please empty your brain below
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Hi DG. Security Guards at the Stop & a Step Up Version of Boarding the Bus... Hell´s Bells Let´s Get the Trusty RM´s back, at Least the Conductor Was a Helpful Person, Top Speed of an Invalid Carriage !!! Have a Day Off.
SW6 | 15.09.17 - 7:34 a.m. | #
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Is this the future of bus travel? Security guards at every bus stop? We already have the paramilitary style armed police at main stations from time to time.
More likely, it will include ubiquitous automatic face scanners (like automatic number plate cameras) to pick out the troublemakers. And individually target advertising as you pass.
Andrew | 15.09.17 - 7:47 a.m. | #
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If the weather warms up a little I think I shall be heading east to try the bus.
I am really looking forward to using driverless buses or trains, and maybe even owning an autonomous car one day.
John | 15.09.17 - 7:58 a.m. | #
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I've been on such a bus on public roads here in the Netherlands back in 2016.
Michael | 15.09.17 - 8:13 a.m. | #
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When it comes to these, I can't help wondering precisely why we will need them.
They are not new technology, as similar vehicles are used to transport goods around the giant retailer warehouses.
Are they ever going to cost-in when the only visible saving will be the salary of 1x operator per vehicle.
Frank F | 15.09.17 - 8:33 a.m. | #
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Still want to know if me and half a dozen mates can stand around this 'bus' on its journey and bring it to a long term halt.
popartist | 15.09.17 - 9:12 a.m. | #
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popartist - Probably. But how long is it going to continue to be amusing to stand around a bus? You could do that to a regular double-decker, truth be told. It's not like the driver's going to run you over.
Chz | 15.09.17 - 9:38 a.m. | #
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Perhaps it could run from the Olympic Park to the Dangleway and back again!
Cornish Cockney | 15.09.17 - 1:55 p.m. | #
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"Popartist: Still want to know if me and half a dozen mates can stand around this 'bus' on its journey and bring it to a long term halt."
You mean test out its onboard taser and teargas array whilst it autodials The Authorities?
drD | 15.09.17 - 1:58 p.m. | #
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I'd rather put them on the Stonehenge shuttle. Looks like they reverse far more easily than conventional buses.
Patrickov | 15.09.17 - 2:10 p.m. | #
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I reckon DG is right to be semi-sceptical and semi-impressed. These things might be the future of getting about, or they might be a dead-end like that non-stop train in some pre-war exhibition. We just don't know which. Yet.
malcolm | 15.09.17 - 2:37 p.m. | #
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I drive a Subaru Outback (Subaru Legacy Estate) with a semi-self drive system. Not steering but speed control, distance adjusting, stopping and starting with no need to use controls. In snow or heavy rain the sensors TURN OFF while car is moving at speed.
If that happens in an unmanned bus, what would be the procedure?
Would it pull to the curb and stop?
BRIAN BERKE | 15.09.17 - 3:16 p.m. | #
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It stopped for a pigeon the other day, and also followed behind a couple of waddling geese.
However not convinced about the electric part of the make up. A Honda hybrid battery has just put me back £2600 at only 10 years old.
Hydrogen anyone?
scrumpy | 15.09.17 - 4:07 p.m. | #
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Scrumpy:
"followed behind a couple of waddling geese." - just like my experience driving a real car into a certain theme park near Tamworth.
"A Honda hybrid battery ... only 10 years old. "
That is three times more than I would expect for a Japanese automotive product. Japanese petrol cars used to have a life of little more than three years because the Jap equivalent of the MOT test was so stringent that nothing would pass and "everyone" would buy a new car every 3 years. A nice way for the state to support volume car production and encourage innovation and rapid introduction of new technology.
Kent Railman | 15.09.17 - 5:44 p.m. | #
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A few years ago, my daily commute involved turning right from the right hand leg of Old Barrow Lane into Old Malden Lane where it immediately becomes Church Road (all B284). This junction being a few yards over the Greater London border (adjacent to the London Loop), and less than a mile away from the Surrey incursion to Worcester Park Station that DG visited not so long ago.
In order to safely complete this manoeuvre, a very sharp 300°+ turn, it was necessary to first count to five and wait, as the road from London curves to such an extent that you have to wait this long to ensure that no vehicle is hidden from view, as a casual glance could just show an empty road heading into the distance.
Mere words are difficult to describe how complicated this is to do, and I struggle to comprehend how an autonomous car would cope here, no matter how many radars or cameras it may have: you simply cannot program software to cope with every circumstance.
Not just for this reason, I do not believe that autonomous cars will ever take off (now, as for flying cars, well there are a few...).
Ken | 15.09.17 - 9:20 p.m. | #
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Hey DG,
How can I share a link for this or other posts? I quite often want to share something with a friend but can only send them to the homepage.
I remember you writing that Blogger made it difficult to provide links and show archives but i've seen you post them before.
Thanks in advance
Tim | 15.09.17 - 10:13 p.m. | #
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Hi Tim
At the bottom of the post is some small text which says "posted 07:00". Click on that and you'll get the unique link for the post.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.09.17 - 10:21 p.m. | #
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Perfect, thank you.
Tim | 15.09.17 - 10:40 p.m. | #
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Rode the 'bus' on Wed going from nowhere to nowhere via a cafe which didn't seem very open.
Sensor range is apparently three metres so the bus has to brake hard - and it does. Not good for standees or those on the tip-up seats.
It can't self-drive round obstacles (yet?), such as the parked Olympic Park flatbed lorry in the middle of the path. Driver had to manually steer the bus round the lorry with an 'X-box' controller!
Lots of other reservations including it drives on the right (it's a standard French product), and it isn't reliable. At least one of the booked days it hasn't run, and on Wed it was out of service for a while for a "full reset".
I'm dubious about its value in London but it's a test-bed, for 'last mile' traffic, not mainstream service if adopted (and the tip up seats removed as TfL doesn't allow them!).
Joel | 16.09.17 - 8:56 p.m. | #
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The whole concept here is simply to have something to sell, not to solve a real problem. The easiest solution is to employ a human driver who already has all the necessary sentient capabilities to drive a vehicle safely. But that wouldn't be saleable as a product. Instead, let's through humans out of work, show how "awesomely" clever we are, and make some money too. What a waste of human ingenuity when you think about the real problems that exist in the world to be solved.
Chris | 19.09.17 - 9:53 a.m. | #
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Further to my comment above - why is that typos only become visible after clicking "publish"? It should read "throw" of course. Well that is an example of human fallibility I accept. But, in connection to the story itself, there is a real danger of people assuming that because something is automated, it is also going to be "perfect"! Of course we all know that that can never be true in an absolute sense, and so shouldn't let this notion persuade us that automation is inevitably better.
Chris | 19.09.17 - 10:04 a.m. | #
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If you were so minded, you could see the onward march of automation and AI as a further front in the perennial battle between labour and capital.
Funny how Marx seems to be getting ever more popular with economists, now there are hardly any proper communist states any longer (you could argue that there were never any proper communist states, but that is another matter).
Andrew | 21.09.17 - 7:31 a.m. | #
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