The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[grilled_cheese]

3 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

^ ha we agree! I am sure you will support my claim to recapture my property taxes and income taxes that are being redistributed! Let's start a petition.

I'm all for telling the rest of the state to fudge off.  My biggest issue are the mouthbreathing bumpkins telling Nashville what to do.  I say we let their infrastructure crumble.

[Pdt2f]

5 hours ago, grilled_cheese said:

Difference being they take more than they contribute.

lol spoke like a true Reaganite! 

[ruraljuror]

The problem here isn't that wealthier counties like Davidson are supplementing the funding of poorer counties.  That's what should happen and it's in the best interest of all the residents of the state for us to do so.

The problem is that we're spending that money widening a stretch of road that is not in need of widening when instead we could spend that money supporting struggling rural schools and hospitals to make sure Tennessee has a healthy and educated citizenry and labor force.  

[Buildtall]

Fox 17 had a video of the woman jaywalking. Not sure if it’s on there website but it happened really fast. They even had video of the passenger reacting just before the accident. Seeing the video I don’t think I could have reacted fast enough either.

[grilled_cheese]

57 minutes ago, Pdt2f said:

lol spoke like a true Reaganite! 

Regan is in hell right now re-raking that same pile of leaves over and over again.

[Guest]

^^ We all may know many people in Hell.... I am confident President Regan is not one of them.

"America was founded by people who believe that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we're on His side." — Ronald Reagan 

Edited March 22, 2018 by Guest

[PaulChinetti]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/21/17149958/tempe-police-fatal-crash-self-driving-uber-video-released

Here is the video.

[Bos2Nash]

^^ saw the video this morning. I think this is going to set autonomous vehicles being used by the masses back several years. One the equipment proved faulty by not registering the pedestrian and two the "safety" operator was visibly distracted and miss seeing the pedestrian as well. Human nature will distract safety operators 10x more often when driving is autonomous. At least now when something happens there is a clear culprit in human error.

[PaulChinetti]

The driver kept looking down, I wonder if they were looking at the 'car view'. I hope they release what the car was seeing. If they were smart it would have been research/dissected and released all at once. This leaking out a bit at a time is silly and causes all of us to speculate.

[smeagolsfree]

I agree the self driving cars, flying car debate that some of the opponents of mass transit are using is a mute point. This does set the self driving car back a few years. It will only be a matter of time when one of the large self driving semi's that are being tested kill a dozen people and that will be put on hold for a while too. 

 

Remember this technology is hackable and can be used to cause mass mayhem and disaster by a determined group. We are putting too much trust in tech.

[PaulChinetti]

Current car tech is hackable also, so I'm not sure that won't ever be a problem we have to worry about. 

Leave it to Uber to be the first company for this to happen to. They should have used the Tesla example of openness/honesty, when that car caught on fire after the driver hit a piece of road debris. 

[Rockatansky]

22 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

programmed to make split decisions that prioritize the lives of its own passengers over pedestrians/passengers in other cars

This has been one of my (many) concerns about AVs. How do you program a computer to act in a moral way? And able to make that morality judgement in a split second?

11 hours ago, grilled_cheese said:

Regan is in hell

 

10 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

I am confident President Regan is not one of them.

Reagan, not Regan. Also, hell isn't real.

[Dale]

30 minutes ago, Rockatansky said:

This has been one of my (many) concerns about AVs. How do you program a computer to act in a moral way? And able to make that morality judgement in a split second?

 

Reagan, not Regan. Also, hell isn't real.

Tell that to Megan Berry.

[PaulChinetti]

25 minutes ago, Rockatansky said:

This has been one of my (many) concerns about AVs. How do you program a computer to act in a moral way? And able to make that morality judgement in a split second?

Well the split second isn't the problem, the onboard computer would only be slowed down by the sensors collecting the data. Computers are great at making decisions quickly. But we have to tell them WHAT decisions to make quickly. 

http://moralmachine.mit.edu

Here is a great little thought game from MIT. It's just a thought game and some of the choices are incredibly hard to make.

 

[MidTenn1]

In traffic engineering we used the PIEV factor in our calculations. It is an acronym for time lost in responding to a situation due to the human delay in Perceiving a situation, the Intellect required to ascertain what is going on and how it affects you, and Emotion which describes the instant you decide what and how to respond and Volition which is the action you take (hit the brakes) to respond.

