Ways to deter motorists?

[classic33]

Hi @Phaeton, there is quite a good article here which explains why that's quite difficult to calculate:

https://medium.com/@mc2maven/a-closer-inspection-of-teslas-autopilot-safety-statistics-533eebe0869d

Tesla themselves report that 1 death in 325 million miles traveled for a "driverless equipped vehicle" vs 1 in 86 million miles for ordinary vehicles. The article above goes into some detail as to why the comparison is not really valid, but still estimates that autopilot has 35% lower crash rates than a human. It is still a fact though that every death due to a driverless car has been reported internationally, and can be listed on one very short wikipedia page.

I have found no statistical evidence to back up the assertion that humans with two eyes, two ears and poor reaction times are better at driving than an AI which has many sensors and far superior reaction times. AI doesn't get drunk, or angry, or upset. It follows the rules it is given. The biggest risk is hacking.

Technically speaking the first fatality from a driverless car has yet to happen. This due to the simple fact that a human driver is still required behind the wheel, with the driver reacting before the car decided to "act".

The resulting two actions led to the pedestrian being hit.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Tesla themselves report that 1 death in 325 million miles traveled for a "driverless equipped vehicle" vs 1 in 86 million miles for ordinary vehicles.

This to me is yet another number plucked out of the ether by the marketing people, I very much find it hard to believe that autonomous cars have actually driven 325 million physical miles. They may well have driven 325 million simulated miles, but not physical tyre on the road, or even more relevant physical miles with other non autonomous vehicles around.

Sorry but having over 30 years experience in software development I find it inconceivable that this software will work as expected, the number of unconceived edge cases will be huge. A human powered vehicle trying to navigate down a crowded street will use an element of 'bullying' to ensure it makes progress, whereas a autonomous vehicle that has been instructed to put humans first will just sit there going nowhere.

It would be far easier just to ban human drivers, that would work, but not a mix of humans & automatons

 

[KneesUp]

Tough crowd. I quite like the idea of generalized motorist deterrents.

I think some posters may have missed that the username of the OP rather implies that they are aged 14 to 16 and trying to do something positive.

That said, hopefully @Dengineering GCSE has learned that one of the most important parts of solving a problem is being very clear about what the problem you are trying to solve actually is.

I *think* what you want to design is some sort of device that will ensure that cars pass cyclists at a reasonable distance. However, you may mean that you want a device that will give motorists a warning of a cyclist in front of them - many country roads are quite windy, so it's easy for an inattentive motorist to come up behind a cyclist with a large speed difference but relatively little warning (as I assume you can't drive yet, to be clear, one ought to drive so that you can stop in the distance you can see, which means that on twisty roads one ought to drive at a speed that means you can stop mid-corner if you need to, but in reality most drivers do not)

If you want to do the former I would guess you need something that will physically deter motorists from driving too close - perhaps a stick-y out thing. You can still get the fold-out reflective flags that were common in the 70s/80s that try to do this - image shows one set up for riding on the right:-

You may wish a more high-tech solution?

The other method is to encourage drivers to move over - off the top of my head I can think of perhaps projecting an image of a cycle lane on to the road - but this would be almost impossible in daylight, and take a lot of power at night. I don't think the blue light idea is an option because it's illegal afaik.

In terms of giving drivers more notice of an upcoming cyclist - I don't really have any ideas other than one that would not work - some sort of retractable trailing light whereby you could 'release' a cable with an led cluster on the end which would then bounce chaotically on the road metres behind the bike. Whether this would simply distract drivers I don't know - and you also have the issue of it bouncing into a hedge and getting stuck, or a car tyre accelerating on it and pulling it back - and that's assuming you can make it reliably tough enough. It would need to be retractable because in the city it would be a liability - I imagine some sort of system like a retractable tape measure, with a 'retract' button on the handlebars? Like I say, it's not really workable, but it's all I have!

 

[Deleted member 26715]

How about something that shows drivers via their sat nav that there is a cyclist on the road in front

 

[glasgowcyclist]

How about something that shows drivers via their sat nav that there is a cyclist on the road in front

That route would require people cycling to have beacons fitted, not something I'd be in favour of.

 

[Milzy]

This thread is as mad as a bag of weasels.
Double the price of fuel & watch more people cycling & taking the bus.

 

[winjim]

This thread is as mad as a bag of weasels.
Double the price of fuel & watch more people cycling & taking the bus.

Double? I wonder what the threshold is for people not just complaining but actually changing their actions. For carrier bags it was 5p, for fuel I suspect it might be rather more. But yeah, double it and if that doesn't work, double it again.

 

[KneesUp]

This thread is as mad as a bag of weasels.
Double the price of fuel & watch more people cycling & taking the bus.

