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IBM's Patent-Pending Traffic Lights Stop Car Engines
theodp writes "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let your engine idle. The USPTO has just published IBM's patent application for a 'System and Method for Controlling Vehicle Engine Running State at Busy Intersections for Increased Fuel Consumption Efficiency.' Here's how Big Blue explains the invention: 'The present disclosure is directed to a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal. The method may comprise establishing communications with participating vehicles; responding to a stop status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: receiving a position data from each participating vehicles; determining a queue of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal; determining a remaining duration of the stop status; sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal when the remaining duration is greater than a threshold of time; responding to a proceed status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: sending a start-engine notification to a first vehicle in the queue; calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start; and sending the start-engine notification to the second vehicle at the optimal time.' IBM notes that 'traffic signals may include, but are not limited to, traffic lights at intersections, railway crossing signals, or other devices for indicating correct moments to stop and to proceed.'"
Hmmm, a computer at a railway crossing that can remotely disable a car's engine. To use the parlance of our times "What could possibly go wrong?"
...if you don't ignore the fact that this is a blatant case of "patenting the goal". The patent is "here's a bunch of ideas that might work to control fuel consumption at signals, we claim them all."
VW (and other car manufacturers probably) already have cars that shut off at stop lights. The "3L" car they made (78.4 MPG, no batteries required) shuts down at stop lights. All this is doing is making it 'intelligent'.
Did they patent "Doing vast and comic violence to idiot city planners, car manufacturers, and programmers that think turning control of a heavy vehicle over to an idiot program is a good idea."? Because I suspect that there might be a market for it.
This may mess up right on red or end up like Toyota end lead to some like car CPU lockup that ends in a bad way.
That will certainly make it easier to pull out of the way of the 5-ton fire engine coming up behind you when you're the first one on the line at the red light.
And that use-case didn't even take me 2 seconds to figure out.
I wonder about inventors sometimes....
I *also* wonder why Slashdot has so *much* trouble letting me be logged in, but what-the-fuck-ever...
The day they actually implement this, I start caring about (and driving) "antique" (aka exempt) cars.
Seriously... Great idea in theory. In practice, how many times have you sat waiting for a light and suddenly had to move NOW? Either for an ambulance, or some moron going too fast and turning far too widely, or a tractor trailer at a tight intersection that would otherwise have rolled its back tires over your hood, or even suddenly having to run the light to avoid getting rear-ended by someone coming up behind you completely oblivious to the light?
Good luck with all of those if the light itself has the power to kill your car. Oh, safety override, you say? Only if I can leave it on override 100% of the time.
This patent would be much less necessary if cities would install intelligent traffic lights that allowed traffic to flow and thus minimized idling engines.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I drive a Toyota!
This is a great idea. But it's being done the wrong way. Rather than sending signals to start and stop cars, the traffic lights should just send signals saying how long the red light is going to be, and while they're at it, specify how long the green lights will be too. Then the smart cars should interpret that how they will, by stopping, starting, or showing a light to the driver. This method will upgrade smoother and be more resistant to jokers with toys at the intersections.
Until *you're* the one in the ambulance stuck in rush hour traffic behind a bunch of cars at a red light that physically can't move.
And yes, I know the emergency lights on the ambulance can trip the intersection into emergency mode. Usually, the intersection will go all RED, for obvious reasons...
I think to remember they patented a method for toilet waiting lines and now they patent a method involving lines of cars.
I think they are obsessed with lines, maybe because they spend a lot of time on the line to patent stupid methods.
suppose your car has been told to shut off at a red light. What happens if you need to suddenly perform crash avoidance? One of the standard things taught in driver school is leaving enough room between you and the car in front of you in case you need to avoid a rear collision. I'm not sure insurance companies are going to go for this.
Wouldn't it be easier and far cheaper to simply have the car's engine control computer implement a count down timer ? If the engine is up to temperature, and the car has been stopped 15 seconds, turn off the engine. As an added bonus, it would work everywhere, such as in a drive-through or car wash, and not just at stop lights.
...if you don't ignore the fact that this is a blatant case of "patenting the goal". The patent is "here's a bunch of ideas that might work to control fuel consumption at signals, we claim them all."
I agree that that this isn't really a fully-disclosed invention. Generally, IBM is more interested in patenting as much as possible just to create patent thickets and later shut out or tax real innovators with bullying tactics. The blog post I just linked to also mentions IBM's claim (made in early 2009) to have a number of patents "larger than those from Microsoft, HP, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture, and Google combined." The blog post also mentions research that shows the average commercial value of an IBM patent is fairly low as compared to the portfolios of such competitors as Microsoft. The patent that gave rise to this slashdot article may be another example.
IBM has also been a long-standing aggressive force in pushing the envelope concerning the scope of patentable subject matter in the field of software. Courts can't be lobbied the way politicians are lobbied (which is something at which IBM is also extremely aggressive) but companies can try to bring up court case after court case pushing the envelope with new arguments in order to find loopholes to extend the range of what's patentable. The recent landmark decision in Germany, effectively lowering the bar for software patentability in the largest EU member state, was related to a Siemens patent, but other landmark cases in the US as well as in Europe (at the level of the European Patent Office as well as in individual European countries such as Germany) related to legal recourse sought by IBM in order to obtain patents on "inventions" of an ever lower standard.
At the lobbying front, the FFII (a European non-governmental organization fighting software patents and pushing for open standards) listed IBM as one of the four IT companies pushing hard for an overall patent and patent court reform in Europe aiming to strengthen the rights of patent holders and the legal basis for software patents.
This doesn't mean to say that IBM is the only company doing it, let alone the only one with an interest in this, but others entered the game relatively late and IBM has a history of decades of pursuing that agenda of an ever broader scope of patentable subject matter.
More roundabouts and less traffic lights. Roundabouts are way more efficient for traffic than stop signs and lights, though they do have the disadvantage of retards on the road failing to navigate them properly. We have one out side of our office and it's like the gong show during rush hour. The rest of the day the thing works really well except for the odd moron driving the wrong way or stopping for no reason at all.