All of these human factors activities have been measured and assessed as to take place in one second. This one second of time was applied to many equations involving signal timing and stopping sight distance.

I would suspect any algorithm used to respond to an unusual roadway event may be a little shaky with regard to the intellect and emotion parts of the equation. The human brain, developed over two million years to respond to a crisis , is still the best computer.

[BolaKnows]

3 hours ago, Bos2Nash said:

Human nature will distract safety operators 10x more often when driving is autonomous.

I think this is a big problem for any semi-autonomous system.  The backup person won't be as focused because he or she isn't doing much.  Then, suddenly, that person has to notice that his or her input is needed and intervene.  I have read that this is a problem for pilots in planes too.  It's a hard problem to get someone to go from oversight mode straight into emergency response mode.

[markhollin]

The Nashville Mass Transit Plan gains endorsement from the Greater Nashville Regional Council made up of mayors and county leaders form 13 surrounding counties:
 

https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2018/03/22/regional-mayors-county-executives-endorse-nashville/449190002

[Guest]

......

Thank you for the correction. In case anyone was confused by my typo (maybe they did not read the post above mine or have not discerned my cryptic avatar) I was referring to our 40th President.

 

12 hours ago, Rockatansky said:

This has been one of my (many) concerns about AVs. How do you program a computer to act in a moral way? And able to make that morality judgement in a split second?

 

Reagan, not Regan. Also, hell isn't real.

 

Edited March 23, 2018 by Guest

[PaulChinetti]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/26/17151944/self-driving-pod-shuttles-london-greenwich-gateway-project

These are interesting looking. 

[Bos2Nash]

2 hours ago, PaulChinetti said:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/26/17151944/self-driving-pod-shuttles-london-greenwich-gateway-project

These are interesting looking. 

They are certainly are interesting looking, gotta love the "pill bag" reference lol.

The biggest thing that stand out to me is the fact that these are being used as infill to a much larger network,  filling in holes. They are also running on a very determined route that makes predictability much easier. It's progress to reality

[Neigeville2]

4 hours ago, Bos2Nash said:

They are certainly are interesting looking, gotta love the "pill bag" reference lol.

The biggest thing that stand out to me is the fact that these are being used as infill to a much larger network,  filling in holes. They are also running on a very determined route that makes predictability much easier. It's progress to reality

Bingo.  Love the way they have no sharp edges.  Running slow on limited pre-mapped routes, I can see these circuiting downtown/midtown, or more interestingly, as a "last-mile" solution for neighborhoods around a light rail stop, shuttling people from home to train and back in something like a bike lane.   During non-peak hours they could give old people like me a ride to the nearby grocery store.  Supplementing cross-town travel by bus/rail.  Seems much more incremental and realistic than a ton of computer-guided steel whooshing down the pike at 50 MPH amid turning cars and pedestrians.

[Tennessine]

On 3/21/2018 at 9:53 PM, grilled_cheese said:

I'm all for telling the rest of the state to fudge off.  My biggest issue are the mouthbreathing bumpkins telling Nashville what to do.  I say we let their infrastructure crumble.

What a wonderful thing to say.  I'm glad we're all exercising maturity in this topic.

[Tennessine]

A little disheartened to be reading the apathetic comments directed toward everyone not in the Nashville metro area. I grew up in Nashville and would personally love to see the rest of the state live up to its potential. From Memphis to the Tri-Cities, I want every city in Tennessee to perform well. I'm sure many of you guys do too, and I don't think everybody responding to this thread believes they are better than the 4 million Tennesseans outside the Nashville MSA simply because they have 615 at the beginning of their phone numbers. 

Lets also not forget: while Nashville pays more than its fair share for the rest of the state, we also get a helping hand from Uncle Sam to fund our infrastructure thanks to states like New Jersey and California. What some of you guys are directing toward other Tennesseans are the exact same feelings that other Americans direct toward all of us.

 

Just my two cents. Not trying to start a fight, as I'm a new member and respect everybody's opinions. I just expected a little more decency from some of the regular posters.

[markhollin]

Everything you need to know about the May 1st Mass Transit Referendum vote. A collection of dozens of links to various articles.

https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2018/03/27/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nashvilles-5-4.html

[Dale]

15 hours ago, nativetenn said:

What a wonderful thing to say.  I'm glad we're all exercising maturity in this topic.

I was just going to say that I live in a bigger city than Nashville and I'm a mouthbreather.