From A Spanish to A Swiss Autumn
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From A Spanish to A Swiss Autumn

Byrichard

When I left for Spain Switzerland was just starting to turn Autumnal. Today, when I looked around I could see that Autumn has arrived properly in Switzerland. In Spain the sun is still warm enough for t-shirt wearing and swimming. The sun is still strong enough to change our chrominance.


Yesterday I drove for around 11 and a half hours, with just one stop to refuel. I usually stop three or four times on that route but I felt like trying to do it in a single hop. This is for two reasons.


1. We’re still in a pandemic and I want to minimise risk. The stop I made was quiet so there was little risk of being too close to others.


2. I didn’t want to leave the car unattended for too long. As I am driving alone I don’t want to leave the car alone, in case people decide to steal things, not that anything was visible.


During the drive I listened to Troy, read by Steven Fry. It is interesting, and it is revision for those who have read his other books. There are moments when I struggled to hear what they were saying, due to the sound being lower, and that cars are noisy.


During the drive I enjoyed eating Spanish honey flavoured peanuts. They are easy to eat, not too messy, and good to keep you focused and attentive. During this drive I had to be focused for twelve hours non stop. People say “oh but twitter, social media and television have destroyed people’s ability to focus. I don’t believe this is accurate. I couldn’t drive for twelve hours safely otherwise.


I did see that one car had swerved off the road, into some grass, and then bounced back. I am certain that this person was either distracted, or fell asleep and smashed into the barrier. From what I saw two or three people were standing beside the accident so I think they’re fine.


Two things make driving easier these days. Cruise control, because this gives you the chance to move your leg around, rather than keep it locked and immobile. The second is to drive at the speed limit or slightly below. When I was in France several trips ago I enjoyed driving in France at 130 kilometres per hour. I eventually found that 130 kilometres per hour, in a previous car was more tiring, and that I was comfortable with 120 kilometres per hour. So from then on I always drive at the speed limit or a speed limit that I am used to. For twelve hours the goal is endurance and comfort. I would not repeat the drive within two weeks again, especially with the change from summer to winter time. I think that such a drive is easy once, but that to be repeated it would be good to wait three to four weeks, before making the return journey, especially as a solitary driver.

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Three Lanes Are Better Than Two

Byrichard

Three lanes are always better than two but environmentalists are against expanding from two lanes to three lanes because they say that having three lanes will promote the use of the car. I believe that this is a flawed argument.


https://youtu.be/8UpVDaugZW0


The A1 motorway between Geneva and Lausanne is often congested because when a slow vehicle wants to overtake a slower moving vehicle it blocks the motorway as can be seen in the video included within this post.


On a three-lane motorway you have the slow lane for slow vehicles, insecure drivers and stoned people with no rush to get anywhere. In the middle lane you have those who want to drive at the speed limit without having to slow down and accelerate all the time. In the left lane, you have all the cars that want to overtake everyone else.


In a system with three lanes, there are three options, and these three options usually ensure that all cars are going at the speed that they are restricted to, or feel comfortable with.


In a two-lane system, these three groups of drivers are stuck in two lanes, but in reality, you only have one lane, the fast lane. The problem with having just two lanes is that if you’re in the right lane you will need to move out and back in constantly as you are expected to do.


Frequently when you do this you find that you are constantly having to go from 100-120km/h burning a lot of fuel constantly accelerating and decelerating. The reason for this constant change of speed is that you’re constantly getting blocked by cars in the right lane either driving too fast or too close to each other. This is another behaviour you see in the two-minute clip.


This results in large stretches of the motorway being empty. As two slow vehicles overtake faster vehicles are unable to overtake and the density of traffic behind the slow vehicles increases. As soon as the slow vehicle has finished overtaking vehicles able to go at the speed limit accelerate and the accordion of traffic expands again.


In a three-lane system, the accordion has less chance to occur resulting in greater fuel economy as cars stick to a steady speed.


I filmed the motorway as a distraction during a walk, not expecting to get such a clear illustration of how easily congestion occurs on a two-lane motorway.

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Self Driving Cars will teach us How to Drive

Byrichard

I am impatient to try a self driving car. I am impatient for the day when the car will know where we’re meant to be and at what time. That is when cars will be autonomous. In this future I envision that self driving cars will teach us how to drive.

For the moment learning to drive a car is problematic because you need fuel, you need a car and you need someone trusting enough to put their life and car in your hands. You also need to find enough money to pay for a driving instructor to teach you how to drive. These are seen as barriers. People say that they would like to learn but that lessons are too expensive.

Self driving cars that teach us to drive are the solution. Cars are driving themselves around California and self driving truck convoys are driving around Europe. As these cars drive and provide data for algorithms, and as exceptions are found so the algorithm is tweaked. We remember the story of the Google car confused by a track standing cyclist and by the Google car that was crashed in to by a human driven bus.

When the bugs have been ironed out, when the challenges have been overcome I visualise a future in which we will choose whether we want to use our phones to read the news or socialise or whether we want to drive the car. In this future the car will be advanced enough to teach its passenger/driver to drive. Cars already provide drivers with a lot of assistance. Breaking assist, automatic windscreen wipers, parking sensors, automatic gear box, cruise control, parking assist and speed limiters are already familiar. The car is “teaching” us to be better drivers, or at least assisting.

The next step is for cars to teach us to steer and situate the car on the road. It could warn us if we are too far to the left, too far to the right, if we are below the speed limit and creating a traffic jam or driving too fast for the road conditions ahead. At a roundabout it could remind us to indicate our intentions both when entering and leaving. It could also assist with parallel parking, backing in to a parking and more.

