I would quite confidently bet a lot of money that you - along with just about everyone else - can't reliably discern anything smaller than a 10% variance in your speed without looking at the speedometer, even when you're specifically trying to, unless you impose ridiculous conditions like driving around in first or second gear all the time. Throw in a realistic situation with other traffic, normal gear selection (or an auto) and you'd be even less likely to - that window is going to increase to up around the 15% mark.
My hearing is fine. I _know_ what 50 km/h or 100 km/h sounds and feels like in a particular car. I still think this argument is pulled out of someone's ass. Human hearing is quite sensitive to differences in pitch.
In Victoria, Australia, you can be booked for as little as 3km/h over the limit.
Well, in that case, don't confuse the effect of stupid laws/policies/people/cops and the effect of "automated enforcement tools". Here in Germany, they won't bother fining you unless you're at least 11 km/h over the limit - because they take tolerances of the measuring equipment into account, the expenses for actually processing the fine, and all that. If you get nailed by one of these "automated enforcement tools" over here, then it's because you were doing a lot more than allowed.
In short: Get sensible policies and automated enforcement won't be a problem. The issues you describe can be attributed to stupid people, not to technology.
A lot of things get "automatically enforced" over here. Not just speed, but distance from the car in front of you, traffic lights, and so on. All of this is done in a way that when you get nailed by these traps, you really deserve it.
Do you know where I could find numbers like say, number of accidents per motorist, or per kilometers travelled? How many of those accidents had injuries or deaths?
Here's some links, unfortunately, they're in German:
Automated speed enforcement tools, however, do not. They also bring up the phenomenon of drivers spending too much of their attention span on the speedometer, and not enough on the road.
Someone's been burning brain cells to come up with that one, right ? Unless you're deaf, you can hear the RPM of your engine. You can also gauge your speed by looking at how fast the rest of the world zips past you. There's really no need to devote much of your attention span to the speedometer to maintain a constant speed. Any driver who thinks otherwise should have their license pulled, because they're not fit to operate a vehicle in regular traffic.
Oh, and speaking of Germany - if that argument was true, then all of Germanys roads should be quite deadly, because we have "automated enforcement tools" all over the place. People wouldn't have any time left to look at the road !
* According to "speed kills" and "people can't choose a safe speed" arguments, the German Autobahns should be the most dangerous places to drive in the (developed) world. They're not. Moreover, they're not even _close_ to being so.
That's because they are kept in a much better state of maintenance than most other countries keep their highway system in, courtesy mostly of the German taxpayer. The minimum level of maintenance on the cars is also higher than in some other places, thanks to regular mandatory technical checkups.
How do you figure that? In Europe, none of what's described in the article would be happening because you have no right to contest a ticket over there
Yikes. Who told you nonsense like that ?
Of course you can contest your speeding tickets over here. Heck, the appropriate advice is printed on the ticket you get by mail. However, since we've got a "loser pays" court system over here, you'd better be ready to cough up the court costs in addition to your fine when you lose. Also, police here are quite good at making sure that their speeding tickets are valid. So no ticketing someone for going 3 km/h over the limit and such crap - if you get a ticket, you were, after subtracting appropriate tolerances, _really_ going quite a bit above the limit.
It says right in the summary that you are incorrect. You are required to accept cash/legal tender for payment on a "debt" only, not for purchasing a product or service.
Weird views of contract law you've got over there, I say. Usually, purchasing contracts (which are formed anytime something is purchased - they don't need to be in writing) contain the exact debts that each party has. Usually, the buyer has the debt of delivering the payment to the seller, and the seller has the debt to accept the payment from the buyer, among a few other things. The latter debt can actually be the grounds for lawsuits.
I can't believe you got Insightful for exchanging tiger/bear with zombie.:( Why is life so unfair?:(
Because it's actually _true_ for zombies, but not necessarily true for tigers. I don't know about bears.
Tigers, like most other cats, instinctively chase things that run away from them. So, if your buddy thinks he just needs to outrun you, give him a headstart (he'll not outrun the tiger anyway) and then slowly back away in the other direction while the tiger chases him down.
Zombies, on the other hand, will instinctively chase the nearest living thing.
Let it be known that The Department of Homeland Security is an equal-opportunity list-maker.
People with arabic-sounding names are considered more equal than anyone else, though.
I don't know why my posting was modded "funny". I de-installed the video driver, rebooted... and had to activate again. Of course, I then installed the new video card and its driver first. Either Windows is just plain dumb, or it can see the future.
Where specifically?
Germany.
And are the roads any good?