I hereby disclose the following to the public domain: " A device for disabling traffic-light driven engine start and stop systems. The device shall consist a switch (mechanical or logical within the vehicles computer systems). The device should be required on all vehicles with automated engine start/stop systems to prevent vehicle shutdowns in case of emergency. The onboard computer system may elect to enable or disable automated engine start/stop based on driver preference and/or vehicle operating conditions. Specifically if a vehicle engine has not reached efficient operating temperature the automated engine shutdown may be disabled until the engine reaches design temperature so as to reduce the creation of noxious gases due to incomplete combustion."
Shutting down idling engines is nice and all, but there are times when it is the wrong thing to do. There go those 1BMer's again, missed the full scope of the problem.
I wish all funding for that would be diverted to making a car with a survival instinct: Proximity sensors for collision avoidance, sensors to determine road conditions of maximum safe speeds accordingly, etc.
Once it becomes rare for someone to die in a car accident, THEN they can mess around with red light idling algorithms and self-driving cars. Just pick your priorities: Safety first.
You can't take the sky from me...
Upon receiving the stop-engine notification, the vehicles may automatically switch off the engine, or display an alert informing drivers to manually switch off the engines. A vehicle may optionally notify the service once its engine is switched off.
For all of you concerned about not having complete control.
The summary doesn't effectively explain when this would be useful. At most lights, it won't matter. The example the patent gives is a 2 minute light, for which it is inefficient to restart the engine state. It suggests "waiting for 10 minutes for a railway to clear" as a case where this would be useful.
The patent seems very vague. It talks about processing information about the movement about other cars, doesn't comment on what should be looked for, how that information is to be determined, or how wait-time should be estimated. It basically seems to be a patent for the idea of signaling the car when a long wait is anticipated.
Wait, you're gonna make it so peoples cars will shut off their engines when they receive a signal from a transmitter the could be in someone elses car? Really, this is gonna be more fun than the taco bell takeover.
takeover vid is here if you've never seen it
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6073744870619162433#
What this patent fails to account for is that starting up the car results in increased fuel consumption for the short period while the engine attains running speed. Short period, though, but multiply it by the number of signals in an average city, and it might just come out that this actually increases sum consumption.
Also, I'd like to draw your attention to a post detailing just what can happen if we introduce networking into cars. And this is even made easier by the forced standards needed for this project to work...
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Doesn't starting a car engine consume a lot of gas . . . like, more than you would if you just left it idling?
I rode in a friend's BMW that shut the engine off when not moving, and it seemed to be a royal fucking pain in the ass to get the damn thing started again. This was in city conditions, where a lot of stop and goes are common.
On the other hand the PolygamousRanchSister has a Prius, and I didn't notice any problems with that.
Oh, and either MAKE or Wired will have instructions on making such a car stopper. Some dumb-ass will actually build it and use it. I would never buy a car with such a "feature." I want to be in full control of my vehicle, all of the time.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This seems like a bad idea, because cars might be running less than optimally. What if a car has been having engine troubles so it doesn't always start consistently?
will it allow Emergency vehicles to turn vehicle engines back on so I can GET the HELL out of the way when there is an emergency?
... in Germany. It was a 2-by-2 lane crossing. I was first on the left, to the right three or four cars already queued. In the back, an ambulance approaching at speed. With my engine ready, I simply skipped to the head of the queue on the right - crossing The Line in the process - and the ambulance passed. Easy.
Now consider the engine was turned off by the traffic lights. What am I going to do? "Sorry guv, lights killed my engine, you have to wait" or maybe push the car out of the way? OTOH, maybe one wouldn't need to - the ambulance wouldn't be able to run the lights anyway. Their engine would be turned off. WTF?
Most traffic lights in metro Atlanta seem to be perfectly unsynchronized, forcing motorists to wait through several cycles. Shutting the engine off for that length of time, the interior temperature is likely to exceed 100F (38C) before you to make it to the next red light. A similar scenario could play out in the colder climates, since the heater core will stay warm for a minute or so once the engine coolant stops flowing.
If the hybrids have a provision to run the electric motor to drive the air conditioner, I might tolerate IBM's plan. OTOH, do what I did, move to a town that has no traffic lights.
Near where I live in South India, there is a town with a population of 200,000 with exactly zero traffic lights. You have to drive two hours to a bigger town to even find a traffic light. Sometimes they even work; and then, some people even consider obeying them. That is, if it's not too inconvenient. My goodness, how uncivilized! But it's way cheaper and works much better than the zombified control-freak nonsense of a light and camera and computer and radio control on every frickin' corner. What kind of idiots would put up with that?
om namo bhagavate vasudevaya
I can't wait for IBM to get sued when some car owner needs to quickly get their car out of the way in an emergency. This can range from an oncoming vehicle, to a natural disaster (like a flood). What happens when there is an emergency and the driver needs to run a red light? Surely, if your brother is bleeding out in the passenger seat, it might be advisable to run the red light (provided no oncoming traffic is present of course) to get to the emergency room.
Life is complicated. We can not foresee how policies will affect the minority of cases. Unfortunately, it is frequently the minority of cases that are most important. (Such as it is uncommon for someone to get hurt and needs to be rushed to the emergency room -- stoplights be damned.) Lawmakers should get a clue too. Everytime they pass a bill to fund their latest piece of pork, they have no conception that while it may not cause dire consequences for the population at large, it will surely cause dire consequences for some.
On one route through my town, we have computerized stop lights. However, I have noticed that with heavy traffic on the main route and build up on the cross streets, once stopped the traffic flow at the next light is effectively halted. Thus, without excessive speed most traffic signals thereafter will be red and effectively kill traffic flow on the main route through town.
I have to drive the route early when traffic is building, but not yet at a maximum density. In order to beat the waiting reds, I drive below (or nearly so) the posted speed limit. Moreover, my final approach to signals I use even lower speeds to have some momentum when the signal changes. Does not always work, but lessens the need to start from first gear at every light. However, sometimes I have no trouble at all flying through most lights unhindered, usually the mornings, but not all days.
What if it's hot outside and my air conditioner is running? Bad idea. Force the transmission into park if you really want something like this implemented.
Anyone want to take bets on how long until the protocols gets hacked and spoofed?
This should be a good thread on comp.risks.
computerized != intelligent
So, no getting out of the way of ambulances and fire trucks then? Do these vehicles have to constantly update the instructions for intersection engine control? What if they go off their planned route?
Twinstiq, game news
This system is totally unnecessary, since engines are not going to be idling anymore with the introduction of the start and stop system.