Once the basics have been learned we could also envision cars teaching us to drive with a trailer or caravan. Software could be written to help people negotiate bends properly, place the caravan properly in a parking and more. Driving assist can be as complete or as passive as we want.

I would like to see how self driving cars would cope with mountain roads. It would be fun to get them to go up narrow roads with traffic and teach them to get around easily. It would also be interesting to develop a behaviour which the car knows will minimise motion sickness for people not used to mountain roads.

Weather and climate affect driving ease. Cars have sensors that are optimised for driving in good weather. When cars meet, rain, snow or other conditions they may get confused by reflections or obscured road signs. Humans should be able to take over in these conditions. We have to see whether cars or people are better suited to drive in fog. In theory cars have technology that should help them see through fog so it should be safer handing control to the machine.

When autonomous cars are ubiquitous and self reliant the shift will move away from humans teaching machines how to drive. Machines will teach humans how to drive instead. In theory there should be no need for humans to drive cars anymore. Redundancy is good.

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TomTom Go and the diminishing cost of live traffic data when driving

Byrichard

Today with Tomtom Go you pay 20CHF per year for the maps and traffic information. When I first bought the TomTom Europe apps for iOS and Android they cost about 170CHF an operating system. If my memory serves me well traffic information would cost an additional 100 CHF per year.

As a result of the high cost for traffic information I was in the habit of using Waze. As long as you have a data connection you get maps and traffic information for free. It would save you 270 CHF initially.

When you live in the french speaking part of Switzerland you are just minutes from France and within hours you can be in Germany, Austria and Italy. As a result having maps pre-loaded in to your navigation is useful. That’s where Tomtom at 20CHF per year becomes interesting. The maps available are for individual countries, for Western, Europe, Eastern Europe, the whole of Europe, The Caribbean, North America and South America. Each of these maps can be downloaded ahead of a trip and used.

This means that once you’ve paid your 20 CHF you have maps for the world, not just for your daily commute.

I am so convinced by Tomtom’s new philosophy that I have uninstalled Waze and will now use Tomtom primarily and Google maps as a backup.

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Videocamp, Paris

Byrichard

A few days ago I was in Paris to meet the Francofous and in the process I passed by La Cantine where they were holding a Videocamp. It’s like a barcamp but rather than talking about radio and podcastng people talked about peer to peer video sharing, citizen journalism and other topics.

I filmed a few people presenting what their seminars had been about and finally they’re available via my website.

Please note that the videos are in French.

Video 1

Video 2

And yes it is very lazy of me to distribute the videos like this but I don’t have time to edit the content at the moment. If anyone wants to offer a transcript of what’s said I’ll credit you for the work.

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Guided by the Nüvi 250

Byrichard

Finding your way around London is hard and after seven or more hours of driving across France from Geneva it can be a little daunting. That’s why I decided to use the Garmin Nüvi 250 to help me. It’s a small pocketable driving GPS that’s easy and intuitive to use. That’s important when you’re on the road. It’s got a small display and there are two main functions. Where do you want to go and the map. The map is either 3d or 2d depending on your preference. With the unit I bought you have 22 European countries including France, England and Switzerland. Those are the three countries I would travel through. The navigation is easy to setup. Select your destination and it will quickly trace a route of where to go. You have the ability to review the points one by one or trust the GPS to get you where you want to go. It’s got a battery life of 5hrs but included with the unit is the car adaptor so that you can power it during the trip.Easy to use and a great driving aid. It made driving through London a relaxed, stress free experience, at least on the way in. On the way out there were traffic jams which this unit did not warn me about. It’s a nice unit, not too expensive but frees up your mind for other things than trying to find your way. It’s a great little help. 

Looking out of a window at traffic

Byrichard

I’m on the second floor of a home which looks out onto a busy road which means there’s a lot of traffic passing by but wait there’s more. Road works are taking place. Traffic must stop. Stopped traffic means hours of entertainment from the comfort of your room.


So far I saw one van back into the car that was sticking to the back. The guy got out and started to yell whilst another was less annoyed. In a second case I saw one-car crash into the back of the second and this was amusing. The guy who crashed was relaxed, almost joking whilst the over was really angry, as most people would be. Two cars were behind this crash and they grew impatient, started beeping, and more. The guy who was crashed into started yelling abuse at them as they drove away.


In other cases you see the large trucks trying to negotiate the bend and that’s impressive. You see some people struggling to park a fiat 500. They find it easy to move their truck although it takes wide turns and some back and forth.


Today I watched out of the window as one of these large trucks was waiting for the road to be clear so that it could negotiate this bend yet no one was courteous enough to wait. They could have and the road would be easier to negotiate for all to use.


There is one thing that annoys me more than anything else with traffic outside a window. People beeping. If you’ve ever lived roadside you know the sound. One person forgets to pay attention to the light and someone behind decides to beep. As a result everyone in the area hears this. It’s annoying because simply flashing your headlights at the person in front is enough to get them to continue on their absent-minded way. This is not a value judgment. They weren’t paying attention to the light therefore my remark is justified ;).


Now the last element, loud music s sometimes nice and other times not quite. I’ve never heard someone drive through a city with the BBC world service blaring out of their speakers. I’d find that interesting and intriguing at the same time. Most of the time its hip hop, R&B, and such. That’s just part of life.


Skidding tires are another amusing feature. You know how it goes. You’re in your car and you’ve been driving it so much your clutch control is fast, almost perfect. Sometimes though your foot presses on the accelerator just a little too hard and your tires lose traction causing a nice little screech and the sound of slipping tires as you attempt to move off. I watched as someone in a delivery truck did that. What surprised me is that he just let the tires screech until they got traction rather than let go of the throttle and move off normally.


All this to say that aside from wanting to throw water balloons through the car window at the idiot beeping traffic doesn’t bother me.