Road Trains get ready to roll

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8349923.stm

by ironkeith • 17 years ago

28 12 17 years ago

news.bbc.co.uk

ironkeith• 17 years ago

I have been a little obsessed with this idea lately, so I'm pretty excited to see some progress. "Training" cars to share the efforts of acceleration/deceleration, cut wind resistance, ideally reduce collisions, minimize the effects of "traffic fluid dynamics", and allow me to play on my laptop during my commute is technology I can get behind.

chrischen3• 17 years ago

Could possibly speed up traffic too since there will be less delay from slow reaction times. But I'm not too sure how turning will work if a long truck and a compact car are in the same road train.

weaksauce• 17 years ago

I would imagine that it is only for highways to start. It could also be handled in software if it was used for trips with sharp turns. The software in the lead car could indicate that the turn was initiated at this point in space and to turn hard when you get there. Presumably there is some kind of GPS that would help with that.

The real worry(though not too terrifying) is more about a rouge driver with a hacked transmitter mimicking a "professional driver" and sending them bunk data that could veer them into an accident. One way to mitigate this is by having some kind of sonar/radar/sensor on each car in the cardinal directions that would indicate if the command was safe. I am sure there are other ways to game the system that I am not seeing from this cursory reflection.

andrewtj• 17 years ago

Initial thought on reading the title was that it'd be a struggle to run road trains in most of the EU and UK, but thankfully the article wasn't referring to one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Road_Train_Australia.jpg

sdkfisljdsd• 17 years ago

Road trains will share the road with everyone else. Just one car cutting in front can lead to a horrific accident. It will be similar to real train accident but more frequent.

Plus the feeling of control is very important. Flying is safer then driving, but numbers be damned, in a plane you have no control so it feels a lot worse then driving.

fan• 17 years ago

Re: "Feeling of control is very important...feels a lot worse than driving."

Citation? I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just curious if there are actually surveys of this. I've personally never felt a subway/tram/plane was any less safe because of lack of control so found the claim hard to empathize with.

rbrcurtis• 17 years ago

I'd be very worried about both wireless security and wireless interference.

Semiapies• 17 years ago

It's like a bus, but with far greater fuel consumption, a far larger road footprint, and the bonus chance to have a multi-car accident due to a software hiccup.

Road Trains get ready to roll

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