Seen it in action on a Fiat 500 here in Italy and looks working pretty well (even if at first it is kinda strange hearing the engine shut off that way).
The ability to turn cars on and off at their whim.
How long until one hacks into the system and just turns them all off?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sorry IBM, you just reinvented the square wheel. Sucks to have paid all those patent fees.
All this is necessary to achieve this is wider application of so called "mild hybrid" technology. Think over-sized battery, over-sized starter motor, over-sized alternator, drive by wire throttle, and a bit of ECU smarts. Any time the car is stopped (or below speed X, where X is small 3mph? ) the engine is "off" (no fuel, no spark, engine still turning if the car is in motion), and the battery and starter motor move the car. Once the speed threshold is exceeded (or battery is sufficiently low) fuel and spark are resumed. At any greater speed the vehicle is powered entirely by the engine. Having electrically powered accessories (power steering assist, air conditioning, brake booster, etc.) would be preferable, so that all of those systems still function when the engine is not spinning. It addition, making these electric tends to increase efficiency and reduce weight. If these systems remain belt or vacuum driven there can be many situation where the ECU may be forced to leave the car idling, or waste battery power spinning the engine to keep the accessories running.
pending
adj (postpositive)
1. not yet decided, confirmed, or finished
While it is true that the patent system is completely broken, you really should cut the USPTO some slack here. The patent was only applied for on Thursday. It hasn't even been looked at yet!
The
I remember an enthusiast Electronics buff in Eastern part of India who came with a device in 1992, nothing new here. Tata Steel which holds board member status in IIT Kharagpur later sponsored this student for an undergraduate in Engineering.
Has anyone asked how this will affect the lead time required to get cars in motion once the light turns green? It's bad enough already with people futzing with cell phones, scratching god knows where, etc.
If this gets awarded, then I can see one of my elementary school projects getting patented 40 years after I did it. This was part of it. The point of it was designing a system where cars communicated. With everything. And distributed computing calculated everything. I've since added traffic cams and GPS to that idea, such that every car would know where you were going, where every other car on the road was, would communicate (2-way) with every signal, camera, and car between home and your location (not always directly, as you could get an update of everything from just the nearest car with all the information) and then the GPS would inform the driver of the "best" route. "Best" could be lowest fuel use, shortest trip time, or whatever optimization they programmed.
Of course, cars were all semi-automated as well, so that when you were in tight formation, the computer would take control and pilot it for decreased following distances and such. That would be possible because as the first in line braked for anything (like an emergency) all the other cars in the line would be notified and would also brake as well, so there's be no collisions.
Improved traffic lights, which minimized delays (I never did find an algorithm I liked, but cost-oriented where time and fuel were both costs) would know everyone headed there and communicate their status to the cars so that cars could continue to cruise as approaching, or know to slow in response to the state the light will be there when they arrive. And cars would, as they do now, shut off when not in use.
I guess the lights didn't specifically send a signal to turn on and off, but they sent a signal of when they were turning green and red, and the car decided on its own (through open and uniform rules, so every car operated the same) how to react, including shut-down when warranted. If they get something so simple and silly as that patented, I can see 90% of what I just said to be patented at some time.
And this was just the rough remembrance of the project from 30+ years ago. I may have missed some bits, and I know some parts (like GPS and cameras) were added later as a "they'd use that too" kind of thought, and I may have included one or two of those without realizing I did. And even then, most of what I thought of wasn't original, but was taken from sci-fi writing that pre-dated me. But leave it to Big Business to patent something that, if not explicitly mentioned, seems like it would have been used in a reasonable implementation of most traffic systems described in sci-fi (well, excluding those where everything is flying).
Learn to love Alaska
Yes, I'm one of those dicks who turns off his engine at red lights.
I can't wait until the first fire truck can't through the line because someone can't get their car started.
That's the whole point of the patent - the lights tell the car when the optimal time to start is so that everyone can promptly begin moving again when the light actually changes.
They could possibly prevent that by using light instead of radio to transmit the code and require the code be sent from synchronous towers so that the source couldn't come from just one location . Put the receptor on a car roof that isn't easily accessible to transmitting towers except that at a street light 20 feet above your head, and you might have a workable system. Use directed laser light and bypass radio. Hell, they could even transmit it through the street material in some way.
That said, this is an idiotic idea to invest in. With the advent of hybrids, which turn off the gasoline engine below 30 or 40 miles per hour, this would become irrelevant technology within a decade or two.
The intent here is for a car like mine, a Prius which can have a stopped engine (gas) without actually stopping the car... or preventing it from driving..
Even when the gas engine is off, the motor is still spinning.. this seems to be a method for allowing the traffic control system to send a suggestion to my car, letting it know how much time will elapse before it will need to move allowing the car to decide turn off the engine (the engine is still spinning; in the case of my car)...
As long as this is a suggestion to participating cars and not an override.. then this is good.
I would like a future where I get on a highway and turn over control of my car to some cloud based computer which will control my cars and others allowing me to commute to my destination without the need to be aware or focused on driving.. and then some test to show I'm alert again and then having me take over controls when we hit the local roads..
http://www.hawknest.com/
The break even point is much less than 3 minutes. It's actually around 7-10 seconds. And it's a fairly noticeable improvement in MPG, depending on your city driving miles. I've gotten upwards of 4-5+ MPG per tank with turning the engine off vs. idling at the stop lights.
But isn't turning the thing on and off creating enough extra wear on the engine that, over the long haul, replacing all those parts and hastening the death of the car creates a worse financial and environmental impact than letting it run?
A fuel efficiency increase of 5 MPG is a few hundred bucks a year, but if it causes you to replace major parts even a month or two sooner than it could cost you at least that much money, not to mention the increased cost of buying a new car even a month sooner than otherwise. Add to this the fact that new parts (not to mention new cars) have hundreds or thousands of gallons of fuels tied up in their mining, smelting, machining, and transport. Turning off the car at intersections seems like a lose-lose, if any of my (conservative) suppositions on increased purchasing on non-gasoline items are correct.
I drive older vehicles,with NO GPS or onboard computers.Sorry,but the authorities(and they are VERY corrupt here) are not taking control of anything I have.My 2 associates,Mr.Smith & Mr.Wesson are with me to back that up.
Not that I would use such an option(I would),but I don't give a healthy country shit anymore..
