Vocal Voices

Without the driver anyone?

20 years? nope, 10 years? Nope. I hard figure. 2021. Five years from now.

I think back to the late 60's and the 70's and the predictions of flying cars etc. However the reality of the self drive is probably going to be more dramatic in changing life than those predictions. If less technological. After all none of the predictions showed a nation of people glued to small hand held devices which they used to talk to everyone else. The predictions of the times were about mature technologies they already knew making huge technological leaps.

In fact what happened was a leap of a totally different kind with a technology that was so much in it's infancy that nobody could even see the technological leap coming.

I wrote a composition as a child about flying cars Suff.

Interesting how our society has changed.

Flying cars were about outward looking, travel, go to new places. The internet is inward looking self obsessed and introverted.

What a change.

For me this has always been one of those "we can do it so we will do it" stories.

They might be of some use in some specialised urban settings - once all the bugs are 'guaranteed' to be out of the system - but for the mainstream I cannot see them being taken up any time soon.

They might be further down the line than HyperLoop - being fired down a tube at 700mph between LA and San Fran - or drones perched on lampposts waiting to deliver the latest shade of nail varnish or Harry Potter book. But for real?

Actually I think Taxi's have a good chance of making it. They can be available 24x7 without extra unreasonable prices, only need to come in for servicing or charging, not for feeding, watering and changing the driver.

I think there are many more gimmicks than a fully automated taxi. That could really take off. Especially electric. Of course it will only be for the cities, to begin with. But then again that's the majority of our taxi use anyway and certainly the majority of the tourist taxi use.

We shall see.

Even as taxis I cannot seen them being much outside a niche market. There are too many variables and imponderables for them to be mainstream.

I would have thought that driverless trains would be a much more
plausible development - something that surely must be possible today?

Forecasting what developments will emerge in the future is really quite impossible.
Back in the 1930s we had lots of outlandish ideas of what might happen in the future,
but the sheer vast amount of change that has occurred is truly astounding.

AggersAgain wrote:I would have thought that driverless trains would be a much more
plausible development - something that surely must be possible today?

Aggers the main thing holding back the driverless trains is the quality of signalling and automatic points. Our infrastructure, there, is so bad that it's extremely hard to do driverless trains without huge infrastructure upgrades.

Driverless cars, on the other hand, just need to emulate humans. Or should I say do what Humans are supposed to do, rather than actually emulate them. The cost base is within the reach of IT companies whereas the cost base and return on investment for the railways is simply outside the range of anyone but the government or truly huge multinationals.

As of the pace of change??? I've had a few predictions come true, but most of what has happened, say 40 years out, is outside of the ability of most people to think that laterally. In some areas our pace of change has moved ahead at light speed. In others, we have virtually stood still for a century. Otto cycle anyone???

Suff wrote: Otto cycle anyone???

That brings back memories, Suff.

adiabatic expansion, anyone?

Starting with a clean slate it might be possible to make driverless cars work as mainstream. New cities, new road systems, new societies and all that. With what we have today - A, B and M roads - and for the near future they are a bit pie in the sky. Add in the reluctance to accept the concept (see me) and they get harder to sell, despite the technological advances.

As for the pace of change, it is well overstated.

Things have changed, but not in the leaps and bounds some would have us believe. With the exception of digital technologies, and possibly space, most things have only evolved, and some of them not for the better.

Futurama and the Jetsons are not here as yet.