I get the impression the OP needs to design and make something for a GCSE project, and is therefore unlikely to be in a position to influence the price of fuel.

 

[icowden]

Double? I wonder what the threshold is for people not just complaining but actually changing their actions. For carrier bags it was 5p, for fuel I suspect it might be rather more. But yeah, double it and if that doesn't work, double it again.

It wouldn't work. You can still buy a carrier bag, and they are easy to carry round. If you live somewhere with poor public transport, how do you go anywhere? My kids go to school with my niece via granddad cabs for example. One hours walk, or a 25 minute cycle. Yes, it is a cyclable distance for the two older children, but not for a 4 year old. Plus even I wouldn't cycle to their school unless I had to as the road is long, fast and narrow.

There are no buses that go that route from our house. To get there by bus would take hours. You would have to vastly improve public transport to get people out of their cars. Hence, driverless electric cars - environmentally friendly, always available and very safe. Your phone is your bus stop and your bus is private. No need to pay a driver so much cheaper.

 

[KneesUp]

... driverless electric cars - environmentally friendly, always available and very safe. Your phone is your bus stop and your bus is private. No need to pay a driver so much cheaper.

Where is the electricity being generated, how is it being stored for use, where are all the materials to make the cars coming from, and how are they all being assembled?

 

[icowden]

Where is the electricity being generated, how is it being stored for use, where are all the materials to make the cars coming from, and how are they all being assembled?

They are assembled in factories like ICE cars. They are made from mined and extracted materials like ICE cars. The electricity is being generated where it is generated now. It is stored in batteries which have a very long shelf life indeed and improving year on year.

Unlike ICE cars, they don't sit on the driveway for 23 hours per day. Unlike ICE taxis they don't sit idle at any time (yes I know some taxi drivers car share). There is some question around lithium supply but that's about it.

 

[KneesUp]

They are assembled in factories like ICE cars. They are made from mined and extracted materials like ICE cars. The electricity is being generated where it is generated now. It is stored in batteries which have a very long shelf life indeed and improving year on year.

Unlike ICE cars, they don't sit on the driveway for 23 hours per day. Unlike ICE taxis they don't sit idle at any time (yes I know some taxi drivers car share). There is some question around lithium supply but that's about it.

Well, kind of - I agree it's probably better, but it's still taking tons of raw materials to do a job that really, if we thought about things a bit better, we could do ourselves - I don't imagine that the Dutch and the Danes would see the need quite so much, because they've designed their cities more with humans in mind, rather than cars.

The energy to move a ton or so of electric car and a person is way more than the energy required to move a person and a bike, and really, I'd rather not burn something to get that energy, and nor would I like the open areas we have left to be covered in wind turbines, solar cells and wave power generators if at all possible.

In short, I'd like to think that the alternative to the car (which I agree we need) is not going to be 'another sort of car'.

 

[icowden]

I agree. I wasn't suggesting substituting bikes for cars, only that self-driven cars are likely to much safer to cyclists than the moron driven ones.

 

[Edwardoka]

This thread is as mad as a bag of weasels.
Double the price of fuel & watch more people cycling & taking the bus.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha *deep breath* hahahahahahahahahahaha
Price is straight up no deterrent to drivers, given how much money some people spend on a new car every year or two. People are ideologically wedded to their hunk of metal and nothing short of societal collapse or a 1970s Amsterdam-style total reversal of policy will change that. No-one in government will even dare raise fuel duty because it's a guaranteed vote loser.

 

[mudsticks]

This thread is as mad as a bag of weasels.
Double the price of fuel & watch more people cycling & taking the bus.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha *deep breath* hahahahahahahahahahaha
Price is straight up no deterrent to drivers, given how much money some people spend on a new car every year or two. People are ideologically wedded to their hunk of metal and nothing short of societal collapse or a 1970s Amsterdam-style total reversal of policy will change that. No-one in government will even dare raise fuel duty because it's a guaranteed vote loser.

I reckon price rise / scarcity would help a lot.
The roads were so much nicerer and quieter when we had those fuel shortages however many (eight?) years back.
People suddenly found ways to reduce the number of journeys, or combine them

- that was my experience, living in the country where there's not much public transport at all.

Increase the availability of public transport, lower the cost, and make it more bike friendly with carriers.

Electric cars for the Incapacitated, and small electric trucks for local deliveries.

Oh and I'll need a small tractor that runs on hydrogen fuel cells too, please, if our young inventor op has any time to spare..

I've already invented the Record player stylus, attached to the 'keep your distance' sticky out thingy.


You can have that one for free, in return for the hydrogen powered tractor and loader