General Chat

Mad or what ?? I certainly will keep my hands on the steering wheel :-D

I will too Barbra, I think it unsafe and maybe a selling point rather than safer driving.

I am a bossy Leo, there's no way I wouldn't have my hands on the wheel lol

Lizx

It's where some passengers put their hands while I'm driving that surprises me! ;-)

Lorry drivers see a lot lol

Lizx

I don't drive, but why can I envisage the middle lane being (illegally) used more than it should be?

Does that mean being "hands free," it will be ok to touch up my lippy or be on my phone then?

:-D :-D :-D@ Dermot, that made me smile this morning!

What next and who comes up with these rediculous schemes?

But correct me if Im wrong, Im sure I heard on the radio that you have to be ready at all times to take over the wheel just in case!

Florence in the hebrides

which headline was this?


Ah! seen it now...

John Kay news reporter was in a car hands free driving but as Florence says you have to be ready to get hold of steering wheel how stupid .don't understand the logic :-S

It gets hammered into every new driver and rider that at 70mph everything happens fast. You only need to look at the persistent ‘speed kills’ messaging and the tropes about stopping distances the length of football fields to be persuaded that at speed you need to concentrate.

So the fact that the Government is now looking into a law change to allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel for prolonged periods at motorway speeds seems at odds with conventional thinking.

At the moment, any rule change is still some distance away, but the first move has been made with a consultation paper on Automated Lane Keeping Systems. This invites interested parties to give their views on the Government proposals.

The whole issue arises from the introduction of a new UNECE (United Nations Economic Committee for Europe) regulation, adopted in June this year and due in force in early 2021. It will allow ‘M1’ category vehicles – ie passenger cars – to use Automated Lane Keeping Systems (ALKS) at speeds of up to 60km/h (38mph) on motorways, allowing drivers of vehicles equipped with such systems to travels with their hands off the wheel in certain circumstances.

Those are:

The driver has deliberately activated the system
The driver is in the driving seat and wearing a seatbelt
The driver is confirmed as being ‘available’ via monitoring systems watching for things like eye movement and sensing if he/she touches the controls
A Data Storage System for Automated Driving (DSSAD)is in use (effectively an aircraft-style ‘black box’)
The weather and surroundings are suitable
The vehicle has done a self-check on its sensor systems
The road is one where cyclists and pedestrians are prohibited and there is a physical centre separation from traffic coming the opposite way
Those rules are already set to be implemented across the EU, but the UK government’s consultation says that the UK’s decision to leave the EU “offers opportunities to go further and faster.”

As a result, the plan is to adopt the UNECE rules but increase the maximum speed of ALKS use from 38mph to the national speed limit of 70mph.

At the moment, an increasing number of cars have lane-assist systems that help keep them between the white lines on motorways, and several are already quite capable of operating without input from the driver even at high speed. However, the current law doesn’t allow them to take control. That means that if they sense a lack of interaction from the driver – ie his or her hands are off the wheel for more than a few seconds – they’ll sound a warning and eventually disengage.

Under the new UNECE rules, drivers of cars with compliant systems will be allowed to keep their hands off the wheel indefinitely as long as the conditions are correct. The idea is that in slow-moving motorway traffic, cars with ALKS and radar cruise control will effectively be able to be self-driving.

However, while the UNECE regulation requires drivers to take back control and responsibility above 38mph, the UK proposes to allow them to keep their hands off all the way up to the national speed limit of 70mph, creating a very different set of circumstances.

Under the proposals, the systems will have to check that the driver is attentive at least once every 30 seconds, looking for control interaction or using cameras to check for eye blinking, eye closure or conscious movement. If they don’t sense attentiveness, the system will set raise a warning alert intended to grab the driver’s attention. If there’s no response within another 15 seconds the systems will issue a ‘transition demand’ to put the driver back in control. The system then gives 10 seconds for the driver to respond before automatically bringing the vehicle to a halt, remaining in the same lane and automatically activating the hazard lights.

That means there’s the potential for a driver to be inattentive or even unconscious or asleep for up to 55 seconds. At 70mph that’s well over a mile.

