Brexit, for once some facts.

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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you will be proven wrong in your lifetime!
when I started, paper tapes were still in use, silicon hard drive was thought possible but not soon. Some 40 years later, SSDs are as cheap as chips. Computers rule our lives for sometime now. Best get used to it.
No I won't and there's need to lecture me on progress, I've been watching it since I was born into an environment not far short of a century ago that still had many Middle Ages elements. I've been all SSD for many years, and my website provider switched all their servers to them recently, but that is an entirely different matter from self drive cars. SSD wasn't a moving target. You won't see them replacing our driven cars for all our uses in our lifetime because they need to operate in many moving targets, 7.6 billion of them for starters without even considering the ever moving surroundings.

Anyway, in all my 70 years of riding and driving motorised I've never heard one driver wanting their driving to be taken from them. So what is the point of progress against universal human wishes to profit a tiny handful of the wealthy at our expense.
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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Sorry flecc, and since you are interested in biology, I would have assumed you knew. . Evolution is a very crude mechanism. Unless a disease renders an individual less capable of reproduction, or reduces fertility, it has no effect. This is why for instance Cancers of the elderly are not controlled , and in fact can increase. Whereas diseases such as CF, with which I am familiar, are held very strictly under control
I did know, but there's also the evolution by elimination which you seem to be discounting, a.k.a survival of the fittest. That may already be in operation to a small degree with Covid-19 in high population density areas, if London is anything to go by.
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RossG

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I agree with flecc on this one, if it's taken 40 years to get to SSD's that's actually a very long time in the world of technology. We'll have a few running around of course, then one will plough into a bus shelter full of disabled children and they'll all be off the road for another 5 years and so on.
We'll have them one day .. in forty years :)
 

Woosh

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No I won't and there's need to lecture me on progress, I've been watching it since I was born into an environment not far short of a century ago that still had many Middle Ages elements. I've been all SSD for many years, and my website provider switched all their servers to them recently, but that is an entirely different matter from self drive cars. SSD wasn't a moving target. You won't see them replacing our driven cars for all our uses in our lifetime because they need to operate in many moving targets, 7.6 billion of them for starters without even considering the ever moving surroundings.

Anyway, in all my 70 years of riding and driving motorised I've never heard one driver wanting their driving to be taken from them. So what is the point of progress against universal human wishes to profit a tiny handful of the wealthy at our expense.
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Imagine you arrive at Hong Kong International airport.
Ignore the Airport Express because it stops at the wrong side of the water for your hotel.
Your choices of transfer to your hotel are: taxi with a driver and a taxi without a driver.
The cost to provide you with a taxi without a driver is obviously much less than with. I'd say a driverless taxi costs about the the same as an Airport Express ticket.
The route from the airport to your hotel does not have any particular surprise in 99.99% of cases.
Which taxi would you choose?
Let's take another airport example but in a different context.
You arrive at Malaga airport.
You need to rent a car. It's a busy airport. Passengers tend to queue outside car hire places after pushing their trolley for a quarter of a mile.
Your choices are: driverless cars and normal cars, both at the same price except that the driverless car can meet you where you wait with your luggage.
Would you choose to hire a driverless car? (you can always take over the wheel if you so wish)
 
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Danidl

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No I won't and there's need to lecture me on progress, I've been watching it since I was born into an environment not far short of a century ago that still had many Middle Ages elements. I've been all SSD for many years, and my website provider switched all their servers to them recently, but that is an entirely different matter from self drive cars. SSD wasn't a moving target. You won't see them replacing our driven cars for all our uses in our lifetime because they need to operate in many moving targets, 7.6 billion of them for starters without even considering the ever moving surroundings.

Anyway, in all my 70 years of riding and driving motorised I've never heard one driver wanting their driving to be taken from them. So what is the point of progress against universal human wishes to profit a tiny handful of the wealthy at our expense.
.
Well I for one would welcome zero driving and automatic transportation. Prior to the lockdown, I was traveling by train and would have assumed much longer day trips this summer.
 

RossG

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When I want to cross a busy road I stand by the curb and wait until someone feels sorry for me and slows down waving a hand for me to get a move on, driverless cars ? well let's see what would happen.
The machine wouldn't know me from a lamppost, in fact I do look a bit like a lamppost as I'm tall and thin and my head lights up. So a driverless vehicle would just carry on and I would stand there for ever getting thinner .. well no I wouldn't because I could just step out in front of it and it would stop would it not, yes of course it would :rolleyes:
On the other hand I could be a right sod and run in front of one being careful to judge it right so it screeches to a halt and gets shunted from behind, kids will have a field day Computerised Chicken.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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Imagine you arrive at Hong Kong International airport.
Ignore the Airport Express because it stops at the wrong side of the water for your hotel.
Your choices of transfer to your hotel are: taxi with a driver and a taxi without a driver.
The cost to provide you with a taxi without a driver is obviously much less than with. I'd say a driverless taxi costs about the the same as an Airport Express ticket.
The route from the airport to your hotel does not have any particular surprise in 99.99% of cases.
Which taxi would you choose?
Let's take another airport example but in a different context.
You arrive at Malaga airport.
You need to rent a car. It's a busy airport. Passengers tend to queue outside car hire places after pushing their trolley for a quarter of a mile.
Your choices are: driverless cars and normal cars, both at the same price except that the driverless car can meet you where you wait with your luggage.
Would you choose to hire a driverless car? (you can always take over the wheel if you so wish)
As I've previousl;y acknowledged on this subject, I haven't ruled out all circumstances and have said there will be of course be instances for driverless cars to be used. Indeed they already exist in public use.

