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autonomous motoring
 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-17 03:39 [#02515755]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



anyone who's spent some time on long highway drives is
probably familiar with how traffic tends to settle into
clusters that move like schools of fish. traffic lights,
stop signs, and slow cars create moving choke points that
gradually trap more cars.

inevitably, there's some twat going 60 in the fast lane, and
everyone's so zoned out driving they don't notice they're
stuck in the mud.

when i'm barreling along and i see one of these clusters, i
am immediately sizing it up: is there some slow car jamming
up the works? who's about to get fed up with it and whip
out; surprise me with a lane change? can i just cruise past
it all as i am, or am i going to have navigate a course of
weaving? this gets very deep and strategic, especially after
three hours of driving, as i get rather bored.

i am waiting for the day when we have level three and four
autonomous cars all about, and i learn to pick them out in
these clusters of cars. i have no idea how, but i'm
reasonably sure their character of driving will be obvious
to me somehow. at that point, i can begin to learn how to
make them get the fuck out of the way as well. ideally,
scare them all and have them scatter like a flock of birds


 

offline SignedUpToLOL from Zuckuss fanfiction (United Kingdom) on 2017-03-17 19:04 [#02515763]
Points: 2853 Status: Regular



God forbid anyone get in the way of your visit to the
dialysis clinic.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 06:46 [#02515776]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



i knew it was you. driving like a grandma. slowing me down
on the highways


 

offline w M w from London (United Kingdom) on 2017-03-18 08:39 [#02515783]
Points: 21386 Status: Regular



You should be respectful and enjoy the scenery at a leisure
pace with less tailgaiting. Maybe they are driving slow
because they do not want to accidentally run over any
innocent animals. Non-human animals are perhaps the most
innocent things, maybe except for plants.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 08:49 [#02515784]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



i figure there's ample evidence of my compulsive and
neurotic nature on this board, along with a small novel of
text about my philosophy of driving.

after two hours of driving, most people have zoned out.
they're listening to "this american life" on NPR and chowing
down on beef jerky and they don't think about their car,
their driving, or the road any more than they think about
how to chew the gobs of salted beef. they are going 60 in a
65 zone

i come up from behind, doing 70 or 75. i am listening
intently to music; all my motions are synced to it. i am
laser-focused on the road, the car. i spot this guy up ahead
in my lane. about twenty seconds before he's even aware of
me, i've switched to the middle lane. he notices me for a
moment, perhaps, as i fly past him on the right, but then
it's over and he's listening to NPR and beef jerky and two
hours later he will have zero recollection of any of it

bottom line: i don't have to tailgate. i have ascended


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 09:04 [#02515785]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



tailgating can actually a legitimate form of communcation.
if i have to, i will get on someone's bumper in a way
intended to get their attention: "please hang up your phone
and let me by. you've formed a rolling roadblock." i always
let off once i feel like they've noticed. i can see them
look up at the rearview mirror, tap the brakes, and so on.
then i think: "alright, they've heard me." then i back off.
people do this each other all the time: "you're a bit slow,
could you please let me by?"

most drivers accept this with a shrug and let me by.
however, if you're an asshole about it -- stick to them like
glue, freak them out -- then they'll decide you can fuck
off; slow way down and torture you. a little bumper-hang to
wake them up, back off once they've noticed? that's a polite
tap on the shoulder and you get much better reactions.

i work very hard to get angry when driving, really. it used
to be neigh-on-impossible, but i've more or less won the
war, even if the occasional battle is still lost.

once you take malice and rage out of the equation, you
realize harassing people -- tailgating to annoy -- only
slows you down. in reaction to someone slowing you down, get
mad and slow yourself down even more? fuck that. i am trying
to optimize the shit out of everything. being a dick gets me
less results, not more

i'm still human, though. there will always be times when
i've been stuck behind some twat for 45 minutes, and when i
finally get an opening, it's like the zookeeper went home
having left the tiger paddy unlocked. so... someday, yes, i
figure i will scatter autonomous teslas like a flock of daft
birds. but i'd rather not have that situation in the first
place


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 09:05 [#02515786]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



to not get angry. angry works me very hard to not get
driving


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 09:23 [#02515787]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



Google's driverless car is brilliant but so boring

But just because it's safe doesn't meant it won't be
massively frustrating - particularly if you're desperate to
get to work or in any other kind of hurry that required a
bit of (legal) urgency on the road.

That's a terrible complaint, isn't it? The impeccable
standards are a sign the technology is really quite
magnificent.

But like dating someone who is just "too nice", the Google
car will start to grate on you a bit.


translation: automated cars will drive like the worst
grandmas ever because they're so terrified of accidents
getting the tech banned. for this reason, A) i will wind up
butting heads with them, and B) i will eat them for lunch

just making the best of a bad situation.


 

offline w M w from London (United Kingdom) on 2017-03-18 10:13 [#02515791]
Points: 21386 Status: Regular



Unless they make it illegal to drive manually.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 11:27 [#02515795]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict | Followup to w M w: #02515791



by the time that comes to pass, i'll either have coded up
the VR driving game i've been designing in my head for
years, or i'll be dead. as such, i'm not going to trouble
myself over this inevitability for now.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2017-03-18 11:34 [#02515796]
Points: 24389 Status: Addict



i'll let the car warm up in the driveway, in park, and rev
the engine. i can feel standing waves of resonance unfold
throughout the car sort of like this except in 3D. it is
reliably ordered and more or less the same every time, so
long as the arc of gas you deliver is more or less the same.
i feel like i could sit there and draw pictures of it, but
there would be so, so many pictures to draw to truly capture
it. what i need is some sort of science-grade analysis setup
with laser-scanning to precisely record all this shit into a
computer so i can build satisfying simulations of it with
bass noises and rumble fx and whatever else VR has to
offer.

cars are due to go electric, and revving the engine like
that will be gone forever... as will all other nuances of
driving as it is today. this bothers me so much i feel
compelled to capture it in a game, for the sake of
posterity... and my own well-being


 


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