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Technology

Cars-How Long in the Anonymous Box? 34

Posted by Cliff from the as-if-cell-phones-weren't-bad-enough dept.
woolfish asks: "So the U.S. is the nation of 4-wheeled cubicles, bitching and moaning about $2/gal gas when Europe's doing >$2/liter. But with all talks of high-tech aside, a car still has only 3 boolean data channels (R/L blinkers, horn), 4 if you count the finger. Is someone gonna get off their ass and figure out a way to work inter-car communication, or are we going to stay pissed off and silent during rush hour for the rest of our lives? What do you folks think, are there any solutions in the works, do you have any good ones, or is silence really golden here?" Sounds cool, and there are several areas where such a thing might be really useful. But are you -really- sure you want to listen to the flurry of foul epithets that must certainly issue out of drivers mouths daily during the long morning and evening commutes?
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Cars-How Long in the Anonymous Box? More

Cars-How Long in the Anonymous Box?

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  • E-bumpersticker (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My freind has one of those red led dot matrix bars
    mounted at the base of his rear window and a small
    brick computer running slackware that cats any of 100 pre-written messages to it's serial interface.
    he is working on a new on run by LCD proc and has animation, fade in's etc...
  • In my opinion, driving is a team effort. When everybody cooperates, things go smoothly. But when someone does not play nice with others, things start to break down.

    From my experience, no matter how fast the main lane of traffic is travelling, there is always someone who wants to go faster and is willing to weave in and out of traffic to go .5 mph faster than everybody else. There should be more communication channels between cars. If our cars could communicate with each other about road and traffic condidtions, etc, the non-exiting lane could travel at a blistering speed and the right most lane could be reserved for those who have exits in the next 5 miles.

    Honestly, the only thing stopping this from happening now is the idea of the national speed limit which was set in the 70's when we were having a fuel crisis. Oh, and the knuckleheads who want to go faster than everyone else also keeps us from going really fast.
  • That is, shut down the cell handoff protocol, and modify the cell software that compensates for motion. That way calls will be brief(in one cell only) and if you are moving the sound quality will be even worse.

    Easy enough to make cell calls while in motion too annoying to be worth it. Note that these changes have no effect on drivers that pull off to the side of the road for the duration of the call.
  • That's cool. I'd put one in the front too and program it to display backwards so that speed demons can see it in their rearview mirror when you catch up to them at the next light.

    hehe :)
  • I forget which movie it was in, but I'm pretty sure it was a Thunderbird. He spoke into a microphone and his words appeared across the taillight panel like a Times Square news crawl.

    There's also that Citizen's Band radio thing.

  • I have been dreaming of this for years! Oh how I'd love to have a little scoreboard-like electric sign that I could run messages on...messages like:

    THE SPEED LIMIT IS 45 NOT 110 YOU JACKASS SO GET OFF MY BUTT ALREADY BEFORE I SLAM ON MY BRAKES AND MAKE YOU REGRET EVER SEEING ME!!!

    Hey, that felt good!

  • That's an excellent idea. I'll be getting some free time soon...[maniacal laughter]
  • Exactly! Something like, "Fat lot of good *that* did you," or "Now don't you feel all macho?"

    I could get into some serious trouble with one of these things! ;-)

  • I have seen research done on this before. Usually they work on select extra symbols, as the time taken to process full messages is too long and thus too dangerous wrt response time. A quick search on the net gave me at least one place to follow up if you're interested:

    The Loughborough University HUSAT lab [lboro.ac.uk]

    You might want to email them, either to get some information, or to point them to the discussion board here and get them to participate (which would be my preferred option :-)

    Enjoy,
    Ralf M

  • You wrote:

    And do you really want to pull someone over, for cell phone use, who just got a phone
    call "John, mom's in the xx hospital and with yy, and the doctors say she has 1 hour to
    live! Get here quick!"




    Absolutely. Nothing like a police escort to the hospital to get you there fast enough...



    Ralf M

  • Humans should not converse with humans in other cars while one party is driving. However, car-to-car and car-to-road communication (bypassing the drivers and passengers completely) is an interesting concept.

