The perils of driverless cars

No, driverless cars won't solve traffic problems. They could, in fact, make them worse as this elegant video explains(10 minutes..the last minute is an ad). The real solution is to intensify cities so that much more is within walking distance and we do without much of the highway and parking lots that now dominate our landscapes.

But the politicians are, in the main, not listening because they want to be elected short term. Long-term, counter-intuitive solutions rarely figure.

So instead we are seeing big investment into driverless cars that will, like wider roads only be a short term relief. If you are skeptical that such a tech will actually happen, here is a list of 48 major corporations who are betting it will.

With share vehicles, here is what they are promising  

 

Okay, if you have got that, how close are we to getting actual driverless vehicles roaming the streets? The bad publicity from two driveless car deaths earlier this year have slowed the rush but didn't stop it.

One of the pioneers, WayMo, has the rubber hitting the road 
Originally a Google "moonshot" project, the company has been working way longer than anyone else on the solution.
Now it is being very tentative and low-profile with an employee "monitoring" from the driver's seat each of the the test cabs in Phoenix, Arizona.
The price set by Waymo is just as tentative, being about the same as competing share services Uber and Lyft, driven by real people.
On the upside, if the acceptance hurdle is cleared and the cars do lose their "monitors", Waymo says the price of rides will drop dramatically.

Here is a nice video summary by the Verge that gives you a look at the cabs in action.

Nice, but just remember, if you choose to travel this way motion sickness doesn't magically disappear. if you decide to read, watch a movie or sit backwards to face others while talking in the vehicle expect nausea just like in a normal car.

Things on a walk

Water fountains at Dickson College

Tactical water store and cans atop Majura heights ready for a summer bushfire

Canberra's bike n coffee culture

First weekend of Summer and, while our former home in Queensland is under threat of bushfire, we enjoy sandal-weather in Canberra. 

The Canberra bike n coffee culture continues to blossom in the inner North. Each suburb seems to have its own favourite cafe...some two. Families in the neighbourhood, often arrive on their pushies

One of the latest places to reach full flower is Ganggang in the otherwise sleepy, nondescript suburb of Downer. Losing its only food shop a few years back was instant euthanasia.

But now, thanks to the generous spirit of the ex-South American owners of the cafe, life, including a regular accordianist, has returned. On a Sunday, finding a place to park your bike is becoming an issue.

Something rotten in the state

It appears 3,128 Australians took their own life in 2017  262 more than the previous year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released national data recently that showed intentional self-harm is now ranked the 13th leading cause of death, moving up from 15th position in 2016.

In 2016, the suicide rate in Australia was 11.7 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 10.6 per 100,000 people in 2007.

This mirrors, but not as severely, the US trend.  The number of suicides per 100,000 Americans rose 30.4 percent between 1999 and 2015.  The increase has not been uniform across all demographic groups. Those in midlife had the largest uptick. For example, for those ages 45 to 54, the rate increased from 13.9 persons that age to 20.3, or 46 percent, during that period.

Strangely, the upticks in the US and Australia  are against the world-wide trend according to the Economist

In the view of a researcher, Steven Stack, a professor of Criminal Justice at Wayne State University who studies the social risk of suicide, two social factors have contributed: 

- the weakening of the social safety net and 

- increasing income inequality.

Another US study showed that 

"states with higher per capita public assistance expenditures tend to have lower suicide rates. ... We also find that general state policy liberalism and the governing ideologies of state governments are linked to suicide rates. In response to a growing literature on the importance of non-political factors such as social connectedness in determining quality of life, these findings demonstrate that government policies remain important determinates as well.

Measure for measure

This four minute US Department of Commerce video is a little "gee-whiz" but makes an important point: the world's measurement system is about to become much more precise.

A vote to be taken in Versailles on 16 November will probably redefine all the metric measurements to be based on scientifically derived constants rather than against samples held in vaults.

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Running cost of EVs

A short chat by a UK car nut about the current cost of running a pretty ordinary (as opposed to a flashy high end) EV. 

Despite the best efforts of our current govt, the difference in running costs will make EVs attractive. At the same time the cost of batteries are dropping driven by innovation and mass production. EVs are projected to reach purchase parity with petrol in Europe by 2022...4 years from now 

Video

The real Moby Dick

While the book Moby Dick was based on the real life travails of the whaling boat, Essex, the title and whale's name was probably derived from "Mocha Dick", a white Sperm Whale who frequently appeared at Mocha Island, Chile. 

First seen in 1810, Mocha Dick survived over a hundred skirmishes with whalers before he was eventually killed in 1838. He was large and powerful, capable of wrecking small craft with his flukes.  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/mobydick.html