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"Road Trains" Ready To Roll
clickclickdrone writes to mention that "road trains," a system linking vehicles together via wireless sensors, could soon be rolled out in Europe. The system is designed primarily for cutting fuel consumption, travel time, and congestion. "Funded under the European Commission's Framework 7 research plan, Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) is aimed at commuters in cars who travel long distances to work every day but will also look at ways to involve commercial vehicles. Tom Robinson, project co-ordinator at engineering firm Ricardo, said the idea was to use off-the-shelf components to make it possible for cars, buses and trucks to join the road train."
If this catches on in America some gear heads are going to explode.
That you can check the professional driver's safety record before joining the train.
-mkb
The plan is called "Sartre". My first reaction: What if there's No Exit?
I am officially gone from
The lead vehicle is a purpose-built vehicle driven by a professional driver, not a 'passenger' of the train.
-mkb
This seems like it could be pretty bad if there was an accident.
You're handing control over to another driver, who may very well decide not to brake and cause a five car pileup, or worse. Also, there's no way to know the mechanical status of the vehicle -- what if one of them blows a tire, or runs out of gas, or the engine seizes?
What you should do is create a dedicated lane that is controlled entirely by computer, and you program your exit/entry point at that time, and let the signal and control computers handle traffic management. If an unauthorized vehicle enters the lane, sensors will immediately detect it, alert nearby drivers (and disengage), and send the police to go catch captain speedy pants and send him to a pants-down facility. Computers also do a much better job of fuel consumption and control... I mean, it'd basically be a packet-switched network, but with cars instead of pieces of data. It's a relatively benign IT problem.
As well, vehicle breakdowns would be handled a lot better because the system would be tied directly to the onboard computer and navigation systems: Just like lorries/semi-trucks operating on the road today. Having spoken to a commercial truck driver, I can tell you that the computer often knows about mechanical problems before the driver does, and their systems are pre-programmed to alert a dispatcher, who will send a rescue/repair vehicle out in situ.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This is not always the case. In some cases, the reduction of the drag from turbulence off the rear means that the leading vehicle also gets a benefit, though not as much as the following ones. This is true in stock car racing and in skating; I don't know about cycling.
Don't forget that if you're in front you're winning. A true gamer has rear view mirrors that say "Objects in mirror are losing".
Actually, lead vehicles benefit from this, too, just not nearly as much.
Even though vehicle aerodynamics have tried to combat it, there is a big negative pressure bubble forming your car's wake 'pulling' it backwards. Partially filling it with another vehicle's high pressure region where it 'cuts' the oncoming air helps.
Actually, the vehicle in front also benefits from the drafting. Not to the same degree as the trailing vehicles, but it gets a significant benefit none the less. See http://www.livescience.com/technology/070215_nascar_aero.html for details.
A generic couple were standing by the side of road, which was basically a piece of flat pavement cut into the side of a mountain. They were watching a garage inventor/scientist type explain his latest invention, a motorized luggage carrier. Sort of a motorcycle sidecar or luggage unit for people who didn't want to change the visual impact of their motorbike. It was an independent unit, had its own motor and fuel, and required only a slight modification to the motorcycle in the form of a radio transmitter. After that, it basically mimicked the motions of the "master" motorcycle.
Garage inventor gets on his bike, fires it up, and drives off. Sure enough, the other device (which I recall looking a lot like a large cooler on wheels) fired up by itself and followed. A few minutes later, the garage inventor loops back and drives by. Getting cocky, he waves at the couple. Unfortunately, he hits a rock and with only one hand on the handlebars, can't recover. He loses control, and drives off the side of the cliff. An unpleasant "crunch" is heard below.
Moments later, the motorized luggage holder comes along and dutifully throws itself off the cliff as well. A second "crunch" is heard.
The couple look down at the carnage and then leave.
Maybe there should be car-carrying trains. Or stop building sprawl. Anyway, actual trains are far more efficient than this could ever be.
Why is my first thought of someone playing 'crack the whip' on one of these long trains??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
... on I-94 to Minneapolis, but I fell asleep and missed the exit by 150 miles.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ok.. Made a fool of myself..