    Virginia Tech has been working on a "smart road" for nearly a decade now. I hear they're supposed to have a test roadway up and running now (no URLs, sorry).
  • It comes down to the driver, and not the equipment they're using...

    Having put 500 to 800 miles a week on my '89 Nissan Sentra pulling commutes in rush hour and between one and five AM, I've used my cell phone to stay in touch with the 60-mile-diameter of locations that I drove to. I've had zero accidents after a year of 600-minute-per-month cell phone usage and 2500-miles-per-month driving, and one high-school parking lot fender-bender in five years.

    If people were as careful on the roads as they should be (potentially lethal half-ton mile-per-minute vehicles piloted by unaware morons) half the folks on the road wouldn't be driving.

    Sure, pass more legislation so troopers can waste their time pulling over cellphone-chatting drivers and filling out the paperwork to sit in court for a day every other week; people need to learn how to drive (mostly pay attention) better and use more public transit.

    Myself, I've found different employment where I only have to drive fifteen minutes to work. :)


    ------------------
  • Yeah, there's a lot of people on the road who aren't safe, with or without cell phones... they just have a lot of potential to exacerbate the problem.

    I recently moved. It more than doubled my commute time. It now can take me over 5 minutes to drive to work :)
  • If you turn people in, you should get a $25 kick-back ;-)

    Of course, you might need to use a cell-phone to call the police, but you'd pull over first... wouldn't you?
  • Hmmm, that's pretty interesting. Probably about the same as people who can't chew gum and walk at the same time 8^) From what I've seen on the road, people who are holding a phone have one less hand to use when they start gesturing about their conversation, someone else's driving, etc... Would singing/talking in the car on a family trip be as bad or worse - there you might be conversing with more than one person. What separates a phone conversation from a conversation with a passenger, and why is it more dangerous?

    If you can't talk and drive at the same time, nobody should be allowed in the car with you, and your radio should be ripped out, as not to distract your puny mind. Of course, you could still drive a NYC taxi (who don't use any of the above signalling methods, aside from the finger), but that's a special case...

    As for the real topic, I still think gradiant brake lights wouldn't be a bad idea... of course, some people would take too long to process the information, and end up dead, but that's natural selection for ya (just kidding, folks). It's true, the more complicated you make the communication process between drivers, the more you have to rely on active thought, rather than automatic reation. "Now, I need to move my finger here to push this lever thingy" probably isn't going through a driver's head when they signal a turn, and if you are conciously thinking about the varying you are doing on the accelerator to maintain speed or whatever, you should have a 'student driver' sticker. They should be automatic. If you introduce communication that goes beyond simple extensions of the body, things will suffer.

    And we already have a fairly successful way of communicating between vehicles... it's called CB radio. Cheaper than a cellphone, too (with some of the same driving concerns, I'm sure)...
  • The front and back of each car should have infra-red ports. Front for transmitting and back for receiving. Then the Voice-over-IrDA should be used for 'Get out of my way', 'Stupid cow' or 'Dude, your foglights are really starting to **** me off'. This chain of insults, where nobody can actually talk back would cause everybody to drive faster to get out of range, and then I could get home quicker each evening.

  • Somewhere I heard that all animals, not just cats make variations of these noises.

    In cars, it is relatively easy to Growl (with the horn or the bird), and Meow (with turn signals and 'sticking your hand out' to ask for a favor of merging, etc).

    Purring is harder to do - sometimes people wave "thank you" or smile, but it is a shorter range gesture where both parties must be looking at each other.

    Coming up with a way to purr over a longer range would do a lot to make driving a more positive social experience.
  • The Professionals: `Big Rig Truckers' have used CB radio for years and the results are impressive. After installing my own CB, and aclimating myself to the `Trucker Culture' I can say first hand that Two Way communication is wonderful for vehicular situations. The Pros know about Radar Traps and Emergency Situations miles before clueless car operators `happen upon the scene'. Pros also band together to denounce uncivilized behavior - warning eachother about `Road enRaged' drivers, and chiding operators that use abusive language. Although CB language may be `Rude and Crude', most `Pros' clamp down promptly on Hate Speech, or cleverly make a mockery of any Bigot.
  • Usually it involves the third digit of the drivers window-side hand.

