Driverless lorries? Convoys of up to ten lorries with one driver?
...the plans could result in platoons of up to 10 computer-controlled lorries being driven metres apart from each other.
When I wuzz a kid, way back BT {Before Technology}, we called ‘em trains and they ran on tracks away from the roads. What happened to that game? Nobody want to go to the rail freight yard to collect their stuff anymore?
I see they’re going to trial this trick on ‘a quiet stretch of the M6’. A quiet stretch? That alone stretches the imagination.
Next up, when we’re all automatic, cars an’ all, will all us car drivers need to queue at motorway joining slip roads ‘till there’s a huge bunch of cars that’ll then be automatically split into convoys dependant on destination and then move off with the poor prat who was first-up at the queue controlling the lot in ‘his/her’ convoy? Now that would be stretching that designated driver thingy a tad would it not?
Imagine the scene, in the unlikely event of a software problem, yeah, I know, when the ‘designated driver’ rocks-up back at the ranch.
“Hi honey, I’m home. Did anyone come to collect those six trucks I brought home yesterday? Yes? That’s good. Oh, there’s sixty for supper by the way.”
Quote; Simon Head.
“it offends the continuum of human dignity to treat people like the appendage of highly efficient machines.”
2 comments:
`A quiet stretch'??? You mean, of the busiest motorway in Europe? I wonder how those convoys will cope with getting through J17 - J20 during rush hour. Still, looking on the bright side, having them linked in a convoy might lessen the elephant racing.
Ripper,
What you say is true but let’s imagine for a moment two by ten truck convoys, let’s call ‘em A and B, on the highway nose to tail doing 60 with attending drivers sound asleep owing to boredom. Then computer A experiences a glitch and rather than a speed of 60 picks up a figure of 62 and thus eases the go-fast pedal back a bit ‘till A gets back down to 60 - which is actually 58.
Convoy B picks this up and goes into overtake mode. Sadly, when the convoys are tidily lined up computer A sorts itself out with the aid of cloud diagnostics and Cortana and thus eases it’s pretend foot back on the pedal a little. Result? Synchronised Mammoth highway blocking.
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