Geek Hillbilly
I haven't got time to RTFA but how about Mazda's i-stop technology which has been demonstrated for years, and development began around 2002-2004.
http://www.mazda.com/csr/download/pdf/2009/e2009_d_p43.pdf [pdf]
http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/100410/bsc1004100501000-n1.htm (Japanese, sorry)
The engine technology detects piston precision precisely and lets the engine stop before a traffic light allowing restart of the engine to be done using some of the starter but mostly combustion power. Detection of a nearby traffic light would be obviously useful in such a case.
How about first they invent a 60-second kill switch on the dome light so that when your children leave the dome light on all night, and then jump the car in the morning, you don't have to rev the engine at every stoplight to have a hope of restarting the car after leaving the destination?
It would be unsafe to cut off car engines at stops. There are times when unusual actions must be taken to save lives. For example a bad guy walking towards your vehicle with a gun leaps to mind.
And then there are other issues. In my state really hot weather is a huge problem. Turning off a car's air conditioning system would quickly raise the car temperature to levels that would drown the occupants in sweat and leave the car so hot that it could not cool off before the next traffic signal starts the problem all over again.
And then we proceed to the cost of the electronic package and the difficulty of maintaining a more complex vehicle.
Perhaps it is past time to consider simplification of automobiles so that they can be produced and maintained for far less money and effort. For example urban vehicles might get by with a one cylinder engine and windows and manual sun roofs might account for cooling the cabin. Rolling the price back on urban vehicles might get the buying point under fifteen hundred dollars if done right.
My bad - I failed to read the entire paragraph. Your civil response is appreciated.
IANAL, but one could ask if this is even legal. Granted, use of a vehicle on public streets is generally a privilege, it does not change the fact that the vehicle itself, and its contents within (the engine, in this case) constitute private property in most cases. Remotely shutting down someone's vehicle may be an act of tresspass, vandalism, or criminal mischief. Adding the safety concerns merely adds another dimension to the severity of the matter. If the engine control system relies upon any sort of security algorithm or hardware, then you might be able to add a potential DMCA violation, not to mention CFAA concerns. 18 USC Section 1030 of the CFAA is what sticks in my mind on this, although I'm not sure if it's been considered for application on this sort of thing.
First of all, starters have a limited lifetime. If you force cars to engage them at nearly every stoplight, they will wear out 10 times faster or more. If a starter wears out at a traffic light, the car can't start and the flow of traffic will stop. This will do wonders for fuel savings, but not much good for transportation, as a whole.
Second, if my engine shut off at a stoplight in the Texas summer, my air conditioning would not work and I would effectively be baking in an oven.
How about instead of that a marquee that tells motorists the wait time and suggests shutting off their engines to save gas?
I'm betting it will be cheaper (especially since you can't patent a sign saying how long the wait is, theme parks have decades of prior art), it completely avoids an entire class of serious problems (like what if a carjacker/terrorist/bored 13 year old figures out how to send the kill signal) and doesn't require refitting every car in the U.S.
If voluntary participation isn't widespread enough once the signs are in place, put on a few PSAs encouraging kids to pester their parents about it.
Of course the whole thing will become a moot point anyway as hybrid and electric cars take over. At that point, at least my alternative suggestion can then be re-purposed to provide news and entertainment.
Detroit was killed by the UAW, not by anything that has anything remotely to do with the race of the citizens.
The biggest problem with this patent is that is is useless. By the time such a system were installed, EV's and PHEV's will be rampant, and won't need it.
Someone had to do it.
"Workers to power!"
That doesn't "work" very well in practice, and couldn't even compete with the Capitalism you hate in terms of worker benefits. Eating the rich is great fun until you run out of rich to eat, then everyone else goes on the exploitation menu, for the good of the workers, of course.
Capitalism leavened with a humane but not overpowering dose of Socialism arguably produces the best results. Business should be restrained by government, government restrained by business, and both restrained by the votes of an engaged and informed citizenry. Makes a lousy slogan though.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I already patented doing stuff based on other stuff. With my invention, if certain stuff is greater than a threshold some stuff will happen. It uses heuristics to calculate the optimal time to do stuff, including information which may or may not comprise of stuff A, stuff B, stuff C, or stuff alphabet. My invention also works with signal types such as signal A, signal B, or any other signal or ascertain can possibly apply to this invention.
Furthermore I don't even have a working model of this stuff happening. However if my stuff invention is made by anyone else, I own it.
Stopping cars at the light isn't all that hard, but making it a good idea to stop them at the light is pretty far away. The trivial problem of pre-loading the oil pump so that it does not do serious life limiting of your engine is a small detail that nobody seems to care about (because they don't know that starting and stopping conventional vehicles at every intersection is murder to the lubrication system, and therefore the entire engine.) Some cars do this (prius, some police cruisers) but most do not.
Much more, you have to re-engineer cars so that A/C is not dependent on the motor running.
Many people who live in places without shit weather have no idea about this (particularly California where "green" ideas that are wildly impractical seem to come from).
Are there places in the country where you can freeze to death if your car stops? yes. Are there places in the country where infants can die of heat stroke if your car stops? Yes. those places just don't happen to be in California/NY.
Heat and A/C are not about comfort, they are about survival, at least in many places in the country.
I have encountered traffic lights which never turn green for my direction, even after waiting through many cycles for about 5 or 10 minutes. There was one light in town which seemed to be wait for its buried magnetic sensing loops to detect at least two cars to arrive before it would turn green. I would be coming back from a grocery store at about midnight and have to sit there for about 5 minutes while waiting for another car to arrive, then it would finally change. Unfortunately, there was also a no right turn sign at the intersection, which made it impossible for me to legally escape from the situation.
There were three lights in town, more or less, like that. I have wondered if perhaps something about my pickup truck or the way that I approach the intersection, fails to trigger the buried magnetic sensing loops. I once talked to another local resident who had the same problem, in his pickup truck, with one of the same traffic lights.
I would hate to encounter a traffic light which could turn off my engine in that situation, preventing me from backing up or turning right to escape the problem. Would there be an emergency override switch for the system? Would they require such a system being retrofitted to my older 1992 pickup truck? I also wonder what would happen if the power to the traffic lights goes out during a thunder storm. Would our engines default to start in such a situation, so that we could treat the failed traffic lights as 4-way stop signs?