There seem to be overwhelming evidence that I was utterly wrong.. Ah well..
Since I can't mod myself -1 stupid, I'll just flog myself 10 times !
--Ivan
(they forget to mention the *EXTRA* fuel expense for the leading vehicle that is basically towing the others..)
Oh look, someone who doesn't know what he's talking about by tries to sound like he does just got modded up. "Trailing cars fill in the lead car's low-pressure wake, thereby cutting down pressure drag."
You just got troll'd!
Maybe there should be car-carrying trains.
There already are. What makes you think there aren't?
Or stop building sprawl.
And the sprawl that already exists? Face it, its not going anywhere, so you'll have to deal with this issue. Trains aren't really going to work, unless perhaps they make them incrediblly fast.
Anyway, actual trains are far more efficient than this could ever be.
Since it's not even deployed, perhaps you should wait before passing judgement.
I'm sure they could... you know... take turns.
Truckers in general are pretty congenial amongst themselves on the road. It only takes a few minutes on listening to the CB radio to know they got each others backs.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
OK - imagine this scenario: a train is driving along, and something happens to car number 2/8. Hit by another car, flat tire, accidentally leans on the joystick, whatever. The car veers out of control, unlinking cars 3-8. So now you have six cars being manned by people who were sleeping/reading/eating/daydreaming 10 nanoseconds ago.
I'm just sayin, I don't think you could pay me enough to get in one of those trains. Mythbusters did an interesting piece on saving gas by drafting. You could save a great deal of gas, but at great expense to safety.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Its been done. On some smaller roads connecting towns in Austria, I've seen them prohibit truck traffic. In each town, they drive the trucks onto railroad flatcars and haul them between towns.
Have gnu, will travel.
Theory: Sartre
Implementation: Kafka
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Nope. Not true. The leading vehicle experiences no extra drag at all, thing is it -is- to some extent towing the vehicles behind it, but if it wasn't it would instead be towing the -air- along, to the same degree. (that air being dragged along is, afterall, the source of the saved fuel for the cars behind.
5 cars driving close together really do use less fuel in sum, compared to 5 individual cars. It's -not- just a question of redistributing the consumption, there's real savings.
How would they expect this system to work at highway Merges ? Another fun thing is inclement weather and curves on the highway. My car can take curves at a much higher speed than a panel truck during high winds.
I can see where this would be useful on long straight highways, but otherwise very dangerous. Each car would also need a "safe return to park" capability which would
cause the cars to park themselves to the side of the road if the central control was lost, and the driver did not respond within a few seconds.
Include a gps unit that would alert people that their turn is coming up, and have the professional driver thing only be for testing , and add that capability to general car system.
Sounds a lot like this idea: Train-of-cars that was posted more than 4 years ago. Note that means certain elements are therefore in the Public Domain and cannot be patented.
Naw, killing the young is both a better deterrent to overpopulation, and easier because the ignorant good-for-nothing whippersnappers won't even see it coming.
Here in Europe, we already use these trains during rush hour. They can reach lengths of many kilometers.
We call them traffic jams. And we don' need no stinkin' wireless link.
"aimed at commuters in cars who travel long distances to work every day"
I have a better idea. Hook those road trains up to their houses, and move the houses closer to work. That will save a LOT of fuel, not to mention wear and tear on the infrastructure.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Exactly, this is a quick and dirty optimization for commuters. By just linking up on the fly and on the highway that's already being driven, any properly equipped cars can hop in instantly and follow the route they normally take. Loading onto an actual train takes time on both ends and requires the drivers to board/depart only at train stations, making it more effective for long distance (3-8+ hours). It also allows this to go all along the freeway you travel, rather than just along the rail lines, meaning more people would use a system tied to just the highway.
Of course, I can guarantee this system would limit travel speed to the legal speed limit, so this wouldn't catch on with the majority of commuters. Most cities, if traffic isn't moving 15mph, it's going 15mph faster than the speed limit.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
So you need one professional driver for every 8 cars to do the driving. How is it saving fuel if for every 8 cars your new train system has to have 1 more car burning fuel? You're adding 12.5% in fuel to save a few mpg.
