I'm somewhat more impressed by this water screen than the iphone's retina display.
Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
121–130 of 206 posts
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#122That's a cute high-tech solution. A simpler one is to put a horizontal bar, the same height as the tunnel's ceiling, which will physically stop the truck before causing millions worth of damages. It's often done in France, sometimes with an early warning: a first arch with chains hanging to the maximal height. It makes a lot of noise on the truck's top, but won't destroy it.
Did you see the truck in the video take out an enormous steel beam that was presumably attached to the structure of the tunnel in some kind of permanent way? How would your solution avoid the same fate?
Something that causes the vehicles engine to stop... a shock?
It wouldn't stop the vehicle but it will decrease destructive force.
Or a trapdoor (warning this is a joke disregard it if you know you don't like jokes)
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#123That's a cute high-tech solution. A simpler one is to put a horizontal bar, the same height as the tunnel's ceiling, which will physically stop the truck before causing millions worth of damages. It's often done in France, sometimes with an early warning: a first arch with chains hanging to the maximal height. It makes a lot of noise on the truck's top, but won't destroy it.
You just need to remember that a small number of people are just not going to get it. Mostly truck drivers that are dead tired. That water screen does the trick because you're not expecting it. Signs, bumps, and noises are all common to highway driving. In Boston a few months ago a coach bus had the top ripped off going under a 10ft bridge on a road that truck/bus traffic is banned from. The driver hit several low ba…
we had a fatal bus crash at the Miami airport back in december due to the driver not heeding the signs .
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/04/3126826/details-emerge...
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
signs and "plackards" go ignored all the time. i worked in a computer lab and had to put up signs when things were broken ( internet, printer, etc.. ) and we always got people ignoring them...
"Placards" is the word you're looking for. Yeah, nobody likes reading, and even when they do, they assume that they can disregard the signs if they have a good reason - such as, they reaaaally want to. At some point you have to accept this, do some A/B testing and find the way to actually get people's attention. For instance, a WET PAINT sign will be ignored. But "This paint was wet at 8:32 AM, please do not touch ti…
True, but not always. There will always be the 1-3% of the population that can't do something right, no matter how elegant the UI or detailed the sign. These trucks fall into that bin. Some people are just going to plow through whatever you put in their path.
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#125Eventually the tunnels will have "soft walls" which send large trucks a remote-braking command if collision seems likely... and the trucks themselves collision-avoidance radar. And soon after that all the trucks will be self-driving.
This would make Speed interesting.
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#126The drivers cannot be not simply ignoring the signs. The sign is telling them that later down the road they will absolutely get in to problems, and get literally stuck. No one would continue with that certainty of getting stuck or in trouble. On top of that, it cant be repeat offenders either. Some one who has been there before must have gotten caught out, one way or another. Its not like drivers on small roads who s…
In the US, there's a system called PrePass[1]. It's intention is to be used to allow a truck to bypass weigh-ins. The in-vehicle transponder has a red and green light on it. It could be repurposed to flash red when the vehicle triggers a too-tall warning, though this would be of minimal benefit since it's a small flashing red light most likely in the driver's peripheral vision.
However, I'm unsure if there's any similar system in place in Australia (or most other countries, for that matter.)
[1] http://www.prepass.com/services/prepass/Pages/PrePassTranspo...
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#127Or they could you know....just build a tunnel big enough to fir every vehicle size? I don't think this problem exists in the UK, I've driven through many different tunnels and they will accept any vehicle size.
And computer manufacturers should just include hard drives that are big enough to store as much data as people want.
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you deliberately put yourself in a situation where you're operating a machine without the mental faculties you need to do it safely, then I think we can safely say that you deliberately caused the accident, even though you may not have thought, in so many words, "I think I'll go cause an accident now."
People are probably more afraid of losing their jobs. They also probably think it won't happen to them.
I doubt the driver was scared of losing his job. I would say that the blame may fall, in part, on the company. I have a friend who owns a business which does a lot of trucking. If they work overtime, these drivers can make $70k+ a year (including benefits, health). For a job with few qualifications needed, that's pretty good. A lot of businesses in the area actually have too few truckers.
Anyway, the point is that by working overtime you can make a good living being a driver. This is why you can find so many truck drivers drivin tired. As such, there are strict rules in place at my friend's business that prevent drivers from driving for too many hours / too many hours without a break. With GPS and whatnot, this is quite easy to monitor and enforce. As a result, along with other rules and superb maintenance, my friend's business has a superb safety record. There is still the occasional accident (can't stop 'em all), but something like this incident has never occurred.
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#129It was cool seeing it in action (I wonder who thought of it, and got passed the bureaucracy to make it happen). I wonder whether they considered industry standard truck height when building that tunnel.
If anyone was at the London 2012 Olympics then they may have seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwNTczEIaDI They may well have these in many other places of course, I thought it was dead cool.
When I'm rich I'm going to build an RSS reader that works like this
Re: Sydney tunnel water screen stop sign for oversized vehicles [video]
#130You might think that trucks ignoring multiple, obvious flashing warning signs wouldn't be that common. This hilarious video proves otherwise: http://gizmodo.com/5955244/watch-this-bridge-destroying-doze...
If you can't read or don't speak english, a sign with text and flashing yellow lights may not be that obvious.
Then you didn't pass your driving exam and get a license. In the US that's required and I suspect most countries require the ability to understand posted signs to get a drivers license.
If you're driving without a license, then that's a different issue.