Picture-perfect, and smooth as a babys butt. Paid for by outrageously high taxes, but at least it's tax money put to good use.
A strong man with a gun is about as strong as a weak man with a gun.
You've just shifted the "strong" criterium from physical strength to marksmanship.
And, well, the saying doesn't really deal with individuals. A large group of people with guns is stronger than small group of people with guns. Especially if the large group can also afford better guns and better training.
've always wondered why on earth do American cars have 3,4,5 or even 6 liter engines, but after a trip to the gas-station I found out: the octane numbers for gas in California are 87, 89 and 91 (and in some places 93 seldomly 95). If you stop at _ANY_ gas station in Bucharest you will see 95, 98 and 99 or 100. In the manuals of most cars I've seen it says that you should use gas at least 95, preferably 98.
Sorry, you're not taking into account that the US and Europe use different systems to measure the octane numbers:
US 87 octane regular corresponds to European 91 octane regular, 89 to 95 and 91 to 98.
But in Europe most cars run on 89/95 stuff with some (especially the FSI/TSI/whatever direct injection engines) even requiring 91/98, while in the US basically everyting runs on regular.
And staying awake for 24 or 48 hours even is not that hard.
Staying awake is _quite_ different from being able to safely drive a vehicle. Have you ever tried to drive after having been awake for 24 hours ? I have. It scared me shitless. Especially the part where it seemed like a good idea to just close my eyes for a second while going 80 mph.
Interesting that you'd pick the TDI instead of the base...
I had the review at hand.
1g of deceleration capability is much higher than the average stock sedan is capable of. (Really. Look it up.)
Ford Focus 2008. 70-0 mph, 190 ft. That comes out to about 8.4 m/(s^2). Still pretty close to 1g.
Sorry. If a late-model sedan can't decelerate at close to 1g, then it's seriously overloaded or needs maintenance - badly.
When they design speed limits for roads, the number they typically use to approximate the average vehicle to determine the maximum safe speed limit is 11.2ft/sec/sec. Or just over.3g.
Yes. Because roads also need to accomodate the 20 year-old junker in bad maintenance, veteran cars, SUVs, vans, pickup trucks, and of course all the people who are too afraid to stomp down on that brake pedal with all their might even if that's the only action that that'll save their sorry butt from crashing into the pile-up up ahead.
That would put you a quadruple the braking ability they assume your vehicle is capable of when they picked the speed limit.
As I said - if you can do it to a car, then there's something seriously wrong with it in the first place. In that case, do the regular maintenance on the braking system first and _then_ try quadrupling the braking power.
It's actually closer to about a quarter of a second. Look it up.
Yes, for hitting a button at a simple, expected event without any distractions. No, not for realizing that you need to brake, moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake, and stomping down on it, in an actual, real-life traffic emergency. Sorry.
You may not realize it, but you are now officially a troll.
You may not realize, but your fantasies of improved braking performance are delusional.
I explicitly left performance cars out of my generalization.
Well, then let's take a non-performance car. How about a plain vanilla, 77 kW VW Golf TDI ? Hardly a "performance car", I hope you'll agree with that. Well, it brakes from 100 km/h to zero in about 38 meters. That's still a deceleration of slightly above 1g. And if you still think you can quadruple that by "replacing components", well, sorry, that's still complete and utter BS.
As I said, if you find a car where you can do that trick, please, please drop it off at the nearest junkyard. It's not roadworthy to begin with. Or are the "stock" brakes on US cars really _that_ lousy ?
Did you miss the part where I talked about tires?
No, I didn't miss it at all. And even if you somehow miraculously manage to fit Formula 1 slicks on your sedan, that still doesn't reduce its weight to that of a F1 race car.
Oh, but you can. You can do *much* better than a 50% improvement.
Only if the car comes with abso-friggin'-lutely lousy brakes to begin with (hint: BMWs don't).
you can quadruple - or more - your grip on the road, and your brake performance on most stock cars.
The "stock" M5 brakes from 100 km/h to 0 in 33 meters, that's a deceleration of about 12 m/(s^2) or about 1.3g. That's pretty much as good as you get on a "stock" car. If you were to quadruple that, you would get into regions that are usually left for _real_ racing cars (Formula 1 and such) which are much lighter and use completely different tires.
Sorry, I call BS here. If you can quadruple the deceleration of a car by "replacing components", then it's time to drop that car off at the junkyard and get one that's roadworthy to begin with.
Driver errors include "Driver was too full of himself, thought he knew better than Mr. Newton, and drove too fast.".
