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Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#121

Post by choeger »

Symbiote wrote: post #97
choeger wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsafe driving is not characterized by speeding a slight margin over the limit on good roads (see German Autobahn for statistics, these are among the safest roads on the planet). Similarly, I am pretty certain that driving 40 in a 30 zone (when 30 is safely possible) is not the cause of most, if any, deaths. Causes are varied, but generally the situations where one or two meters of road would make a difference are ob…

The increase in stopping distance from 30km/h to 40km/h is significant, more than 1-2 metres, and much of it is thinking/reacting time, i.e. still travelling at 40km/h. People are much more likely to survive an accident at a lower speed. "The results from one of these studies is presented in figure 1, which shows a fatality risk of 1.5% at 20 mph [32km/h] versus 8% at 30 mph [48km/h]." [1] (in typically British fashi…

Your source speaks of impact speed.

To achieve a difference in impact speed of 16kph, you would either have to go much faster, say 60 to 70kph before the accident or not brake at all.

There are of course situations where a driver cannot brake at all, but there the speed limit should be 10kph or less (and then going, say, 12, would again be more or the same).

On a road where 30kph is considered safe, 40kph is only slightly less safe.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#122

Post by SteveGerencser »

lazylizard wrote: post #117
owenmarshall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse. Gas stations occupy an interesting place in American life: some stations - often those in urban areas - are designed for “get in, grab a pack of peanuts, get out” transactions, but others in rural areas serve as a local gathering area. Pre-Covid (and, let’s be honest, even post-Covid) the gas stations near m…

its really weird for someone used to the faster type of gas station. why would people want want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary around petrol fumes...

Because there are no real fumes. No more than anywhere else, and there is more likely to be a gas station with a restaurant (pizza/chicken whatever) in it than a restaurant at all. Small 'town' down the road has one gas station and one cafe. The cafe is only open for lunch. So a lot of the old timers gather at the gas station where they can get a coffee, a snack, or even a chicken dinner, and sit and chat with friends.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#123

Post by ClumsyPilot »

gambiting wrote: post #119
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just my opinion, UK government has brough forward it's ban of fossil fuel cars to 2030 from 2040 because they've done the research and found that it would geberate savings for the overall economy. Consider thay the gas station is just the tip of the iceberg, it comes with an underground cistern of flamable liquid, trucks for delivery, complex oil refinery, pipelines and tankers. We are talking about literally…

>>They need basically no ongoing maintenance The problem is that this is where you're wrong. Even if we get regular 3-pin 13amp sockets installed everywhere instead of the proper type-2 connectors, you can't just leave domestic sockets outside and unprotected, because in case of any damage or injury you'd be liable. At the minimum you need some circuit that can detect faults and report to HQ that it needs repairs. Th…

What is stupidly expensive in your book? Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100? Average car owner spends £160 a month in UK.

Petroleum fuel is more expensive that eqivalent electricity because they have to pay for massive oil refineries, etc. It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore. Once you net out these costs, petroleum will not come out on top.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#124

Post by gambiting »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #123
gambiting wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>They need basically no ongoing maintenance The problem is that this is where you're wrong. Even if we get regular 3-pin 13amp sockets installed everywhere instead of the proper type-2 connectors, you can't just leave domestic sockets outside and unprotected, because in case of any damage or injury you'd be liable. At the minimum you need some circuit that can detect faults and report to HQ that it needs repairs. Th…

What is stupidly expensive in your book? Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100? Average car owner spends £160 a month in UK. Petroleum fuel is more expensive that eqivalent electricity because they have to pay for massive oil refineries, etc. It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore. Once you net out these costs, petroleum will not come out on top.

>>Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100?

According to the latest version of the electrical regulations, any external socket used for charging a car(and that includes regular domestic 3-pin sockets) has to have earth independant of the supply earth. Meaning that a separate earth stake has to be installed for each socket. I've gotten several quotes to do this recently and they all came back at around £400-500 mark. But even ignoring that, you are completely off the mark when it comes to parts, proper external armoured sockets and cables cost a lot more than "£50-100". That's dumb sockets that don't do anything. Commercial charging points that provide just regular 13amp charging without anything fancy go for multiple thousands of pounds, but you think a £50 socket would do? Have you considered why it might not? If you want to do it on the entire street then multiply that number + add the costs of digging up the street which can be a small fortune(ask OpenReach how much they charge per metre of groundworks, it's not uncommon to get bills for £100k for a 50ft of cable laid in ground).

>> It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore.

Uhm, I don't, but I just don't see how that's relevant. I'm also not saying that we should continue using petrol. Just that building this infrastructure in our cities is going to be incredibly expensive, and our councils already struggle so much to provide any support to our streets and roads. But somehow there are people who believe that by 2030 councils will magically pull the money out of their backsides and build it. I just don't believe that will happen.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#125

Post by ClumsyPilot »

gambiting wrote: post #124
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is stupidly expensive in your book? Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100? Average car owner spends £160 a month in UK. Petroleum fuel is more expensive that eqivalent electricity because they have to pay for massive oil refineries, etc. It costs a fortune and you seem to totally ignore. Once you net out these costs, petroleum will not come out on top.

>>Whats the total cost of parts for installing a socket, even with electronics, £50-£100? According to the latest version of the electrical regulations, any external socket used for charging a car(and that includes regular domestic 3-pin sockets) has to have earth independant of the supply earth. Meaning that a separate earth stake has to be installed for each socket. I've gotten several quotes to do this recently an…

I am absolutely in agreement that initial installation will be expensive, and cannot happen without a national initiative/funding pot. Thank you for providing clarity on numbers, which I did not have.

