Tag archives for C21
Opening Chapter “Ambush!” – Excerpt from Perfects
'Ambush' is probably the (very short) opening chapter of my novel, which will be edited professionally over the winter. I'm also thinking about re-titling the novel to avoid confusion with the original novella that it was expanded from. Ideas accepted in the comments. Ambush Pandora’s driving scared the hell out of all of us, but the simulator couldn’t lie. She was way safer and faster than any of us, even me. We didn’t buy that though, given how scary she was driving on manual, so I got Han to compare her real driving performance with the simulations. She was slightly slower and safer when we were actually in the car with her, but still faster and safer than any of us could do in the sim. So we reluctantly agreed that she should be the driver. Two Police Cars in Liverpool…
Autonomous Vehicles pt.2
Social Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles Perhaps Autonomous mobile homes will cruise round here: Catford Road (South Circular Road), London SE6 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) My previous article on Self Driving Cars covered some of the technical points, that self driving cars are starting to look safer than human drivers and that there are traffic management benefits to most vehicles being self-driving. But there's more to it than that. For a start there will be more than just 'cars' that drive themselves around, so properly one ought to talk about autonomous vehicles (AV). No More Professional Drivers The most obvious consequence of autonomous vehicles is that those who drive for a living will rapidly be out of a job. The cost base for taxis, truck haulage and bus companies involves driver pay plus the costs of the vehicle. I expect that initially there…
Self Driving Cars
I've written over the last couple of weeks about advances in police technology, but one of the other technology changes that has a major societal impact is self driving cars. People have been talking about this for years, and recently both Google and Elon Musk are seriously working on self driving cars. Other companies are too, but not to the same extent. Progress Report on Self Driving Cars Last week Google released a report on where they'd got to with self driving cars. They plan to report monthly from now on. Their self driving cars have clocked up million miles in autonomous mode, and have been involved in 12 accidents. None of those accidents have been the fault of the self driving cars, in fact for 8 of the 12 the vehicle was stationary. If you ignore the five accidents…