And people bragging about their 250 ms reaction time are definitely full of themselves. Yes, you might react that fast to an event you expect and move your finger in time to stop that stopwatch, but no you're not going to react that fast to a rare, unexpected event and stomp down on the brake in 250 ms. Stop kidding yourself, period.
Or you can increase the performance of your brakes and tires sufficiently to take the velocity squared part of the equation into account.
There are technical limits as to how large your deceleration can be. You won't be able to quadruple it on most cars, sorry.
So you're bad at math and at engineering, too.
Also, I didn't mention that stopping distance also includes a term that depends on the drivers reaction time (pretty much a constant) and the velocity.
Just like somebody with an agenda (wanting people to drive slower) to tout an equation while neglecting to consider one of the variables.
You're also bad at guessing agendas. Today's just not your day, I guess.
I worry about a bridge collapsing while I'm on it. When the battery shorts out, the wiondows aren't going down
Carry a small hammer where you can reach it quickly (under the seat, wherever). When your car hits the water, you may have to go out the windshield or the rear window, and those don't roll down at all.
If you do the elecrics on cars, PLEASE redesign the damned things so they'll work with the key in the "off" position
... and get sued into oblivion as people's kids and pets strangle themselves accidentially.
I am curious, as any time that I have done 120 plus MPH, my reaction time was affected by adrenaline, and my only focus was potential targets, and avoidance of them. Using your logic, All those first-person shooters I play should be totally similar in play, whether the latency is 10 ms or 100 ms.
Now let's see, what are the differences between playing an FPS and driving a car ? I'll name a few:
* When driving, you have to pay attention to a much larger part of your field of vision than when just staring at a monitor.
* When driving, some of the areas you have to pay attention to may actually be out of focus, since you're actually perceiving a 3D image and not staring at a 2D screen. And don't forget that even if you think you're the fastest thing for miles around, you occasionally have to check your mirrors.
* When driving, some of the important controls are actually moved by your feet _and_ all of them need much larger motions and force than pushing a mouse around, hitting a key on the keyboard, or clicking a mouse button.
* The number of situations you may have to react to is much larger in real life (tm).
There are more. And pretty much all of them will lead to your reaction time when playing an FPS being somewhat shorter than when driving a car.
Latency in an FPS is _added_ to your reaction time. If you're playing against people who have a reaction time similar to yours, then the person with less latency will shoot first and win. That's why there's a big difference between the guy with 10ms and the guy with 100ms. It doesn't have anything to do with the human.
Assuming dry pavement, That M5 likely would stop from 100 MPH in in under 200 feet. Less, if the vehicle is fully optimized for dry-only pavement.
Erm, no. Even assuming a pretty much perfect reaction time of 0.5s (from recognizing the need to stop until foot stomps down on the brake pedal), the car will already have travelled about 22 meters. Then, he'd need a deceleration of about 2.5g to stop in less than 38 meters. Even a souped-up street sedan doesn't do that - they top out at about 2g. Maybe if he war driving a _real_ race car (much lighter), he'd have a chance.
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That's probably because Americans like cars that guzzle gas at any speed (including zero, AC doesn't run by itself).
My hearing is fine. I _know_ what 50 km/h or 100 km/h sounds and feels like in a particular car. I still think this argument is pulled out of someone's ass. Human hearing is quite sensitive to differences in pitch.
In Victoria, Australia, you can be booked for as little as 3km/h over the limit.
Well, in that case, don't confuse the effect of stupid laws/policies/people/cops and the effect of "automated enforcement tools". Here in Germany, they won't bother fining you unless you're at least 11 km/h over the limit - because they take tolerances of the measuring equipment into account, the expenses for actually processing the fine, and all that. If you get nailed by one of these "automated enforcement tools" over here, then it's because you were doing a lot more than allowed.
In short: Get sensible policies and automated enforcement won't be a problem. The issues you describe can be attributed to stupid people, not to technology.
A lot of things get "automatically enforced" over here. Not just speed, but distance from the car in front of you, traffic lights, and so on. All of this is done in a way that when you get nailed by these traps, you really deserve it.
Here's some links, unfortunately, they're in German:
http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/DE/Content/Statistiken/Verkehr/Verkehrsunfaelle/Tabellen/Content75/UnfaelleVerunglueckte,templateId=renderPrint.psml http://www.focus.de/auto/autoaktuell/unfallstatistik_aid_54847.html
Basically, only 12% of the fatal accidents in Germany happen on the Autobahn, where in turn most of the kilometers are driven.
