Thanks, I was indeed missing something. Southbound would be quite simple to engineer, however as you say Northbound is trickier. It would either require a new fly over or will have to operate on the B800 along with pedestrians, cyclists and everything else found on unrestricted roads.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
Driverless cars (and buses)
(113 posts)-
Posted 5 years ago #
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@HankChief I believe all the buses will still have drivers so they’d actually drive instead of ‘supervise’ if there’s route changes.
Posted 5 years ago # -
@HankChief I believe all the buses will still have drivers so they’d actually drive instead of ‘supervise’ if there’s route changes.
What exactly is the point of it then?
Posted 5 years ago # -
The only purpose is to put drivers out of a job. It's obviously a solid fail on that point.
So otherwise it has to be getting funded as a technology development test bed.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
Capri said the aim was to ensure the pods were safe when encountering cyclists, children and adults who may be distracted.
“
Posted 5 years ago # -
What happens if you fall asleep in a self-driving car?
Posted 5 years ago # -
electrically powered pods will also help the airport cut its carbon emissions - greenwashing of the highest order.
no dozy pedestrians talking on a phone and not looking at the traffic - victimblaming of the highest order.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Stagecoach are being extremely vague and evasive over the exact route it will take south of frb. As a cyclist this detail is absolutely key.
Not very good for a 'consultation'.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Somewhere I've read, and I could swear it was in New Scientist, that car manufacturers were trying to skip over Level 3 and Level 4 automation, because this was the most dangerous. They found that when a human not actively engaged in driving was sudden and unexpectedly dumped in charge of a vehicle when the automation failed, the driver wasn't able to cope. I've not been able to find this, unfortunately.
Does this ring bells with anyone?
Posted 5 years ago # -
So upshot, they've got £25 million government money to burn to establish a new route as a technology testbed. Even if the technology fails, Stagecoach get the infrastructure for a new route, either way the autonomous vehicle folks learn stuff.
It does - as observed, unavoidably - use the A904 which is frequented by easily squished cyclist types, including me. Quite why their twitter rep would be so evasive on that I'm not sure, they did wind me up a lot by evading a simple question.
£25 million would buy a lot of cycle track.
Posted 5 years ago # -
I’m at the drop-in right now if anyone has any questions they’d like me to ask.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Too late for questions but did you get the answers?
Posted 5 years ago # -
Sadly the project isn’t really that groundbreaking so there wasn’t too much to ask. The autonomous tech is essentially off the shelf stuff that works. Almost entirely running on trunk roads with a safety driver so very little (if any) interaction with poor lane markings or vulnerable road users.
Off the shelf bus as well so nothing exciting like bike storage. Stagecoach service so no integration with TfE buses/trams at Edinburgh Park.
Posted 5 years ago # -
A904 is not trunk route and is quite heavily used by cyclists, unpleasant as it is.
It is a short, constrained route so the bus path can be easily planned out and mapped and tested in advance.
The question for me is whether the system can reliably detect a cyclist, and cues such as hand signals.
Assuming a cyclist can be detected, is an automated bus safer than the generally relatively aggressive Stagecoach drivers? Very possibly. A fatality would set back their project a decade, so I expect they will be on the very cautious side.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Not reassuring article on cycle detection rates in autonomous vehicles:
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
The possibility of making pedestrians safer is a welcome one, not least because walking is so undeniably good. Walking boosts physical and mental health, draws communities together and produces no carbon emissions. But there are good reasons to be sceptical about the promises made by the proselytisers of the high-tech car future. Car companies swear they are here to help – by selling us products that hardly ever hit anyone or anything. But the truth is that this promise is, at best, a distraction. In fact, much of our discourse around cars, self-driving or otherwise, is less about transforming the status quo than maintaining it, obscuring paths to progress exactly when we need them most, and leaving pedestrians right in the line of fire.
“
Posted 5 years ago # -
Anybody fancy helping them come up with the plan for the autonomous buses from Ferry Toll. Details are scant.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2446911178727852&id=266757856743206
Check out "CAV Forth: Autonomous Bus Design Jam!" on Eventbrite!
Date: Saturday, 12 October 2019
Location: Apex Waterloo Place Hotel
Posted 5 years ago # -
Quite good Point of View about driverless cars:-
"Margaret Heffernan argues that, in the world of technology, there's nothing inevitable about the future.
"I'm not saying that automation isn't a big trend or that driverless cars aren't a possibility", she writes, "but there is nothing about them that is inevitable"."
Posted 5 years ago # -
This future vision of transport includes driverless cars as well as electric scooters. It also includes this paragraph:-
"
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/0769eef2-725f-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5?segmentId=e3f13e6d-1e60-2b14-6f12-54670b861684Public transport could become highly personalised, says Mr Goodall. “For the last century, transport has been about building train sets. The next decades of transport will be built around personal needs. That is why Uber and other ride-hailing services have grown so quickly — you can hail a cab and it will arrive in two minutes. We will go from transport on fixed rails and routes to one that is hyper-personalised.”"
Hyper-personalised is exactly what cycling is if you're doing a journey dotting from work, this shop, that shop, library and home. It would be even more hyper-personalised if you didn't have to plan your journeys to exclude danger from cars.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Christian Wolmar:-
Happily, therefore, my view is that the driverless car dystopia will never happen. Sure, there may be limited use for such vehicles, such as airport shuttles or other pre-fixed routes, but the vision of everyone being in driverless cars that are shared use is, frankly, a fantasy. There is, in fact, little public appetite for these vehicles and there is a lot of scepticism about claims they will reduce traffic when the opposite case would seem obvious.
The real risk is that governments and policy makers are suckered into thinking that a driverless world is both desirable and feasible. They may well be fooled by the hype and seduced by the vision of sitting in a car sending texts while being driven by a robot. It is, therefore, very important to challenge politicians about this vision and to subject the myths put out by the industry to close scrutiny.
Governments constantly looking for a technical fix, be it driverless or electric cars which will let them off from making hard political decisions like making it more difficult to use a car for daily transport.
Posted 5 years ago # -
“
People attending a transport trade show in Glasgow will be offered rides round the SEC car park in a prototype Stagecoach single-decker.
“
Posted 5 years ago # -
Governments constantly looking for a technical fix
, be it driverless or electric carswhich will let them off from making hard political decisionslike making it more difficult to use a car for daily transportalso works, for myriad situations...
Anyway, earlier today I saw (but now can't find) a tweet from a woman in a US city who was trapped in the road by a delivery robot. They're apparently programmed to wait *in* the kerb cut, which is often not much wider than a wheelchair. If they sense pedestrians moving towards them they won't move forward. So, one sensed her wheeling towards it and... stayed put. Blocking the only place she could exist the road. The lights changed and she was stuck out in traffic, unable to get out of the way.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Erratic driver follows driverless waymo on public roads
Posted 5 years ago # -
Interesting programme on the BBC about Shenzhen and technology, in which AI was being used not to drive vehicles but to watch the drivers of commercial trucks, to detect when they're either falling asleep or being distracted; infractions eventually reach a level at which their license is suspended.
Posted 5 years ago # -
Bit tricky to hold a webinar under Chatham House rules?
Posted 4 years ago # -
I wondered about that. Maybe minds are wiped at the end?
Posted 4 years ago # -
Cars with ALKS as currently configured will not be able to change lanes, nor react to the red X signal
That doesn't sound like fully automated driving.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Not heard that acronym before - not sure I want my long and wide car to be an ALKY...
Posted 4 years ago #
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