Igor Delovski Board

[delovski]

Traffic "EXPERIMENTS",
by William Beaty, Electrical Engineer

"Just one single car, if it decelerates while approaching a jam, can change
the behavior of everyone behind it. And soon these people behind that
single car will take the place of everyone in the jam. Your single car can
bite a huge chunk out of the region of stopped traffic. If one car refuses to
pack together with everyone else to form a "parking lot," the jam can be
made smaller."

[delovski]

Mikehall's Embedded blog: And then... it snowed...

"It's Monday November 27th at about 8pm in sunny old redmond - late
afternoon it started snowing ... you can probably see that 148th (in the distance)
isn't moving.

Looks like I'm going to be in the office for a while longer - choices are:

1. Start work on the CE Remote Registry Diff tool
2. Install Vista
3. Start working on an MSDN WEPOS Virtual Lab
4. Start walking (might be faster than driving).

Choices, choices..."

[delovski]

A picture I took 5 years ago:

[delovski]

I'm all for putting more vehicles on our roads. As long as they're coaches

"The M25 has 790 miles of lanes. If these are used by cars carrying the
average load of 1.6 occupants, at 60mph the road's total capacity is just -
wait for it - 19,000 people. Coaches travelling at the same speed, each
carrying 30 passengers, raise the M25's capacity to 260,000. Every coach
swallows up a mile of car traffic."

[Ike]

Lavovi i Blizanci su najbolji vozači (CRO)

"Najopasniji su vozači u 24. godini života. No Romanov kaže da bi 'radije
ušla u automobil s dvadesetčetverogodišnji Lavom, nego s 25 godišnjim
Ovnom'. Prema istraživanju koje je objavljeno na internetskoj stranici
InsuranceHotline.com astrološki su znakovi značajan faktor u predviđanju
nesreća."

[Ike]

Google Earth exposes automakers' secret test tracks around the world

"The blokes over at AutoExpress took a cue from the ApocalX crew and
decided to use the magic of satellites to scour the globe in search of automaker's
secret test tracks."



And more from there: "The old GM grounds in mesa AZ looks pretty cool."

[delovski]

Research: trees make streets safer, not deadlier

"Though engineers generally assert that wide clear areas safeguard
motorists who run off the roads, Dumbaugh looked at accident records and
found that, on the contrary, wide-open corridors encourage motorists to
speed, bringing on more crashes. By contrast, tree-lined roadways cause
motorists to slow down and drive more carefully, Dumbaugh says."

[Ike]

How to drive on Snow and Ice

"1. Don't.

2. You can change direction, or you can change speed, but you can't change them both at the same time.

3. ..."

[XNote]

Reddit: Google Maps adds "Traffic" Button

"Would be nice if they could print some traffic statistics like 500 cars per
hour or something. Green, red, yellow; WTF am I supposed to do with that
information."

[Ike]

Feature: Strange Ways to Unlock Car Doors

"Hacked Gadgets recently compiled a list of videos on how geeks unlock
car doors, and we’ve selected our favorites."

[delovski]

The OldNewThing: The meaning of a red traffic light is open to interpretation

"Everyone (well, almost everyone) knows that in Boston, yellow means gun
it, red means three or four cars may still go through, and green means stop,
because three or four cars are coming."

[delovski]

Slashdot: Software Speeds Response To Road Accidents

There is a "research out of Ohio State University that could help authorities
respond to car accidents more quickly and ease traffic back-ups at lower cost,
particularly in rural areas.

The software improves the efficiency of communications from in-road vehicle
detection loops to transportation engineers monitoring conditions in order to
improve traffic flow. Faster response to accidents and traffic jams could have
huge payoffs: a 2002 study estimated that traffic jams cost the average city
almost a billion dollars a year."

[delovski]

Road kill - Why are we so worried about terrorism when so many more
people are dying on our highways?

"Tougher laws and social awareness have reduced drunk driving. Yet fatalities
per mile traveled have not fallen as much as might be expected given improved
technology and less alcohol-impaired driving. There appear to be two key
reasons: cellphones and horsepower."

