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Traffic Safety Film of the Week

I couldn’t resist this image of an autonomous truck versus autonomous car showdown at the DARPA urban challenge race a few years back. One wonders what the algorithm is for determining propensity to back up — if the other guy is bigger than you?

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Traffic Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Traffic Safety Film of the Week”

  1. SteveL Says:
    November 17th, 2009 at 4:41 am

    The algorithm in Bristol for backing up is “whoever has least to lose”.

    That means that cars that their owners value the least win against other cars; a battered 1970s Volvo being a classic “effective negotiation tool”. It’s already battered and a couple more scrapes won’t hurt. Owners of premium 4×4/SUV toys suffer here as their vehicles are pretty expensive to repair- unless its a company vehicle in which case they can drive pretty badly. As for bicycles, well, tough. They have almost no negotiating power whatsoever, except the ability to clip wing mirrors.

  2. Velocentric Says:
    November 18th, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Clip wing mirrors?
    Why I wouldn’t know what that expression means ;>

  3. Robert Cole Says:
    December 2nd, 2009 at 10:57 am

    Apparently even our machines behave like we do (lol)

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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