Except that with this system, they don't need to be jammed. If everybody in the train presses the accelerator at once, knowing that the car in front of them will as well, everybody gets to move. You're not as limited by the following distance required by an unpredictable human driver and the unpredictable circumstances ahead.
Reducing inter-car distance reduces the amount of road you need because you put more cars on the same amount of pavement, and the same highway functions as a much larger road. But it only works if you get the humans out of the loop.
Of course it also provides opportunities for truly spectacular failures.
No worse than usual. Where I come from this would space the cars out slightly ... but their behaviour would be more predictable.
Right so a (probably exaggerated) 20% increase in efficiency of the vehicles behind.
Mythbusters did a test at 55 mph, where they got 20% at 50 feet distance and 39% at 10 feet, and that with a car driven "by hand", not remote controlled by the leading truck.
And in NASCAR, both cars drafting go faster (even if the following car gets the better deal), so it's unlikely that the truck will have a much lower efficiency, if not actually a better one.
Last but not least: why do people assume that the truck needs to be an "extra" vehicle that wouldn't drive otherwise instead of a regular truck with some extra equipment, with the driver/owner getting some benefit for doing the job (like being allowed to legally go faster than other trucks).
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The fundamental problem with most automated driving schemes is that they address driving on freeways, which people don't mind all that much.
Speak for yourself. I make a 5 hour drive once a month to see family and assuming a minumum level of safety, I would pay at least $5k for a system that kept the current lane, kept the current speed, and automatically slowed down to avoid accidents. Sure my drive would take just as long, probably even longer since it wouldn't go around slow vehicles in the fast lane, but that would be hours out of my life that I could spend doing any of a dozen different things.
And the sprawl that already exists?
Well, the nuclear powers are talking about reducing their warhead stockpiles. Maybe we could solve two problems at once.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They are certainly drafting. It's just that flying things disturb the air in a quite different pattern from ground vehicles. Staying right behind someone flying means being in the down-draft which is keeping the leader up, which means you have to work harder to keep yourself up. To the side you can catch a bit of up-draft from their wing vortices, in addition to less wind resistance.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Wait! What? Did someone on the internet admit they were wrong?
What the hell is going on???
Designate the leftmost lane the "train lane." Hit a button on your dash, and it signals the train to make an opening for you, hand off driving control to the "conductor" and you get to cruise at 15mph above the posted speed limit--legally. When you approach your exit, it signals you to leave the train, and you resume manual control to get the rest of the way to your destination.
Sounds workable to me.
except at 55-75 mph there's that much less room to react when the tire of the car in front of you blows out...
Unless you're building in sensors that can check for each and every possible change to the front vehicles ability to maintain speed and safety.
An automated roadway seems a better bet than semi-autonomous 'trains' on an uncontrolled road. The 'trains' would by their definition need to interact in real-time with humans driving cars the old fashioned way. Trying to get a computer to react properly to independent human behavior at that speed in unknown conditions seems a steep steep hill to climb.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
They do say that the lead car of the train would be driven by professional drivers. of course that won't really help if a car in the middle of the train does something unexpected.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Just though i would point out that the ability for a motorcycle to brake faster than a car or truck is a myth. If you have a car or truck setup with the same quality tyres and brakes as a performance motorcycle you will find they stop in the same or less distance (Due to certain circumstances where a larger contact patch is benificial such as braking on dirt etc). (I am a motorcyclist also =p).
GM did this "car train" thing as an advanced research project back in the late 1970's in Cincinnati, OH.
Couldn't find a link, but remember reading about it.
except at 55-75 mph there's that much less room to react when the tire of the car in front of you blows out...
Yes, if that happens you hit them! But, you don't hit them very hard because they haven't had time to decelerate very much and your autopilot slammed on the brakes the millisecond they started to slow.
In the worst case, if the lead car suddenly loses a tire or something, the whole train probably collides, rather gently and then comes to a stop as a mass. Might scratch some paintwork, but unlikely to kill, or even hurt, anybody.
On a totally automated road system you would have trains like this separated by gaps big enough to ensure that even if one train is brought to a sudden halt (say by hitting a falling tree or a rogue motorist) the one behind has space to do a controlled stop.