I am hoping arguing that, on average, charging points should last decades so the running costs should be minimal and the system would save money in the long run, purely when you consider physical resources involved.

To further reduce running costs and put it on commercial footing, we could try a modular approach - Maybe we could have a system where we dig up the street, and install something like a metal frame in the ground covered by a (miniature) manhole, which includes a fixture, electric cabling, etc. It's just a dumb and robust connector, nor electronics.

Then different charging points could be installed there by private companies, or by homeowners, etc at a fee. The idea is to have like a standard connector - any maintenance would (normally) be needed on the charge point only, metering is done by the charge point and upstream at street level. Maybe we can mandate smart metering like we are doing for houses right now.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#126

Post by colejohnson66 »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #81
hannob wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.

An interesting method that is widely used in Australia is “average speed cameras”. They set up 2 sets of cameras on a long highway and then time how long it took you to get from one camera to the next. It’s an excellent idea because you can’t just slow down for the camera and then speed up again.

California actually explicitly bans police setting up these kinds of speed traps

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#127

Post by hansvm »

sandworm101 wrote: post #48
hannob wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.

>> The technology for speeding cameras Speed cameras are not the go-to tech. Nearly every car on the road has a GPS, either organic to the vehicle or inside the driver's phone. If we wanted to actually enforce speed limits it would be a trivial matter to have google forward the relevant information. This was done by a few rental car companies many moons ago (circa 2001). Speeding laws don't know how to account for su…

That brings back memories of Pokemon Go issuing bans after flights because you must be location spoofing to have travelled that quickly.

On some level, a device owned and controlled by the consumer and asserting a particular travel speed seems like the wrong place to put that kind of enforcement.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#128

Post by hansvm »

theluketaylor wrote: post #116
PurpleFoxy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting method that is widely used in Australia is “average speed cameras”. They set up 2 sets of cameras on a long highway and then time how long it took you to get from one camera to the next. It’s an excellent idea because you can’t just slow down for the camera and then speed up again.

Average speed cameras seem unbelievably dangerous to me. I haven't ever driven somewhere with them, but I suspect all I'd be thinking about was the speed limit, resulting in very dangerous driving. With all my focus on making to correct average I'd fail to properly track other drivers and potential hazards. I'm much happier with a flow of traffic enforcement. Ticket those who speed excessively beyond what traffic is…

If you're trying to game the detection system to minimize travel time then average speed cameras could encourage pathological behavior (which would hopefully also be caught by careless/reckless driving laws). They're dead-simple and not subject to cosine error and sensitive closed-source calibration techniques though. Even accounting for clock skew and clock drift, if an average speed camera says you were going x+2ϵ mph then it's safe to say you were going at least x+ϵ mph for at least some small interval and some very small value of ϵ.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#129

Post by hansvm »

hannob wrote: post #26
ultimoo wrote: post #2

Not sure what's so surprising/interesting about this (I don't have a subscription to read the full article). This nugget in the introduction seems to summarize the tech behind this -- > Sensors installed in electric bays can be used to detect the presence of a vehicle and whether it is being used to recharge the car battery.

It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.

We'd probably need a few other societal changes to make automatic enforcement of the posted speed limit manageable. As an example, if you're on a 50mph road in the USA and assume that your speedometer is calibrated within legal tolerances (and no further) then you'd have to set your cruise control to at most 43mph to ensure that you'd never speed (5mph speedometer error at that speed plus 2mph in speed variability from bumps/hills/etc), you could actually be averaging as low as 39mph in practice, and somebody else behind you with a speedometer off the other direction could think you're going as slowly as 35mph (on average, slower from time to time). I can say from experience that doing so is an easy way to be flipped off, sworn at, passed on the shoulder or a sidewalk, and have police called to your location (occasionally driving the speed limit plus 0-10mph results in similar levels of aggression), even though you can potentially be ticketed for going even a mile per hour faster (most police forces allow a lot more slop in your speed for precisely that kind of reason, but there are definitely a few who don't give a shit because they know you don't want to drive all the way back to the middle of nowhere to fight it) and even though driving that slowly is totally legal in most places.

None of that is insurmountable of course, and the easiest fix seems like just having the automated system only ticket you at some threshold above the limit while grandfathering in tighter speedometer tolerances. Aggression from driving the speed limit would probably decrease rapidly as tickets started arriving in the mail.

Re: Smart spaces will fine petrol car owners illegally parking in electric bays

#130

Post by dragonwriter »

hannob wrote: post #26
ultimoo wrote: post #2

Not sure what's so surprising/interesting about this (I don't have a subscription to read the full article). This nugget in the introduction seems to summarize the tech behind this -- > Sensors installed in electric bays can be used to detect the presence of a vehicle and whether it is being used to recharge the car battery.

It's surprising because car drivers are used to the fact that rules are not or rarely enforced. Just think about it: Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely. The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex, you could mass-produce them and deploy them basically in every street. I'm not aware of any country doing that.

> Technically it would be no big problem to enforce speed limits widely

More than you suggest.

> The technology for speeding cameras isn't exceptionally complex

But speed cameras are just one piece of enforcement. With those and automatic license plate reading you get a piece of evidence that a car violated the limit at a particular time and place, but even if the law is that a set limit is a hard limit (which is not the case in much of the US, where posted limits are often prima facie but not dispositive limits), that's not all you need for enforcement. You also need legal process to weigh potential counterevidence, to deal with contested identity of actual drivers, etc. This isn't technically complex, but it adds a lot of overhead, which is why even places which legally allow this mechanism deploy it selectively, not comprehensively.

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