Someone's been burning brain cells to come up with that one, right ? Unless you're deaf, you can hear the RPM of your engine. You can also gauge your speed by looking at how fast the rest of the world zips past you. There's really no need to devote much of your attention span to the speedometer to maintain a constant speed. Any driver who thinks otherwise should have their license pulled, because they're not fit to operate a vehicle in regular traffic.
Oh, and speaking of Germany - if that argument was true, then all of Germanys roads should be quite deadly, because we have "automated enforcement tools" all over the place. People wouldn't have any time left to look at the road !
* According to "speed kills" and "people can't choose a safe speed" arguments, the German Autobahns should be the most dangerous places to drive in the (developed) world. They're not. Moreover, they're not even _close_ to being so.
That's because they are kept in a much better state of maintenance than most other countries keep their highway system in, courtesy mostly of the German taxpayer. The minimum level of maintenance on the cars is also higher than in some other places, thanks to regular mandatory technical checkups.
Yikes. Who told you nonsense like that ?
Of course you can contest your speeding tickets over here. Heck, the appropriate advice is printed on the ticket you get by mail. However, since we've got a "loser pays" court system over here, you'd better be ready to cough up the court costs in addition to your fine when you lose. Also, police here are quite good at making sure that their speeding tickets are valid. So no ticketing someone for going 3 km/h over the limit and such crap - if you get a ticket, you were, after subtracting appropriate tolerances, _really_ going quite a bit above the limit.
Weird views of contract law you've got over there, I say. Usually, purchasing contracts (which are formed anytime something is purchased - they don't need to be in writing) contain the exact debts that each party has. Usually, the buyer has the debt of delivering the payment to the seller, and the seller has the debt to accept the payment from the buyer, among a few other things. The latter debt can actually be the grounds for lawsuits.
Because it's actually _true_ for zombies, but not necessarily true for tigers. I don't know about bears.
Tigers, like most other cats, instinctively chase things that run away from them. So, if your buddy thinks he just needs to outrun you, give him a headstart (he'll not outrun the tiger anyway) and then slowly back away in the other direction while the tiger chases him down.
Zombies, on the other hand, will instinctively chase the nearest living thing.
I'd totally head for a Super Target/Walmart if zombies showed up, LOTS of ammo/guns and canned food/water galore.
Note to any aspiring zombie master: Zombify Super Target/Walmart first and watch your victims come to _you_ instead of having to chase them down.
Let it be known that The Department of Homeland Security is an equal-opportunity list-maker. People with arabic-sounding names are considered more equal than anyone else, though.
Then let's thank God and the powers that be for the terrorist watch list (TWL), because anybody can be on it !
I don't know why my posting was modded "funny". I de-installed the video driver, rebooted ... and had to activate again. Of course, I then installed the new video card and its driver first. Either Windows is just plain dumb, or it can see the future.
My WinXP became "deactivated" after I de-installed the video card driver. This "feature" is hardly limited to Vista, I'm afraid.
Where specifically? Germany. And are the roads any good? Picture-perfect, and smooth as a babys butt. Paid for by outrageously high taxes, but at least it's tax money put to good use.
You've just shifted the "strong" criterium from physical strength to marksmanship.
And, well, the saying doesn't really deal with individuals. A large group of people with guns is stronger than small group of people with guns. Especially if the large group can also afford better guns and better training.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_number
US 87 octane regular corresponds to European 91 octane regular, 89 to 95 and 91 to 98.
But in Europe most cars run on 89/95 stuff with some (especially the FSI/TSI/whatever direct injection engines) even requiring 91/98, while in the US basically everyting runs on regular.
You can have my health records when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Staying awake is _quite_ different from being able to safely drive a vehicle. Have you ever tried to drive after having been awake for 24 hours ? I have. It scared me shitless. Especially the part where it seemed like a good idea to just close my eyes for a second while going 80 mph.
I had the review at hand.
1g of deceleration capability is much higher than the average stock sedan is capable of. (Really. Look it up.)
Ford Focus 2008. 70-0 mph, 190 ft. That comes out to about 8.4 m/(s^2). Still pretty close to 1g.
Sorry. If a late-model sedan can't decelerate at close to 1g, then it's seriously overloaded or needs maintenance - badly.
When they design speed limits for roads, the number they typically use to approximate the average vehicle to determine the maximum safe speed limit is 11.2ft/sec/sec. Or just over .3g.
Yes. Because roads also need to accomodate the 20 year-old junker in bad maintenance, veteran cars, SUVs, vans, pickup trucks, and of course all the people who are too afraid to stomp down on that brake pedal with all their might even if that's the only action that that'll save their sorry butt from crashing into the pile-up up ahead.