All this system does is:
- display RED signal
- talk to the cars
- calculate their priorities and the shut-off times
- send shut down signal then turn them back on after the set time
How can one patent that? What is the invention here?
Are there places in the country where you can freeze to death if your car stops? yes. Are there places in the country where infants can die of heat stroke if your car stops? Yes. those places just don't happen to be in California/NY.
I'm all for ridiculing this idea, but having the A/C turned off for 5 minutes (an unrealistically long light) really should not alter the temperature in the car enough to kill anyone, even an infant, in 5 minutes. Assuming you don't have the A/C on and the windows down, and least ;)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Duh. This is not going to make your Edsel engine stop when you approach traffic lights and thus ruin it and cause traffic accidents.
What this is going to do is add to MODERN cars, that have not been built yet. They will include this circuit and starters and engines that are DESIGNED to start/stop rapidly in a way to save gas. This is already done by most hybrids already. And any pressure on the accelerator will override it, this is not big brother trying to stop your constitutional right to drive.
So you're openly racist. Duly noted...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
this is such a bad and invasive idea the only response is f*ck you ibm
Although your post is incredibly offensive and racist, I must admit the expert way you worked in "rectal chastity" into your argument nominates you for the daily Winner of Teh Internets award.
I used to deliver pizzas for a living. Which meant that I would shut off and restart my car about 3 to 4 times an hour.
After doing it for a while, I figured out that I would need to replace my starter every six months to a year. This is a *very* bad idea - think of how many stoplights the average commuter stops at during their commute home.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
By the time, and if this rolls out (maybe 20 years?), I would think that there will be a large % of electric cars for which this has no application to.
When will manufacturers, especially software manufacturers, ever understand the concept that it is *MY* computer or device, *NOT THEIRS* ???
As noted above in all the "What could go wrong?" posts, this kind of central control is fraught with problems and unintended consequences..
If they simply take an approach to design and engineering that respects fact that it is not their device, all kinds of problems go away.
A proper approach would be for the lights to broadcast their status and schedule for the next few minutes (i.e., how long until the next change, how long will be the next red, etc.), and allow the vehicle and driver to decide what to do about it.
Sure, If we're at the beginning of a long red, then it is probably best to shut down. But, if we're making a right turn and/or trying to get someone to the hospital at 3AM, have paused to check that there is no crossing traffic, then we should drive on. If the hybrid motor is trying to recharge low batteries, the motor should keep running. Etc. We could even have a dashboard or heads-up display showing the status so the driver can make better decisions. Different car designers can code the best algorithm for *their* particular car design, e.g., a hybrid might use a completely different response pattern than a truck or a sportscar.
What is so hard about that? [Warning - oversimplification following] Decentralized systems are generally more flexible, and have shallower bugs than centralized systems. So, why do they persist in designing that way?
Using light would also make it easier for a driver to disable if terrorist (or prankster) transmitters became a problem.
As usual, duct tape is the answer -- just cover the receiver on the roof with it. And, of course, everyone has duct tape next to the plastic sheeting stored their "Terrorist Attack Kit" in their closet so there is a nice symmetry and this is a great re-purposing opportunity.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Most traffic accidents happen at a traffic light. It's good practice to leave space somewhere around the vehicle when stopped at a traffic light so that you have an escape route if you find you're about to be rear-ended. If your engine has been switched off, you lose the ability to move out of the way of the dump truck that's coming towards your vehicle.
If you can freeze to death in a car that's stopped for approximately one minute, you are either a) living in antarctica, or b) engaging in some serious hyperbole. Having spent more than 60% of my life in place where cold winters are really freaking cold (Edmonton, Alberta) I know that sitting inside a car for a minute is not going to lead to death.
Having spent another 10 years or so where summers can be particularly uncomfortable (Seoul, South Korea) I know that while heat can be uncomfortable, I also know that not infant is going to die of heat stroke in a minute or two in a stopped car. If your heater and/or air conditioning isn't working, then get it serviced. A minute or two without either will not be fatal.
If in this situation, your car stops and doesn't restart, get out, use the cell phone and find somewhere sheltered form the elements while you wait. You will almost certainly be somewhere where shelter is to be found, as traffic lights generally indicate some form of development, usually a medium sized town at the least.
Having said that though, I don't think this is a particularly good idea, as anything reduces the driver's control over the vehicle is usually not a good thing.
Oh - wait, the motors won't be running at a stoplight...
Rather than picking out a snippet of a patent and complaining that the snippet you found is obvious etc, the right thing to do is to look at the claims. While there are lots of cars (as has been pointed out by many folks in the comments) that turn your car off when stopped, that's not what this patent is about. It would be nice if the Slashdot editors would read patents correctly before complaining. One could complain about this one but it would be nice to do so from a position of understanding.
Here's the actual claim:
1. A method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal, comprising:establishing communications with a plurality of participating vehicles;responding to a stop status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising:receiving a position data from each participating vehicles;determining a queue comprising a list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal;determining a remaining duration of the stop status;sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal when the remaining duration is greater than a threshold of time;responding to a proceed status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising:sending a start-engine notification to a first vehicle in the queue;calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start when the first vehicle starts moving; and sending the start-engine notification to the second vehicle in the queue at the optimal time.
Note that you would not infringe this patent unless the traffic light sent out a signal saying how long before the light turned green and unless in addition that the other cars told you how many others were ahead of you in line so that you could figure out how long before you'd need to start. Certainly nothing does this now. We could debate how obvious the ideas are or perhaps find something in a Sci-fi book where this is done.
But please stop picking at the first few sentences of the abstract of patents and complaining. It's the claims that count.
of course the checks and balances thing does not work to well when government .. not to mention the media .. has been taken over by business ..
once corporations were granted the legal rights of persons and limited legal liability through political and legal maneuvering .. the pathway to a private planet for those who own the corporations was set .. it has just taken a hundred odd years for the implications to become apparent and full blown ..
aliens arriving on on earth today could come to no conclusion .. but that humans were an organism bred to service corporations ..
90 degree crossing intersection is and was a bad design right from the beginning .. it is a waste of time and human effort to try and fix something that was broken from the beginning ..
if the ants and bees were as poor at traffic control and design as we have been they would not be here .. and soon neither will the vast majority of humanity be here .. either through the results of our environmental miss treatment as you could not call it management .. or by the design of the corporate owners .. as there simple are not enough resources to sustain even the worlds current population at present levels of consumption .. i give us 50 years tops ..
you think the oil and terror wars are out of hand just wait until the water wars begin .. but oh wait .. those people trying to find enough fresh unpolluted water to drink will simply be labeled as terrorists ..
we must perpetuate the american dream .. read nightmare ..
So, carjackers can now just hangout at traffic control light and have little to no resistance when taking someone's car. What about undercover law enforcement that is involved in a chase of a criminal? They sure as hell do not use Crown Victorias, or other "standard" law enforcement vehicles. There are also civilians that might need to run through a red light.
The fact is, no one and nothing(other than the driver) should ever have, or will ever have, control over a vehicle. There are just too many problems that arise and I can foresee this as becoming illegal(in the U.S., at least), if it were ever patented and marketed.
I'd think this makes no practical sense with current internal combustion engine designs. Where you might want to look into such a technology would be with all electric vehicles, though one wonders why they wouldn't just be designed to ALWAYS tun off when you come to a complete stop for more than a few seconds?
I don't see how *anyone* can reasonably claim that starting the engine more often wouldn't increase wear on the starter? As it is, those things are basically rated to only so many cycles of operation. If your car has upwards of 100,000 miles on it, chances are REAL good you're going to be buying a replacement starter soon, if you didn't do so already.
And of course, you've got all the other factors mentioned -- such as safety issues. (How quickly will people crack the method used to signal vehicles to shut off their engines and start using it for other purposes? Seems like a bad thing if the criminal element can randomly shut down a car engine and proceed to carjack the owner?)
with a plug in hybrid running on battery or pure electric there would be no need to turn off, when the motor isn't running it isn't drawing any power
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
After two minutes or so after a complete light cycle, depending on jurisdiction, one may legally proceed through a "stuck" red light.
In regards to your pickup not triggering signals. Ensure you're stopping completely behind the white line (stop bar); note where the sensor wires are, and position at least one of your tires directly over one of those sensor wires. And then after a few moments, inch forward very slightly, and then do so a little more every so often.
Many newer traffic signals, especially at high volume, multilane intersections, also use optical sensors (often mistaken as cameras) to detect vehicles.
Ron
There is no oil pressure when starting a car. This is where the excess wear-and-tear comes from. Engines would need an electric oil pump to pressurize the oil system before cranking to reduce the wear-and-tear from starting.
Now that is another thing to fail... (I've never had to replace the mechanical oil pump on an engine, but the electric fuel pump has needed to be replaced.)
I'm a fan of adding intelligence to our roadways, but given the condition of the infrastructure in the US, I would rather the added expense, in both implementation and support, be put towards fixing bridges, roads, electrical systems, etc. then on tech that will save a little bit of gas/oil. In fact, this is slowly taking care of itself with the development of hybrids and EVs, which uses battery power instead of gas.
David
Municipalities rake in too much in red light violation fines to go for it.
Obviously you have never been to Dallas in August.
15 minute stop light marathons coupled with 90 percent humidity and at least 50 days a year of 100+ degree weather... With my A/C on full blast in my 2004 Subaru, the interior of the car does not get below 80 degrees for the duration of my 45 mile commute during peak summer. The A/C is not defective, the climate is.
I have lived in California, and even on a 110 degree day, it is cool in the shade, and you can do ok just by rolling your window down.
Planning for this seems foolish, when STOPPING is the real problem, and turning off the motor is just a band-aid. Engineer the city in such a way that stopping at anywhere other than your destination is not necessary, or is extremely brief. How is that for an unrealistic solution, which would work for my region but not the rest of the country (since Texas is mostly flat, empty space, taking the space to design the cities for non-stop is realistic for TX but not CA)
My real point is that if the interval in which the car is stopped is so short that it doesn't matter if there is climate control, then it is short enough that it will not save any fuel anyway.
Since the U.S. does not have even close to homogeneous travel conditions or travel needs, a homogeneous "solution" to traffic wasting fuel is not even worth pursuing as anything along these lines with real value cannot be adopted nationally, and anything that is not adopted nationally will fail.
... why not sync the %$#@&)$$ lights better? That would save quite a bit of gas, not having to start and stop at every intersection.
Have gnu, will travel.
I for one welcome our new traffic control overlords
IMHO the biggest problem with traffic lights isn't synchronization; it's the behavior of the drivers. At least in my area the lights are attached to inductive sensors placed in the tarmac, and the way they're supposed to work is that they sense the presence of the car approaching the light and, after a suitable period of wait time hysteresis (which starts from the last time the light switched, and so may already be expired), switch the signals and allow the car to pass.
Unfortunately, drivers (again, at least in my area) aren't very clueful about the presence of the sensors, and will stop way, way back of the stop bar, before they get to the sensor, or pass over it and stop halfway into the intersection. The sensors are huge, roughly 2m by 8m, so it's not like you have to be precise to hit them, and they are visible as grooved loops in the tarmac just behind the stop bar, but I can't count the number of times I've been stuck behind a long line of cars at a light, with the first car stopped before it got to the sensor. As far as the light can tell, there's nobody stopped at the light, so we wait and wait.
I've driven with people who have stopped before the sensor and then complained about how poorly the lights are "synchronized." Apparently, traffic light sensors are not common knowledge.
I don't need smart traffic lights. My MINI turns off its engine all by itself...
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
Sorry IBM, this one is just plain stupid.
Besides, electric cars will probably drive all these smoggers off the road within ten years. This'll never overcome the inertia of implementation in IC cars before the factories that make them, no longer do so. Just look at how far behind car manufacturers are with heat-IR vision, GPS, collision avoidance... working systems are *decades* old, and the number of cars today that implement them is simply pitiful. And when you do find something, for example GPS, the GPS is old, old, old. The auto industry is *very* slow to do anything.
One thing I am pretty sure of is that I'm done buying smoggers. I suspect a lot of other people have made the same determination. My family's current vehicles should last us until the time where decent electrics are available at sensible prices. Current generation vehicles have decent longevity, so with just a little luck, no chance of IBM ever shutting me down. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Car turning off engine, wouldn't that be the exact opposite of a Toyota? It would be like some bizarro-world Toyota, maybe an Atoyot.
If we really wanted to decrease fuel consumption at intersections then cars should not have to stop which, means everyone has to learn how to merge.
at rail road crossings you need to be able bailout and trun around when trains stop / go real slow.