[Ike]

Three posters

"Amaunt of space required to transport the same number of people by car, bus or bicycle"

[XNote]

mtn - Massive Traffic Light Scam Cheats Italian Motorists



"Italian motorists have been cheated out of over £5 million through a simple
scam, where the time between amber and red traffic light changes is reduced
to as little as a blink of an eye. The scam catches unsuspecting motorists that
don't have time to stop when the light suddenly turns red, landing them with
a fine for running the red."

[delovski]

Are Tiny, Gas-Saving Cars Unsafe? Today Mine Saved My Life

"I rolled my Toyota Yaris three times this morning after hitting a six-foot-
high dirt embankment at highway speed. I crawled out with no more than a
bump on my head, seat belt burn, and a massively stiff neck."

[delovski]

Youtube: George Carlin - Driving

"Anybody who drives faster than me is a maniac! Anybody who drives
slower than me is an idiot!"

Found it here: reddit.com

"You know what grinds my gears: People who are in a hurry to pull out in
front of you, and then drive 10-20 MPH under the speed limit... and there
is nobody behind me for miles."

[delovski]

slashdot - Rude Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams

"Traffic jams are minimized if a significant fraction of drivers break the rules
by doing things like passing on the wrong side or changing lanes too close to
an intersection. The insight comes from a cellular automata study published
this month in the journal Physical Review E. In effect, people who disregard
the rules help to break up the groups that form as rule-followers clump toge-
ther. The risk of jamming is lower if all people obey the rules than if they all
disobey them, according to the analysis, but jamming risk is lowest when a-
bout 40 percent of people drive like jerks."

[delovski]

reddit - Stuck accelerator that killed a family of 4

"Reddit Toyota Owners: This is the 911 call, including moment of crash,
from a stuck accelerator that killed a family of 4. Toyota issued a recall
for several makes & models. Make sure you get the "fix" next week."

[delovski]

Slashdot: Woz Cites "Scary" Prius Acceleration Software Problem

"Speaking at Discovery Forum 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak went
off topic and spoke about a 'very scary' problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius.
'I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't
work right,' said Woz, who went on to explain he'd been trying to get thro-
ugh to Toyota and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administra-
tion for three months, but could not get anyone to explore an alleged soft-
ware-related acceleration problem.

'I have a new model that didn't get recalled,' Steve said. 'This new model
has an accelerator that goes wild but only under certain conditions of cru-
ise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again — safely.'
Toyota said it investigates all complaints."

[delovski]

npr.org - 'Diverging Diamond' Traffic Flow: Way Of The Future?

"Fans of the new highway interchange design say it improves traffic flow by
eliminating problematic left turns. There's just one catch: It briefly sends all
cars over to the left side of the road."

[Ike]

Wired - Does Money Make You Unhappy?

*Why is traffic so unpleasant? One reason is that it’s a painful ritual we
never get used to – the flow of traffic is inherently unpredictable. As a re-
sult, we don’t habituate to the suffering of rush hour. (Ironically, if traffic
was always bad, and not just usually bad, it would be easier to deal with.

So the commutes that really kill us are those rare days when the high-
ways are clear.) As the Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert notes, “Driv-
ing in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.”

[Ike]

bbc.com - Driverless cars could change everything

"... if the technology avoids getting crushed by government regulators and
product liability lawsuits, writes the Federalist's Dan McLaughlin, it could
prompt a cultural shift similar to the early 20th century move away from
horses as the primary means of transportation."

[Ike]

businessinsider- Uber CEO explains his company’s highly ambitious
goal to end car ownership in the world

"Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, believes his company will ultimately go
neck and neck with car dealerships. He wants to make Uber so affordable
that riding Uber consistently becomes cheaper and easier than actually
owning a car."

[delovski]

medium.com - Let's Talk About Self-Driving Cars

"The major assumption is that 'Everything that moves will go autonomous',
and we are not only talking about cars, all the trucks on our roads, drones
in the sky, shopping cars and even toys will move by itself to the extent that
our involvement will become rudimentary, undesired or even illegal."