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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

#81

Post by PurpleFoxy »

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.

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.

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

#82

Post by ogre_codes »

gambiting wrote: post #15
kwhitefoot wrote: post #8

Would be better to spend the money that this will cost on fitting a simple domestic socket in every parking bay. That we even my Tesla will gain 13 km per hour of charging.

I'm still eagerly awaiting explanation on how this is going to work with terraced houses where there's about 40 houses on each side and people park how and where they want, and most importantly where the local council barely has enough money to fix the worst potholes. But suddenly they are going to dig up a 300 year old street to put down enough cabling and charging points for every car. My question is "with what mon…

> My question is "with what money".

If people want to charge their electric cars and live in a place where it's difficult to do so, that is their problem.

Most places with super dense housing like you describe are probably in fairly dense urban areas where other forms of transportation are probably better regardless.

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

#83

Post by ogre_codes »

gambiting wrote: post #77
88 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t imagine private vehicle ownership will disappear entirely. It will just become even more of a luxury than it already is. When autonomous vehicles halve the cost of an Uber/Lyft journey, many more people will weigh up the costs/benefits of private vehicle ownership and decide it’s not for them. Different services will compete based in part on the luxuriousness of the interiors and the frequency at which they a…

>>When autonomous vehicles halve the cost of an Uber/Lyft journey, many more people will weigh up the costs/benefits of private vehicle ownership and decide it’s not for them. That's kind of my point - this won't happen, because Uber is already at rock bottom prices. For me to take it to work is about £10. That can't cover anything about the journey and is clearly heavily subsidised by Uber. That cost isn't going dow…

> That's kind of my point - this won't happen, because Uber is already at rock bottom prices.

Not really. There are a lot of places to optimize the cost of an Uber competitor. If you have electric self driving cars that pick people up, maintenance and fuel are much less expensive and you aren't paying for a driver. Most of these would only need a 50-100 mile range and could fuel up between passengers.

Full self driving cars is a few years out, but having a service that has defined roads it can travel on is likely possible in the fairly near term. Waymo is already doing this to some extent.

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

#84

Post by InvertedRhodium »

sandworm101 wrote: post #76
cameronh90 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK at least, it's relatively simple. If it's a red circle with a number in it, that's the speed limit - anything else is advisory. In my experience, cars with built in sign readers do an exceptional job of working out the current limit (more reliable than me, certainly!).

So no temporary work zones in the uk? What is the rule if the sign isnt there/visible? Do you then get to race through an obvious construction zone?

If there's no sign to indicate that the speed limit is changed, how are you supposed to know what the speed limit is?

I've had speeding tickets forgiven in Australia because the sign simply wasn't visible enough due to overgrown trees and a 2 lane off ramp separating the sign from the road it applied to, let alone the sign missing altogether.

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

#85

Post by endymi0n »

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.

I‘ve seen them in the Netherlands as well. These are pretty great as they completely discourage any form of cheating that is dangerous (i.e. sudden braking), but incentivize smooth flowing traffic.

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

#86

Post by choeger »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #49
choeger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same holds for a lot of other rules, from public transportation tickets over legal fireworks and drinking age to softer drugs and taxes. Society as a whole seems to be generally fine with smaller infractions and I consider this a good thing, tbh. I would be perfectly fine with a similar scheme for traffic laws. The thing with speeding cameras is that they could easily be adjusted to allow for 20% (say at most 20k…

Unsafe driving is a real cause of a substantial amount of death, and unlike most causes of death it is not over represented in the elderly, giving it a massively outsized impact in terms of reduction in expected years of life. Motor vehicle collisions are reliably the leading cause of death of teenagers and young adults in many parts of the world. People are bad at appraising events that are rare with high negative i…

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 obviously rare.

So to emphasize my point: Permanent and ubiquitous speed control is the wet dream of many people, but it's a proxy. These people have a problem with cars. And there are many places where that is absolutely justified (dense inner cities for example, or streets in front of schools).

