[PLUG-TALK] Driving in Cities: How Ants Commute

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 19 Jan 2015, Russell Johnson wrote:

> Of course, I still think the sensors in the road will be needed for some
> time. There are plenty of times when I’m driving through the mountains
> when my GPS is convinced that my truck is driving through a cliff….

   Heh! My Garmin Nuvi some times gets it in mind to send me a way I don't
want to go, and it can take up to 10-15 miles before it stops telling me to
turn and go its way.

   I see this driving east on Hwy 26 through Sandy. Rather than continuing
over Mt. Hood on 26, it wants me to turn south at the east end of town. Not
being inclined to waste time seeing where it thinks there's a road over the
Cascades down there, I ignore it.

   On the way home from Winnemucca or Elko, traveling north on US 95, it
wants me to turn off on NV 140 through Denio, Fields, and French Glen up to
Burns. While that's a bit shorter (~12 miles), the trip up 95 to Burns
Junction, then across the north end of Steens Mountain on OR 78 is quicker.
There are also no free range cattle standing in the middle of the road ...
unless a couple of cowboys are moving a herd along OR 78. Driving slowly
through the herd, with cows poking their heads in the windows and calves
standing in front ignoring the horn until their mom chases them away, is
quite the experience! Also, it's rare for me to see more than a dozen
vehicles heading the other way in the 91 miles between Burns and Burns Jct.
Turn on the autopilot, listen to the satellite radio, and look for proghorn
antelope and coyotes.

> I also don’t see this becoming ubiquitous in our lifetime. There are
> plenty of roads that will never be updated because they lack the traffic
> to make it viable to update. Then there are those of us that like to go
> off the beaten path. I go out in the woods to recharge and get out of the
> city. Communing with nature, even from the cab of a pickup, is a great
> stress reliever.

   Perhaps in some cities we may see autonomous vehicles, but not in the
boonies. Whether in the mountains or the high desert (or other remote areas
of the country) there's too little traffic to warrant the expense or letting
a OSP car sit and wait for the one car per hour to pass.

Rich