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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?
Yep someone will fund this and a ton of development will happen before anyone has the common sense to realize all of these bikes will just get stolen.
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.
You've obviously NEVER actually watched cars roll a stop sign or even a traffic light. It isn't the cyclist part that runs a stop sign - it's the HUMAN part - because car drivers do it too.
And NO ONE has EVER seen a cyclist try to squeeze a car off the road for DARING to use it.
PS - put down your donut and Moutain Dew, get on a bicycle, and lose that baby elephant you're carrying to term.
The reason cyclists are treated like cars rather than pedestrians in traffic law is not because of the danger they pose, but because they move quite a lot faster than a pedestrian (even a running one).
There are plenty of situations where pedestrians are given right of way based on the idea that they are slow enough for a driver to see them coming from far away. If a driver had to expect a fast-moving cyclist in the same location, he would have to slow down in advance, leading to chaos and congestion.
If cyclists were treated as pedestrians in traffic law, we'd need traffic lights at every crosswalk.
A bicycle costs $500
Sure. A crappy, heavy, low-quality bike, with a no-name component groupset, that you likely won't get your moneys' worth out of before something on it fails, then at that point you may as well chuck it in the recycle bin and get another one. You need to spend more like $1000 to get something of decent quality that, properly maintained, will give you your moneys' worth.
I bought the cheapest bike I could find that seemed able to support my needs - 300lbs including luggage/groceries. It was $200, and I have put over 10k miles on it. I needed to replace my rear wheel after about 5k miles and a new chain since I am bad about cleaning it. It has an aluminum frame and seems really light compared to the schwinns and huffys I grew up with. Shimano gears, but I'm confident you can find a way to make fun of that.
I've had so many bikes stolen over the years I can't bring myself to spend much on one. I find your pompous attitude that $1000 is the minimum buy-in to be a cyclist to be destructive.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That shouldn't happen. A good wheelset should last you for years, at least 4 or 5 times that many miles.
Well, I can't be sure but I think the axle bent when I got hit by a car. There were also numerous potholes and driveway bumps and the fact that I am overloading the axle. I don't need my bike to be eternal, I treat it more like a consumable. Strangely, since I adopted this attitude it hasn't been stolen or destroyed in an accident but I've been burned enough to not get attached.
you need to buy something quality, not cheap, and you get what you pay for when you buy a bike.
Here you're just plain wrong. My bike is from Walmart, it was $200, and it has nearly 15,000 miles on it. I had the wheel replaced under warranty, if I bought a new wheel from the mfr it would have cost $50.
I ride hard, maintain poorly, and still my cheap bike held up admirably.
It is sad how many years I wasted, thinking that I didn't have what it takes to be a bike commuter, because of misguided people like you. I couldn't get over my heartbreak when I came back to my beloved Peugeot and it was beat to death by vandals in 1988. Now that I have realized cheap bikes are a good option I am a happy cyclist, putting at least 150 miles a week onto my trusty walmart bike.
I know a bunch of people with expensive bikes who are afraid to take them anywhere, and a bunch more people without a bike at all because they think they need to spend 4 digits to get something decent.
Man, you really need that seminar!