But this is what I posted and you quoted:

"You won't see them replacing our driven cars for all our uses in our lifetime."

i.e. They will have limited uses, often in prepared circumstances, but will be far from replacing our cars in our lifetimes.
.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
53,130
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Well I for one would welcome zero driving and automatic transportation. Prior to the lockdown, I was traveling by train and would have assumed much longer day trips this summer.
I'm definitely against handing the driving I enjoy to automation, even if it were possible, but not against alternative means of transport. That said, there's few things more boring than seated in an airliner with someone else twiddling the controls.
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  • Agree
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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We'll have them one day .. in forty years :)
I'm not even confident of that time frame Ross.

The reason governments are so keen is their potential to eliminate the human caused accidents. However, as the problems increasingly become insurmountable I think it far more likely that we'll settle for the obvious compromise.

Retaining human control but with safety override in potentially dangerous situations. We already have that optionally on some cars, mine included, and I leave some of it switched on as an additional safety factor.

My car will brake itself in some situations, preceded by a sonic Beep when it's not quite sure it's right, but some of these features are just an irritating nuisance of little value.
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RossG

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My car will brake if I drive too close to another car but if the other vehicle then speeds up mine with accelerate again, needless to say I keep that option off. It's also got lane guidance and self parking, all good fun but I can do that already so it's just a novelty. The only way driverless cars will take off is with the driver being alert & aware of what conditions exist at any one time which for me at least negates the point of their presence anyway.
 
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oldgroaner

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Wicky

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Recent school visits for Boris are a minefield...


A former school librarian has said she "feels sorry" for Boris Johnson after a book display intended as a message to her former employers ended up making waves on social media.

The titles - which included Roald Dahl's The Twits - were spotted behind the prime minister during a visit to Castle Rock School in Leicestershire.

The books that were visible behind the prime minister included Farenheit 451 - a dystopian novel about a society where books are banned - as well as titles including The Subtle Knife, Glass Houses, The Resistance and Betrayed.

Some suggested the display was a mischievous dig at Mr Johnson.

The school said the library "stocked a wide range of texts".

"It was a message for the management team, not for Boris Johnson. I did feel sorry for him," said the 48-year-old librarian from Leicestershire, who wants to remain anonymous.
 

jonathan.agnew

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My car will brake if I drive too close to another car but if the other vehicle then speeds up mine with accelerate again, needless to say I keep that option off. It's also got lane guidance and self parking, all good fun but I can do that already so it's just a novelty. The only way driverless cars will take off is with the driver being alert & aware of what conditions exist at any one time which for me at least negates the point of their presence anyway.
I'm forever late, so always nailing it as fast as possible, and self drive features (other than arguable safety features that have been known to fail)dont really fit in with this
 

oyster

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My car will brake if I drive too close to another car but if the other vehicle then speeds up mine with accelerate again, needless to say I keep that option off. It's also got lane guidance and self parking, all good fun but I can do that already so it's just a novelty. The only way driverless cars will take off is with the driver being alert & aware of what conditions exist at any one time which for me at least negates the point of their presence anyway.
I use adaptive cruise control a lot of the time.

Partly because my right foot gets tired, uncomfortable, then painful the further I drive. Partly because it means my attention can be outside the car rather than on the speedo. Some areas round this end of the world are pretty hot on speeding both directly by police and some cameras. Particularly welcome on the extensive lower speed limits (e.g. 50 at Port Talbot, and many miles of 40 for roadworks more recently on roads in every direction.

Lane guidance has never appealed.
 

RossG

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Although nobody ever seems to like it but I have cruise set on my e-bike display. I find a nice straight bike lane, set my speed to around 10mph then when it locks I can take my hands off the bars and read a book or grab forty winks, works great ;)
 
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jonathan.agnew

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Dec 27, 2018
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He hasn't the intelligence and felt rather insecure?
terrible loss (but schapps, hancock, cummings, boris etc are lining up to make the next spike memorable. tories have incredible comic potential). And his interest in security seemed so sincere.
On separate matter I gather from world tonight sturgeon say workers shouldn't be forced to return to place of work. She keeps publicly successfully visibly wrongfooting the conservative government (before masks, and schools, and yet before masks). And it must be very easy, the way boris/cumming blunder from one fiasco to the next. But I dont know why starmer isnt doint it and appear missing in action
 

Nev

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Looking at these 7 day rolling average graphs at the bottom of this article from the BBC, it shows France and Spain are now at similar levels to earlier this year. The virus is mainly spreading in young people hence hospitalisation and death rates are still very low, but older people are likely to catch the virus from the youngsters.

I remember earlier in the year when rates were shooting up in Italy and Spain, I felt that the government appeared to be thinking that it was their problem and we would not get the same problem here. Hence all the sporting events that were allowed to carry on etc.

Do you folks think what is currently happening in France and Spain is likely to happen here in a few weeks time?

Here is the article.
 

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