Elon Musk style.

I�m a Garmin guy but TomTom recently put out a good traffic suckage index ...

TRAFFIC SUCKAGE INDEX

Having fun there in LA? What, only number 10?

Wow, Toronto is only ranked 47th?! Based on what I saw driving to and from work today ... I�m totally disgusted ...

- I got seriously cut off by some BMW driver who thought he was in the Indy 500. He/she continued to weave around rush hour traffic like a maniac

- Some people don�t understand that the leftmost lanes are progressively faster passing lanes

- Some people slow down for no reason (cellphone maybe?), worst of all in the left lane

- Some people on the express lanes see the collector lanes totally congested so they feel the need to slow down for no reason

- Rubberneckers really piss me off

Literally all in today's drive. I can go on and on from past experience.

And the insane over reliance in satnavs...
Last week a truck driver followed the GPS instead of his brains and tried to drive his 60t truck over a pontoon bridge rated at max 4t.

But, he who is without sin and so on....
Yesterday I had a tailgaiting #%&*$# behind me and I drove through every single puddle ( we had snow mixed rain all day) to spray him with dirty water.
Eventually he took the hint.
Not really turning the other cheek I guess:D

Great how the chinese are already up to speed
on how to suffer the miseries of an advanced country.
Number of motor vehicles in China has gone up
from around 15M in 2000 to 260M, second only
to the US, and they can proudly boast of now
having 13 of the top 35 slots in that list.
(And there are now more drivers in China than
people in North America.)

I'm shocked that Miami wasn't on that list. As for LA, you couldn't pay me to live there.

I have first hand experience in London so I can't conceive of the places listed as worse than that ! It must be absolute madness.

The issue IMO with Vancouver is getting in and out ...horrible bottlenecks.....but either side is not too bad.

I can't help but wonder how much smoother traffic would flow if people would just put their damn phones down until they get to their destination. Sorry for the old man rant.

It's not a rant at all. It's the absolute truth. I see drivers on a daily basis either not going when the light turns green or driving 15 mph under the speed limit because they're texting or surfing the web on their phone.

Someone needs to invent a heads up display that projects peoples phones onto their wind shield. Maybe a keyboard on the steering wheel so that they can use their thumbs to text and tweet their little brains out while driving. At least that way they would be looking out over the dash board at the road ahead. It may have to come to something like that, because I think people just can't put their phones down.

We are fortunate to have lived in an age where you can still have your own car. Those years are numbered, it will become unsustainable as human populations increase

and industries are already working on tossing human drivers out of the seat

"Self-driving cars still feel like a sci-fi technology, decades away from reality � but you'd be surprised. A lot of the things we need to put them on the road already exist, and the rest is just around the corner"

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7211789/the-big-future-cars

They are taking a lot of the drivers responsibility out of it already. You don't need to check your mirror to see if it is okay to change lanes, a sensor will tell you if it is okay. Starting to swerve into the next lane, a sensor will alert you. About to slam into another car or a building, don't worry a sensor will alert you on that too.

could be a good thing .... i remember the state message board on the highway last year on my way to work:

"As of (date) 3001 drivers have been killed on Texas roads"

Just think of the major changes to auto insurance and liability. If these cars are completely automated and don't use any input at all from the driver what happens if there is an accident due to a system malfunction/miscalculation? The manufacturer of the car would be held liable no?

true enough Panzer

Could already be happening.

But my sensor said there was nothing there so I went into the other lane.

My car didn't automatically brake, so I ran into the back of the other vehicle.

Which would be only a small percentage of that if people would pay attention when driving. We don't need more gadgets, we need people to pay attention. I've been driving for 30 years and have never been at fault in an accident or hit another vehicle. I'm not special or perfect, anything I can do everyone else can do. I just realize that I'm operating a piece of machinery that can end one or more person's life in the blink of an eye, and make sure I'm always in complete control of it.

Istanbul traffic is insane. Been there two years ago and the average Istanbulian would rather sit in a car in a traffic jam for an hour than ride a bike for 10 minutes. Or walk for half an hour.

Indeed. A technology fix for stupidity isn't a fix, it's a crutch and another failure point. If people in WI didn't drive while they were drunken morons we'd reduce road deaths a million times over what an automated system would save.

People obviously don't WANT to pay attention, they want to do other stuff. If cars drove themselves, they could do whatever they wanted on their commute to work.
I think many people would rather take 15 mins longer to get to work in exchange for not having to fight the traffic themselves. They could read or phone or whatever for all that time and get to work or home relaxed and not stressed out.

As for people dying from failures, I'll bet the number would be far lower than we have now from people being in control. Quite simply driving tests are too lax, and people are allowed to get licenses that have no business driving anything, anywhere, ever.

If cars could drive themselves, they could tighten the restrictions and only the good drivers would be allowed manual driving.



The Jedi Master