Haringey to get self-driving taxis

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Permalink Reply by Oli Brown 3 hours ago

I'm not sure how a self-driving taxi would cope on Green Lanes. It's one thing for prototypes to perform well in ordered grid like streets in Califormia where there is lots of space. Its entirely different on Green Lanes with fake-plated mopeds driven by often unlicensed drivers weaving between traffic combined with cyclists who ignore traffic lights, pedestrians who wander onto the road without looking and shop delivery vans whose drivers think nothing of doing a three point turn in the middle of peak hour.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson 2 hours ago

Sounds like a typical day on Market Street, San Francisco (where they also have to deal with cable cars)

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter 1 hour ago

I'm not sure how a self-driving taxi would cope on Green Lanes

I'm not certain either, which is why they are currently in testing mode in London. However self-driving taxis enjoy fundamental advantages including:

1. no ego
2. no anger
3. no illness
4. no drug-use
5. no tiredness
6. no tail-gating
7. no aggression
8. no showing off
9. no heart-attacks
10. no use of cup-holders
11. no one-handed driving
12. no aged slow-reactions
13. no youthful inexperience
14. no hatred of other road users
15. no revving of big engines - as can be heard among the boy-racers ofGL
16. no forgetting to check mirrors (this omission killed a cyclist in Camden)

Apart from these items (and more), what have self-driving taxis ever done for us?

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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton 1 hour ago

Oli Brown, can you tell readers of this website about your own situation? For example whether you live or work in Haringey; use Green Lanes as  a walker; cyclist, car driver or otherwise? Do you have family members who use the local roads. Are there particular concerns for their safety e.g. kids going to school and restrictions on school streets? Have you or a family member or close friend who is elderly or disabled?

Do you perhaps have some general aim or hope in raising this issue? I sometimes think back to my diabetic grandmother who was killed crossing the road near her home in East London. Or reflect on times when I used to regularly bike around as a young man and narrowly escaped possible injury.

Please note that in posing these questions  I'm making no assumptions about your own views. 

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