    But seriously, LED based tail-lights are becoming common place. It seems that it shouldn't be to hard to use them communicate basic directional information.

    For example, if you are turning the steering wheel left, the left running-light could start to blink on its own if you didn't signal yourself.

    Also, you could use different intensities or patterns to indicate acceleration or deceleration (if not already indicated by braking lights). The LAD tail-lights I've seen are usually concentric circles, the number of circles illumincated could change based on pressure on the gas (petrol) pedal.

  • This site was featured on ZDTV: www.dumbassdrivers.com [dumbassdrivers.com]. You can select from a variety of postcards, give them the license plate number for the idiot who just cut you off, and they'll write your message on the postcard and send it to the idiot's address. All for free!
  • Look, the current system works well because of its simplcity. As it is, many people already have trouble handling the driving of the car, never mind a richer driving communication experience. There are plenty of people who couldn't even handle stick-shift, how do you expect them to do more?

    Besides, everybody is already loaded with all kinds of things to do in the car. For example: - Eating, Drinking
    - Reading (newspapers, especially a large one like NYT)
    - Talking on the cell phone.
    - Putz around maps
    - Playing around with the new high-tech toys like GPS etc.
    - Listening the the radio/tape player/cd player, and fiddling with them as well.
    - Carry on conversations with other passengers.
    - Putting on makeup or putting on nail polish(I've been in the car of someone who did exactly this, within 10 minutes, and did a nice job, while talking to me and driving 70mph on the highway).

    Not to mention, there are plenty of other methods of communicating with other drivers, like using your car's body language, some of which I've done myself:

    - Tailgating and headlight flashing (hey you are going too slow, get outta the way! or, your light are not on!)
    - Leaning toward a lane change (Actually, not usually consciouly, but you can tell if someone wants to cut in front of you this way).
    - The old arm/hand signals which have fallen into disuse.
    - Good ol' hand gestures that doesn't involve the middle finger, such as: waving = go ahead; hold hand out=thank you for letting me go ahead; throw your hand up in disgust, etc.

    I don't know about you, but I think that there's plenty of communication going on already. As it is, people like to remain relatively anonymous on the road, because you are driving with a bunch of strngers, many of whom can be complete psychotic. Who wants to deal with them? As it is, there's enough road rage and distracting things on the road. We don't need more things to complicate and distract from the act of driving safely.

  • take CB radio. been around for a long time.. keeps the truckers busy.. not the longest range, but then again, if you go too long range, it doesn't make much sense.
  • There's _just_ about enough room to stuff one of those under my spoiler on my '96 trans am.. course, i wouldn't want to go drilling holes into the spoiler.. and it's a couple hundred bucks for a spare one :(
  • In england you can buy an LED array which flashes messages up at the driver behind you. It costs about $40 (£25) but you are limited to about three pre programmed messages (sorry is one of them)however im sure a small amount of reprogram could change the vocabulary to something a bit more insulting
  • Look, buddy, you might think 70 is way wangin' fast, but frankly we speed daemons are tired of your me-first attitude where you'll stay in that left lane as long as you please. That lane is for passing, not for feeling smug that you can self-righeously put some distance between you and the cell-phone user. It's called the passing lane, so once you've gotten around the blue hairs, get back in the right where you belong so we can get done with the business of doing what the lane is really there for. I know you like to think that your Accord goes as fast as anyone should go, but please, there are some of us out here with real European vehicles who are tired of waiting behind your commute appliance. If you want to go slow, find a school zone, that's what they're there for.

    - obviously tongue-in-cheek

  • The problem with banning cell phones it is doen'st take into account all the reasons to use one.

    the "valley girl" trying to drive while the conversataion goes "And mike, ya know, he is two timing Julie." "Like wow, like what is she going"... (Okay, so I do a horriobal impression, buut you get the idea) should hang up and drive.

    In my area there is a number I can call to get traffic conditions, if I call right before I get on the freeway I can find out about bad conditions and sometimes take a alternate route. I'm not as safe for the minute I'm making that call (Though I chose a fairly low risk area to make it), but I'm safer overall since I spend less time in heavy traffic.

