because we've heard so many that proved to be damn lies when the dust settled: "Face recognition cameras will only spot terrorists!"; "The new bomb scanners will make air travel safer and more convientent, and no false positives!"; "Peoplesoft is an easy to use and cost effective solution to your HR needs"; "The speed sensors are for your own protection citizen" etc...
Also, speficically regard objections to automated traffic enforcement scams such as this a lot of object because we know that the stated objective, "increased safety", and promised benefits, "lower insurance rates" are total bullshit. If increased road safety were the goal then stealth enforcement wouldn't be seen as a benefit, bright red flags and flashing lights would mark the intersections dangergous enough to warrant traffic spy-cams and people would slow down, thus saving lives. That and having traffic engineers set the speed limit to a speed that the road can safely handle, or better yet pump the money being tossed into spy-cams into smart roads with adaptive speed limits. So yeah I'm afriad of any revenue generating, control increasing technology marketed as a safety device.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut