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Autonomous Cars? How About Autonomous Bikes?
R3d M3rcury writes: So we've all heard about the brave new world of autonomous cars which will be at our beck-and-call. But how about an autonomous bike? The i-Bike (not to be confused with the iBike computer) is the winner of KPIT Sparkle 2016, the All India Science and Engineering Student Contest. It started off as a bicycle suitable for use by people with disabilities. If you could use a smartphone, you could ride a bike. But the developers realized that this could be part of a bike-sharing system. You could rent a bike at the train station, ride to work, and then have the bike automatically return to the train station for the next person. Of course, the obvious question is: Will the bike stop at stop signs?
Why is that an obvious question?
Why wouldn't it stop at stop signs?
Because many human cyclists don't.
They wanna drive on the street but not obey the rules of the road. Then, they play the pedestrian card if they get in an accident with a car, ignoring the laws of physics that say a two ton vehicle can't go from 30 mph to 0 under 50 feet.
This argument? Really? Yes, and every person driving an automobile stops at each and every stop light and always yields to peds...oh wait, they don't.
And guess which one kills more people every year?
I live in New England, haven't owned a car in roughly a decade and have been commuting 20 minutes each way every day for work by bike in addition to whatever other daily transportation i need, and own/use snow tires for said bicycle. I also own a nice road bike which gets ridden on weeknight group rides and weekends. I started out on a $350 hybrid I bought from REI on special, and it lasted me several years and thousands of miles, until I decided I wanted something better.
So yes, I do actually know what I'm talking about. And incidentally, Minnesota has more bike commuters per capita than many much warmer locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There have been dozens of studies over the years showing that riding a bicycle for transportation, even slowly, brings health benefits over people who sit in their cars for transportation: https://www.google.com/search?...
Oh, and which is it? Everyone flying along so fast they'll fatally injure pedestrians they smack into? Or people who "toddle around with their heartrate under 100bpm so slow it doesn't do them any good"? Hmm?
Please, save the "you want to put grandma on an iceberg" crap. I wasn't advocating forcing people onto bicycles. I'm saying driverless cars aren't going to fix problems with congestion and pollution.
Please help metamoderate.