We could gradually switch to cyclone engines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_regenerative_cyclone_engine
Which have full torque at 0RPM, eliminating the need for starters. With lower pollution, and comparable to gasoline engines in efficiency to boot. Oh, and throw out that ancient transmission.
Its good for IBM to focus on applying technology to the better sharing of common resources.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Take something that you don't want to break a lot and is already prone to premature breaking and shut it off and on a lot. Stop and go traffic is bad enough, but everyone knows that a sure-fire way to destroy a mechanical device quicker than normal is to keep turning it off and on. No thanks, cause planned obsolescence is already bad enough as it is.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
This is real cute, but really if IBM wants to be all evil big brother like they were in WWII, they might as well get rid of cars entirely and provide fully automated vehicles where there is no driver.
Murphy's law is a bitch, especially when you're doing 60km/h in a 1500lb steel coffin. It doesn't matter how well you plan it, it will screw up. If it's not a flaw in the system, then it will be someone sabotaging your system. That's just too much "power" to entrust to a machine, because machines can be reprogrammed.
If Microsoft can't produce a mod-proof gaming console, a relatively simple machine by modern standards, then how can IBM even dream of building a mod-proof car safety device ? This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen. You mess with cars, you mess with people's lives, and as any of the automakers can attest, if your mistake kills more than a dozen people, the class-action lawsuit will kill you. IBM just has that much more to lose, they are a huge target.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I can just imagine compliance with this being passed into law at some point, or at least yet more electronic junk that we can't avoid paying for if we want to buy a car. I also imagine that this will mean even more delays before the traffic moves when the light goes green, as we now have an additional wait for the slowest car in the queue to start its engine.
Check the subject line :P
Actually you are incorrect. The subject line of the post contains the word "negro" foreshadowing the racism to come and term reparations checks is clearly attached to the "non-well-to-dos". Reparations checks in the context that had developed could only refer to African-Americans.
So the poster was incredibly racist in assuming that the "not-so-prosperous blighted urban areas" were comprised of African-Americans and additionally those African-Americans as a majority were not only supportive of the concept of a reparations check, but were willing to steal from and rape other people to receive justice. All of it being done joyously as well.
I don't think the conclusion that the original post in question was racism is automatic at all, but the only conclusion that one could come to reading it. Claiming that the simple act of recognizing and condemning it for what it is as proof of a person's blind hatred is not insightful, but just plain derogatory, and a clear example of trolling.
Or there's a heat wave and your Air Conditioning quits at every stop light.
Its called the caravan model for autonomous vehicles..... Bunch of babies. Its called the inevitable.
For those of us who live in the desert (outside of Palm Springs). When its 120 in the summer, the already enjoyable experience of sitting at stop light can be coupled with the AC kicking out smoldering hot air. I'm sure those with small children won't mind...
Ah clever, but your brilliant plan had a fatal flaw. You said:
At no time did the GP specify race or skin color
But:
Pissed NWMs burn down large sections of the city.
The acronym was defined in the post title, so there is racism explicitly stated in the post, even if you ignore the context set out by the title.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
As long as this contributes to the creation of cars that self navigate through a relay of traffic lights and precise gps navigation, and controlled through voice commands and responding with a nice synthesized voice of a woman and a massaging chair in the car, I won't complain. Oh, and if we could add an automatic cocktail mixer in the car it would be just heaven on wheels, I would gladly sell my soul to the devil (aka, give up my privacy and civil rights to the corporations).
There is a video on youtube of the worlds first fully automated passenger jet, coming in for a low pass over the run way.
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Perfect, absolutely perfect.
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Except for the forest of tall trees at the end of it.
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Haaaaaaa Haaaaa I just love the oberver with the French accent, "Ohhhh Noooooo Ohhhhhhhh Nooooo"........
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Piss myself laughing every time over that.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feyx80koMC8
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Yeah so when are the dumb fucks in IBM going to be bringing out automatic closing doors - while your trying to get through them with the couch?
Capitalism leavened with a humane but not overpowering dose of Socialism arguably produces the best results. Business should be restrained by government, government restrained by business, and both restrained by the votes of an engaged and informed citizenry. Makes a lousy slogan though.
We could make a more condensed one out of that.
"Social democracy: It Just Works."
How about that?
That would be very useful if you were a hijacker...
This is an example of another environmentalist saying "Hey, wouldn't it be great if..." and not having a clue about what they are about to say. Lets look at a few things. 1. If a car is turned off (of course these are cars that opt in to this program) but it will not crank again it produces a traffic issue 2. If a car is turned off before it is stopped this produces a braking issue involving safety. Let me explain, most systems use manifold vacuum to be used with the braking system. Without the vacuum supply your have basically one shot at pressing the brakes and getting a good solid brake pedal, otherwise your manually trying to push the brakes which is virtually impossible to stop a car at speed. 3. At an intersection, there are 4 directions. What system will be used to ID which vehicles are going which way and which ones should be stopped? Perhaps the person in the straight lane has their turn signal to get into the left turn lane and is waiting for traffic to pass so they can move in but the light system has them stopped till the straight light goes again. 4. Hacking the system is always a threat. Remember OnStar early in its existence? Remember all the doors, windows, ect going haywire? Hmmm... Thats probably enough comment for now. It seems pretty much everyone is looking down on the idea. IBM was a little late announcing this, should have done it on April 1.
When it happens, it'll save a lot on fuel costs and speed up travel times.
The transition will be difficult, as will pedestrians, cyclists and dogs.
Maybe when my flying car is ready.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
Am I too late to patent a device which blocks this to limit wear and tear on starter motors? Think of the traffic jams caused by cars whose starter motors have failed. Think of the recovery and repair bills for those stricken vehicles. Think of the children waiting vainly for parents who are stranded miles away.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Even 15 minutes, even for an infant, would not be enough to cause heat stroke. And the weather you mention is not exactly extreme, just uncomfortable. But seriously, if you really have 15 minutes stoplights (or queues regularly) you should do something about it: build a railroad, more road, something :)
The idea is, as I said, completely broken. By the time this is implemented, most cars do this anyway (many modern car stop the engine completely when standing still, voiding any benefit.)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I would not own a vehicle with this anti-technology. If I could not buy one without it, I would buy it, then rip it out/circumvent it/bypass it, or rip the antenna off, or whatever. When I come up to a light, if I am going to be idling more than what I'd guess to be a minute, I thumb the engine-stop switch, then flick it back to run. (If I were worried about wear/tear on my starter motor, or were worried about the engine restarting, I wouldn't) I already do this on my own, but I require it to be MY choice. Note that I didn't say anything about the key. That's because I have a motorcycle. If I had a car, on a hot day, and I had the windows up and the A/C going, I wouldn't want some asshole at IBM or the city's traffic management nazi HQ deciding to kill my engine (and my A/C) for me. No, thanks. Why don't they go invent something useful instead, like an off-switch for children, or a bug that can fly through the open half of a half-open window?
