On self-driving cars, British (and European) roads would seem to present challenges perhaps not present in the American cities where they have taken off: tricky roundabouts, winding country lanes, narrow (sometimes cobbled) lanes, and in certain cities like Cambridge, cyclists and pedestrians that seem to come from nowhere. Or perhaps these differences and challenges are overstated? Anyway, I'd love to read something on how self-driving car companies are planning to deal with some of the peculiarities of British / European roads!
> There was no set standard on how to store TROs digitally, starting from the most basic questions like how the database should store geographic coordinates
To add a bit of nuance here: there are a handful of widespread standards for storing geographic data (ESRI shapefiles, GPKG, GeoJSON...) and while there are some impedance mismatches, it's fairly straightforward to convert geodata between them using open-source software. Same goes for the choice of map projection. Incompatibilities usually arise at the next level up: what do we call the different "layers"? Which features do we represent as points, which as lines, and which as polygons? What schema do we use for the metadata attached to features? The tools tend to be very flexible in what data representations they'll allow, so reconciling two geodata schemas designed by different people can involve a lot of grubby custom code. I used to work for a company that built software for civil engineers, and a big part of our value proposition was that we'd done a lot of this work for various governments' geodata feeds so you could use them together.
Hi James, I can recommend you switch to Waze while driving. I think it will improve your experience significantly. I can also recommend an app called appyparking to help with your parking woes.
While interesting, one wonders how much this project costs and whether the benefits are worth it. I drive a lot and the above apps serve me well.
From a roadworks perspective, I believe the data is already collected and made available on one.network
Councils seem unable to resist the temptation to authorise multiple overlapping works. Digging the same streets up over and over again. Changing speed limits and restrictions on a whim. This is a cultural problem and won't be solved by a new shiny system. I know some people believe the constant works and changes are deliberate to make driving more inconvenient.....
I was a waze user for about 20 years, up until a few months ago. It's been really good but recently a road near me was closed, so I reported it in the app. Annoyingly this can't be done through android auto so I had to stop my car to report it.
A few hours later I came back and it was trying to send me through there again! I found that the only sat navs that knew about the closure were Tom Tom based ones.
I now use the Tom Tom app. It's not perfect, it often seems to slightly miss the destination you put in but it does a great job of avoiding road closures.
Mentioning the peculiarities of British Roads, can someone better versed in the subject tell me what , if any , provision is made with self driving cars in the event a person or persons attempts to maliciously make a car stop by standing in front, eg to delay, harass , attempt a crime etc when normally a vehicle could possibly be driven away in such an emergency?
This, along with the data on fuel pricing that is being made more available through an api will make navigation apps much more powerful.
Only issue I can see is that a TRO gets issued for 3 weeks to resurface a road because that is at the longer end of what they expect it to take. It gets finished in 2 weeks and the navigation apps won't know.
Dynamic TROs could solve this but that would be some way off.
Hi James - really interesting!
On self-driving cars, British (and European) roads would seem to present challenges perhaps not present in the American cities where they have taken off: tricky roundabouts, winding country lanes, narrow (sometimes cobbled) lanes, and in certain cities like Cambridge, cyclists and pedestrians that seem to come from nowhere. Or perhaps these differences and challenges are overstated? Anyway, I'd love to read something on how self-driving car companies are planning to deal with some of the peculiarities of British / European roads!
Actually have something on this landing in a couple of weeks hopefully!
Brilliant, looking forward to reading it!
I hope the licensing of this is compatible with OpenStreetmap as well as the commercial satnav businesses.
> There was no set standard on how to store TROs digitally, starting from the most basic questions like how the database should store geographic coordinates
To add a bit of nuance here: there are a handful of widespread standards for storing geographic data (ESRI shapefiles, GPKG, GeoJSON...) and while there are some impedance mismatches, it's fairly straightforward to convert geodata between them using open-source software. Same goes for the choice of map projection. Incompatibilities usually arise at the next level up: what do we call the different "layers"? Which features do we represent as points, which as lines, and which as polygons? What schema do we use for the metadata attached to features? The tools tend to be very flexible in what data representations they'll allow, so reconciling two geodata schemas designed by different people can involve a lot of grubby custom code. I used to work for a company that built software for civil engineers, and a big part of our value proposition was that we'd done a lot of this work for various governments' geodata feeds so you could use them together.
Hi James, I can recommend you switch to Waze while driving. I think it will improve your experience significantly. I can also recommend an app called appyparking to help with your parking woes.
While interesting, one wonders how much this project costs and whether the benefits are worth it. I drive a lot and the above apps serve me well.
From a roadworks perspective, I believe the data is already collected and made available on one.network
Councils seem unable to resist the temptation to authorise multiple overlapping works. Digging the same streets up over and over again. Changing speed limits and restrictions on a whim. This is a cultural problem and won't be solved by a new shiny system. I know some people believe the constant works and changes are deliberate to make driving more inconvenient.....
I was a waze user for about 20 years, up until a few months ago. It's been really good but recently a road near me was closed, so I reported it in the app. Annoyingly this can't be done through android auto so I had to stop my car to report it.
A few hours later I came back and it was trying to send me through there again! I found that the only sat navs that knew about the closure were Tom Tom based ones.
I now use the Tom Tom app. It's not perfect, it often seems to slightly miss the destination you put in but it does a great job of avoiding road closures.
Mentioning the peculiarities of British Roads, can someone better versed in the subject tell me what , if any , provision is made with self driving cars in the event a person or persons attempts to maliciously make a car stop by standing in front, eg to delay, harass , attempt a crime etc when normally a vehicle could possibly be driven away in such an emergency?
I use Parkopedia.com - it's pretty up to date with parking regulations.
It's pretty good! Still relies on crowdsourcing though!
This, along with the data on fuel pricing that is being made more available through an api will make navigation apps much more powerful.
Only issue I can see is that a TRO gets issued for 3 weeks to resurface a road because that is at the longer end of what they expect it to take. It gets finished in 2 weeks and the navigation apps won't know.
Dynamic TROs could solve this but that would be some way off.
Or better still, walk, cycle or take public transport. Or a combination of those mobility modes.
Hello, you must be an able-bodied person living in a large town or city!
Or better still, take your supercharged Jaguar sports car.