    And do you really want to pull someone over, for cell phone use, who just got a phone call "John, mom's in the xx hospital and with yy, and the doctors say she has 1 hour to live! Get here quick!"

  • Think carefully before you propose the turn signal come on when you turn the wheel.

    Take a typical 4+ lane road. Can your algorythm tell the difference between "I'm turning the wheel left to move into the left lane", and "I'm turning the whell left because the road curves to the left." Now combine the two situations. Now take the person who decides to switch into the left lane on a right hand curve, meaning the wheel has to move less!

    Of course all this ignores the major thing: as the driver behind you, I don't want to see your turn signal to tell me that you are changing lanes, I want to see your turn signal to tell me that you will soon be switching lanes and I should make some room so I'm not tailgating you as you move over. (I know that I'm the exception to the rule, and I'm supposed to put 3 feet between me and the guy in front of me whenever someone wants to change into my lane, but the bad habit of curitcy is hard to break)

  • "Murderer's Row", 1966
  • Tower wrote:
    anyone driving while talking on a cellphone should be shot. If it is a completely hands-free set, that's ok, but
    I read a newspaper article about a study that had recently been done, which indicated that using a hands-free model was no improvement -- i.e. it is the distraction of a telephone conversation that is the problem, not the manual use of the phone. Which, to bring this thread back on topic, may be a good reason to stick to those more basic forms of communication.

    ======
    Webmasters: get a Free Palm Pilot [jackpot.com] for referring 25 signups (Web-based games).

    ========

  • I agree with Cliff. More communication among drivers would be a Bad Thing. Even apart from the increase in violence, do we really need another thing to distract drivers from the road?
  • anyone driving while talking on a cellphone should be shot. If it is a completely hands-free set, that's ok, but I nearly got killed by some dumb 18 yr old girl 'driving' a puke chartruse Cav while jawing away...

    I've always liked the studies that compare the accident rates of cell-phone drivers to drunk drivers... and what about that town in (Ohio?) that outlawed driving and talking. That's the best.

    State Troopers should pull people over for reckless endagerment and ticket them. Make our world a better place, and give me some laughs at the fools on the side of the road.

    (That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it - you don't have to agree)
  • But with all talks of high-tech aside, a car still has only 3 boolean data channels (R/L blinkers, horn), 4 if you count the finger.

    Fer instance, how about a cell phone presence and a cell phone using?

    I know if I see someone driving while using a cell phone, I try to give them a wide berth, the information that communicates to me is to expect weaving and erratic braking.

    How about headlights? We've all experienced Jeff Gordon wanna-bees who tailgate you in the left lane of bumper to bumper traffic, then flash their headlights, expecting you to pull into a crowded lane so they can go 75 instead of your 70.

    And let's talk about bumper stickers. Fer instance, if I see a lot of Grateful Dead stickers on a car, I give that car a lot a room, no telling when an acid flashback might occur (though I'm still waiting).

    George
  • People don't use the signaling equipment they have on their cars now, I don't think another gadget attached to the car is going to make them pay any more attention to their driving.

    I think its mainly a problem with the "American" licensing system... Driver's education was a joke, and besides being shown some gore films on safe driving, the whole rite is really not taken that seriously. Also, Americans view driving as a right, not just a privilege. Note the standard "I paid my taxes and I can do whatever the hell I want" attitudes and their variants (Drive as Fast as I Want, Drive as Close To You as I Want).

    This is just one example, but last month we had an incident close to our town where an 80 year old driver backed into a school building, mowing down 6 kids in the process. I would hate to have to break it to their parents that this 80 year old will not have her license privileges taken away or even re-evaluated. (That AARP lobby is pretty powerful these days).

    Flavor "Wheels of Tragedy" Dave
  • NEW BRITAIN, PA - Driver fined $75 for driving while on phone [phillynews.com]:

    Dan Young says he never thought calling his mother from the road to tell her he was on his way home would make him an outlaw.

    In Hilltown Township, home of the state's first local ban on handheld phone use while driving, it did. And yesterday a judge told Young, 42, that even though he was not aware of the law - Young lives in Fleetwood, Berks County - he was still guilty of violating it and will have to pay a $75 fine.

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