Hannah is out at the Sea Otter Classic in California, USA. It’s a four day festival of racing and a huge expo area. There are races for every type of ...
By stwhannah
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Hmmm another device for drivers to dhick about with and be distracted from looking where the fheck they are going.
I'd prefer the return to the days of a great big pointy spike in the front of the steering wheel to focus the driver's mind more. Not an extra distraction on a display.
🤔 a high tech gimmick to add to the distractions for the inattentive and careless.
Having said that, Teslas identify bicycles near the vehicle and when coming up behind them treat them like any other vehicle: slowing down and keeping a distance when on ‘autopilot’/cruise. Not much value when you can see the cyclist and drive accordingly.
This could be an incremental step on these manufacturers’ full self driving ambitions. That’s fine. But a cheaper and better step to increase their vehicle safety would be a free advanced driving course with each vehicle. Plus, change the marketing of cars. Given their unattractive qualities, maybe they should be marketed more like tobacco?
It was obvious from the podcast who was more marketing in the group being interviewed and that concerns me. The Audi chap sounded reasonable and the infrastructure guy sounded like he just wanted to make roads safer and more effective, but I did get a feeling that this (like Hannah said) would be the next helmet/HiVis.
The comparison with flashing lights is a bit weak though. You can buy cheap, effective blinky LEDs for next to nothing and so they are easily accessible for cyclists with even really limited spending power. I really doubt that this new tech is going to be as cheap as that, or as readily available in anything like the near future. Maybe if the car makers deliberately subsidised them/gave them away it would catch on, but if the tech is 50 USD or the equivalent, it's going to start being a luxury to a lot of people. Also, bringing in a dead relative is a dick move. Like you said, you can't respond to that without sounding like an asshole.
It's odd to hear the obvious differences between US and UK road users too. The UK has small, crowded roads and drivers that have a rep for being angry and even using cars as deadly weapons. Is the same true in the US? They have more space and straighter roads, yet seem less hate-y about it, or is that just me not being exposed to it more often?
I could only listen for a few minutes before switching off. So the entire population of cycle users, from age 5-95, have to fit a transponder so the Audi driver doesn’t run you over? And if you don’t then they’ll have a “get out of jail free card?” What a terrible idea.