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

#87

Post by choeger »

hannob wrote: post #56
choeger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same holds for a lot of other rules, from public transportation tickets over legal fireworks and drinking age to softer drugs and taxes. Society as a whole seems to be generally fine with smaller infractions and I consider this a good thing, tbh. I would be perfectly fine with a similar scheme for traffic laws. The thing with speeding cameras is that they could easily be adjusted to allow for 20% (say at most 20k…

I live in a city where 48 people were killed by cars last year. I am not fine with that.

Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't. But how many of these deaths would have been prevented by a 20% less speed?

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

#88

Post by sandworm101 »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #84
sandworm101 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no temporary work zones in the uk? What is the rule if the sign isnt there/visible? Do you then get to race through an obvious construction zone?

If there's no sign to indicate that the speed limit is changed, how are you supposed to know what the speed limit is? I've had speeding tickets forgiven in Australia because the sign simply wasn't visible enough due to overgrown trees and a 2 lane off ramp separating the sign from the road it applied to, let alone the sign missing altogether.

If you are surrounded by people in orange vests, or traffic cones directing you to a detour, you are in a construction zone and better not be doing highway speeds. The fact that the sign wasnt visible, or even wasnt present, will not help. This comes up in AI cars all the time. The camera is blocked from seeing the sign beside the road, perhaps by a truck in the right lane. Or maybe the temporary folding sign is blown over. You still have to recognize a construction zone. A bad sign might get you out of a basic speeding ticket, maybe, but it wont protect you from a dangerous driving ticket, or going to jail after running over a construction worker. And a great many juridictions mandate vastly reduced speeds when cops/ambulances/firetrucks/towtrucks are beside the road, meaning you have to recognize such situations regardless of posted signs.

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

#89

Post by elihu »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #6
paledot wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not parking spots. Don't park next to a gas pump if you're not putting gas in the car, even if it has an internal combustion engine.

People treat gas pumps as parking spots all the time. It's even more frustrating when you are driving a diesel and the only diesel pump at the station is blocked by a gas car and the owner has wandered off to get a coffee or use the restroom, all while multiple gas pumps sit empty.

I suppose a long-term solution is just to have more charge ports. Or to have charge stations with longer cords so they can service more parking spots.

I mean, charge stations are basically just 110 or 220 volt AC electrical outlets with a fancy plug. There isn't any fundamental reason they have to be an expensive, scarce resource. The more difficult scarce resource is the underlying electrical infrastructure. But if a commercial site only has so much power available, it seems better to just have a cap on the number of chargers that can be active at once to stay within the amperage limits of the site rather than to artificially constrain the number of charge stations. Then if someone is using a "charging spot" but isn't actually charging, it's not a problem; they aren't blocking anyone else from charging.

That's a long-term solution, though. For now we just don't have enough charging stations in most places to be able to not care if someone is using one when they shouldn't be.

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

#90

Post by davchana »

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.

Absolutely correct about the technology. Qatar is doing that.

I lived in Qatar for 7 years, drove a car. All speed cameras are not visible. Some are marked with sign boards, but many are hidden permanently on a lamp post, or in a palm tree, or in anything. There are even mobile cameras, which an operator puts on a heavy tripod, & goes away, & camera takes photos of offenders & send back to data centre. Cameras are on highways, on streets, on intersections. Every traffic signal has built in camera. Fines go up progressively with each offense & over the limit. Owner of car gets a mobile notification as soon as his car speeds in front of camera. All fines are payable fully at yearly registration. If paid in some x days, there is a discount.On Holy Month of Ramadan also sometimes there is a discount.

The biggest is, there is no need of a man standing behind camera. Two photos taken apart a second or such are the proof. Owner can only contest it if he has gps recordings. Speed limit is speed limit. No +5 or +10.

But then, fine amount stings only if they are enough. For an expat like me, a fine of $200 is a lot. For a local Qatari 20ish year boy, thats nothing. Some of my photography club members had fines in tunes of $2500 a year, & totally normal.

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