What kind of vehicle do you have? If your car is too small, or too motorcycly, or scootery, you may have to help the sensor pick you up by adding a magnet to the underside of your ride. Check the web, there are numerous sites that will give you the details. My solution to this, when the magnet trick doesn't work is twofold. One, if traffic is clear, go anyway. Hope not to get ticketed, (haven't yet). Two, avoid that intersection, and complain to the city, or whomever the authorities are who control that, because the sensors are supposed to work, if they don't, the sensitivity may be off, or the device may be malfunctioning. The people who live parasitically off your tax-money are SUPPOSED to fix it, so let them know it's not working, and they should take care of it for you.
It's not your invention - hundreds of intersections in Bangkok have "count down" counters that tell everyone how long it will be until the red turns green. A low tech solution that actually works. No one will ever implement anything matching the IBM patent - it's just another distraction, and a worthless contribution to /. IMNHO.
One funny side of software patents is that every time one gets published to Slashdot, the authors get a free peer review of their flawed process. And later they can charge companies for infringing it.
none
The part we need to fix to improve fuel efficiency and traffic safety is the faulty nut behind the wheel.
...where it gets up to well over 100 in the summer, I have no desire to have my engine (and thus air conditioning) turn off while sitting at a long traffic light. I'm all for saving energy, but that's energy well-spent, in my opinion. I'm sure my compatriots in Arizona would agree.
1. They move more traffic than lights. 2. They waste less gas. 3. They are many times safer. 4. They require no installation nor maintenance of traffic lights.
Ok, this can be bad in SO many ways:
1) a remote signal that can disable your car's engine? I can thing of dozens of ways this could be used to cause fatalities. it going to be really easy to hack...
2) This can't be used to prevent cars from going through intersections, it would only work for cars already stopped, so this is a lot of technology and risk to only save gas, not lives.
3) if the car is stopped, it can simply cut off it's own engine, and when you press on the gas, start it again. The Prius already does this, and most regular cars can be augmented with a $100-200 kit to do it as well. The only drawback to adding it is other vehicle electronics are effected every time the engine turns over, but on brand new cars being made, this is a simple system to implement, easy to accomodate, and if it has no external control access, it can't be hacked easily (requires physical access) either.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Detroit wasn't killed by the UAW, it was killed by the people who employ UAW members. Management built poorly designed, poorly engineered cars that were way too big and used way too much gasoline when people wanted smaller, fuel efficient vehicles. Japan delivered the cars that customers wanted, and Detroit didn't.
As usual, the victims (the people who built the cars and actually produced the wealth) got blamed for the shortcomings of those who employed them. If you want your employees to unionize, treat them like shit and they will form a union. In the words of a then non-union airline CEO in the early eighties, "amy company that gets a union deserves one."
Anybody who works for a living who is anti-union is blind to reality.
Free Martian Whores!
Someone get this idiot a dictionary. Please explain how the ability to apply for or quit any job I please is slavery.
The obvious solution is to have all cars be EV's. Problem solved. Now that wasn't so hard was it?
How long until someone on Instructables shows how to build a "prank" car stopper?? Be pretty cool on an Interstate, or in Car Jacking, NOT! What a Really Really bad idea. Same kind of thinking that "Gun control" stops Gun crime, quite the opposite. This is a really bad bad idea. Enforce the existing laws, don't automate "common sense"!!!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
i have long written to presidents and committees asking for clocks on red signals that count down to their change, thus allowing frugal motorists to shut down and start up in time to join the smooth flow of traffic. this way seems more orwellian and more efficient.
Are there places in the country where you can freeze to death if your car stops? yes. Are there places in the country where infants can die of heat stroke if your car stops? Yes. those places just don't happen to be in California/NY.
Actually they are in California. Have you ever been out towards Death Valley? Or perhaps up near Tahoe or Mt. Shasta? It's not California that's the problem. It's the folks from LA and the Bay Area that are the problem. ;)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Have you actually been to Southeast California, or are you just one of those trolls that thinks California is some tiny little place the size of their precious Iowa hamlet? Here's a hint: the hottest place in the US is in California. And as you head north through the Sierras, you can easily freeze to death in the winter. Look up Donner Pass some time, you might just recognize the name.
heat is ethereal without humidity.
even with a shitty cooling system 110 degrees and 5% humidity is nothing. When it is humid in tx/la/the swamp south, it never gets below 90, not even at 3am, that is real heat... It takes a real A/C system to remove it and maintain it when the water keeps conducting it back.
Even without climate control, in 110 degrees and low humidity, your sweat acts like a cooling mechanism, as in you sweat a little, it evaporates cooling you off. This evolutionary advantage is completely fucked by humidity. Sweat does not cool you off, in fact there is no natural way to cool off, even as I mentioned, waiting until dark barely nets any benefit.
I stand by my original statement that most people don't even know what hot is. So hot sweat stops working. Thankfully most people will not have to experience that.
Just let that be a lesson to you, when your corporate HQ moves to Dallas and you see that home prices are unbelievable, tell them to fuck off.
Funny, I ignored the subject because I always do (nobody tends to use them here, unlike at k5) and was about to ask if there was some USA code-word I missed. Thanks for pointing out "reparations checks", I've heard it in that context but wouldn't have made the connection here. (At least, not having missed the subject.)
Why is your engine running at all when you're sitting at a stoplight? Many European countries require drives to turn off their engines when stopped at a traffic light. So because you are not capable of turning off your engine at a stoplight, you want to charge the taxpayers for the fuel you chose to waste? I'm not following your logic at all.
Nice! Such a device would have killed me 3 times I can think of. Stopping isn't always the safest course of action.