That would put you a quadruple the braking ability they assume your vehicle is capable of when they picked the speed limit.
As I said - if you can do it to a car, then there's something seriously wrong with it in the first place. In that case, do the regular maintenance on the braking system first and _then_ try quadrupling the braking power.
Yes, for hitting a button at a simple, expected event without any distractions. No, not for realizing that you need to brake, moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake, and stomping down on it, in an actual, real-life traffic emergency. Sorry.
You may not realize, but your fantasies of improved braking performance are delusional.
I explicitly left performance cars out of my generalization.
Well, then let's take a non-performance car. How about a plain vanilla, 77 kW VW Golf TDI ? Hardly a "performance car", I hope you'll agree with that. Well, it brakes from 100 km/h to zero in about 38 meters. That's still a deceleration of slightly above 1g. And if you still think you can quadruple that by "replacing components", well, sorry, that's still complete and utter BS.
As I said, if you find a car where you can do that trick, please, please drop it off at the nearest junkyard. It's not roadworthy to begin with. Or are the "stock" brakes on US cars really _that_ lousy ?
Did you miss the part where I talked about tires?
No, I didn't miss it at all. And even if you somehow miraculously manage to fit Formula 1 slicks on your sedan, that still doesn't reduce its weight to that of a F1 race car.
Only if the car comes with abso-friggin'-lutely lousy brakes to begin with (hint: BMWs don't).
you can quadruple - or more - your grip on the road, and your brake performance on most stock cars.
The "stock" M5 brakes from 100 km/h to 0 in 33 meters, that's a deceleration of about 12 m/(s^2) or about 1.3g. That's pretty much as good as you get on a "stock" car. If you were to quadruple that, you would get into regions that are usually left for _real_ racing cars (Formula 1 and such) which are much lighter and use completely different tires.
Sorry, I call BS here. If you can quadruple the deceleration of a car by "replacing components", then it's time to drop that car off at the junkyard and get one that's roadworthy to begin with.
Driver errors include "Driver was too full of himself, thought he knew better than Mr. Newton, and drove too fast.".
And people bragging about their 250 ms reaction time are definitely full of themselves. Yes, you might react that fast to an event you expect and move your finger in time to stop that stopwatch, but no you're not going to react that fast to a rare, unexpected event and stomp down on the brake in 250 ms. Stop kidding yourself, period.
There are technical limits as to how large your deceleration can be. You won't be able to quadruple it on most cars, sorry.
So you're bad at math and at engineering, too.
Also, I didn't mention that stopping distance also includes a term that depends on the drivers reaction time (pretty much a constant) and the velocity.
Just like somebody with an agenda (wanting people to drive slower) to tout an equation while neglecting to consider one of the variables.
You're also bad at guessing agendas. Today's just not your day, I guess.
Carry a small hammer where you can reach it quickly (under the seat, wherever). When your car hits the water, you may have to go out the windshield or the rear window, and those don't roll down at all.
If you do the elecrics on cars, PLEASE redesign the damned things so they'll work with the key in the "off" position
Now let's see, what are the differences between playing an FPS and driving a car ? I'll name a few:
* When driving, you have to pay attention to a much larger part of your field of vision than when just staring at a monitor.
* When driving, some of the areas you have to pay attention to may actually be out of focus, since you're actually perceiving a 3D image and not staring at a 2D screen. And don't forget that even if you think you're the fastest thing for miles around, you occasionally have to check your mirrors.
* When driving, some of the important controls are actually moved by your feet _and_ all of them need much larger motions and force than pushing a mouse around, hitting a key on the keyboard, or clicking a mouse button.
* The number of situations you may have to react to is much larger in real life (tm).
There are more. And pretty much all of them will lead to your reaction time when playing an FPS being somewhat shorter than when driving a car.
Latency in an FPS is _added_ to your reaction time. If you're playing against people who have a reaction time similar to yours, then the person with less latency will shoot first and win. That's why there's a big difference between the guy with 10ms and the guy with 100ms. It doesn't have anything to do with the human.
Assuming dry pavement, That M5 likely would stop from 100 MPH in in under 200 feet. Less, if the vehicle is fully optimized for dry-only pavement.
Erm, no. Even assuming a pretty much perfect reaction time of 0.5s (from recognizing the need to stop until foot stomps down on the brake pedal), the car will already have travelled about 22 meters. Then, he'd need a deceleration of about 2.5g to stop in less than 38 meters. Even a souped-up street sedan doesn't do that - they top out at about 2g. Maybe if he war driving a _real_ race car (much lighter), he'd have a chance.