The consultation on the new system will ask whether there are any legal barriers to going ahead with it, how drivers should be educated to use the systems safely and what roles vehicle manufacturers and the government should have in providing that education.

It also raises questions over how the systems will detect and respond to police vehicles, fire engines or ambulances trying to get past and how they’ll sense low-energy collisions where there’s a responsibility to stop.

It’s in this last situation that motorcycles get a mention. The call for evidence posits a scenario where a filtering motorcyclist is clipped by or clips a car that’s using ALKS, potentially knocking the bike down. In that situation the law requires the driver of the car to stop, but would the ALKS actually be able to tell that it’s even happened?

The consultation is open now and runs until 27 October. The full document can be found here and anyone wanting to take part in the consultation process can do so online here.

taken from a Bennetts motorcycle page.....

'Hands Free' allows the drivers to repeatedly wash their hands. :-S

The general idea is that autonomous driving will be the only way to go on motorway standard highways with vehicles organised into platoons.

https://trl.co.uk/projects/cloud-assisted-real-time-methods-autonomy-carma

.

I was a van driver for far too many years.

Been there, done that, eaten my dinner while it was happening!

so if the car for some reason suddenly decides to brake to a stop.....this is assuming that the daydreamer behind is also gonna brake to a stop?

Seeing how many lane markings are worn out I can foresee problems.

And is the speed controlled by the driver or the car? Will you "have" to travel at the speed limit either manually or automatically?

Whole thing seems to be pointless and fraught with problems and anomalies.

And as for fully autonomous imagine having to program in "Take me to Tesco's in the town (sorry don't know the postcode ) but pick up Aunty Betty on the way (sorry don't know her postcode either but it's the house with the red door in the first road past the fire station) and park in a disabled bay with room for her to get her walking aid out of the back seat. Drop Betty off on the way back and park on the road, not the drive, as I am expecting a workman later and he will need to put his van there"

None of this stuff is going to work mixed in with normal driving at least not in Europe. The cars /trucks will have to be kitted out and integrated with the road control system itself. The beginnings of this can be seen with "Smart Motorways".

An experiment with equipped cars on a controlled (slow lane) section of a motorway with human drivers is not all that controversial. Volvo, BMW, Mercedes already have cars and trucks with most of the kit neeeded for autonomous driving.

There will be some dramatic changes over the next 30 years -
platoons of trucks with just one driver, , cars set up for a journey with the driver only concerned with the controlled section of the route. Properly adapted vehiclkes, mainly electric, will be expensive. Quite possibly we will move away from an ownership model for cars to personal rental ( indeed that is already well under way ) plus uber type robot cars in urban areas.

One of the big gains for governments would be a massive drop in road accidents and injuries plus it would make life difficult for criminals.

None of the forthcoming major changes in ground transport will be all that dramatic for those 70+ as the phasing out of new ICE vehicles only starts 2030-35.

The UK Govt funding is a drop in the ocean. Thanks to brexit the UK will have no say at all in the a massive operational and engineering which will use Galileo for GPS. This is an interesting aspect of "taking back control."

Well if they phase out cars think of the loss of income collected from all the car parks and meters. Brighton this week have agreed to a cycle lane along the seafront and beyond thus removing all the parking bays. if there is nowhere to park then people wont come to visit the town, so a loss of income to the businseses too.

People who live in areas where there is a good transport system, ie bus, train can use them instead of a car, but for people in rural areas, a car will always be first choice.

Even leasing a car is around £200 a month plus insurance etc

Florence in the hebrides

Not quite the same thing, but in some areas of Perth there are now trials of small, driverless buses

https://tinyurl.com/y3zx3exa

It's very disconcerting when you actually see one :-S

Florence perhaps Brighton will do what other places have done - plenty of car parks - cheap or free with buses/trams to the parts people want to go to.

So glad I won't be driving in 30 years time lol! I mean vehicles, of course, but I might be driving people mad if I can live to be 103 as my son thinks I intend doing lol

Lizxx