Tag Archives: vehicle

Swedish Megatunnel to Be Completed in 2026

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Time for a look into some amazing engineering. Sweden’s capital is experiencing increasing traffic difficulties due to both its growth and the growth of other cities in the country. This often generates traffic that exceeds the capacity of the current infrastructure.

Major European road E4 currently passes through Stockholm, where it mixes with the local traffic, leading to unpleasant experiences for everybody involved. But come 2026, vehicles traveling the North-South direction close to the capital will benefit from one of the superstructures of the 21st century:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/can-you-build-an-environmentally-friendly-megatunnel-sweden-thinks-so/^

And since I’m talking Stockholm and tunnels, I can also recommend having a look at how the Swedes are rebuilding the second-largest public transport^ hub in the city. They’re digging the entire bus terminal into a mountain^.

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One More Hyper-car for the Hyper-consumerist Empire

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Diversity is beautiful. It’s the reason why our planet is so different than everything else we’ve encountered so far. Humans have added to the diversity through art and technology. But what if there is a boundary after which adding more diversity becomes ugly?

Some people don’t have running water. Some people start their day thanking that their home wasn’t blown up. Some people struggle in a hospital bed. Some people build cars like these:

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/mercedes-amg-project-one-hypercar-revealed/^

And some people buy them.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be able to afford such a car. It’s “good diversity” to be able to use technology to build masterpieces like the one above. But not until we’ve done some progress in fixing our society. Not while there’s still people undergoing extreme suffering. We have bigger problems to tackle and issues to consider before we can play around on the race track.

Do I blame the engineers that build hyper-cars? Of course not. Besides being a former Formula 1 fan, I know that these people are only doing their job. I do blame, however, a society that doesn’t encourage these bright minds to work on fixing bigger, more meaningful problems. It’s a paradox:

In order for society to begin to want to fix itself, society must first fix itself.

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The Danger Posed by Vehicles with Tinted Windows

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Quote: “the need for the eye contact is something hard to do with tinted windows. As a pedestrian, before you step off a curb when you arrive at a four-way stop, the interaction with a driver requires a degree of not just acknowledgment, but trust. I have to know what you intend to do, and I have to know that you’ve seen me. Think of how often you respond differently because you see someone on the phone or texting. You need this information, and dark tinting obscures it.”

I don’t normally start my recommendations with a quote from the article I’m recommending, but sometimes I make exceptions. This time, the reason is that the quote I started with is exactly what made me feature this article. The same quote also got me thinking about how will pedestrians interact with self-driving vehicles. Food for thought…

There’s quite a lot of regional information in the article (pertaining to Canada). But once we get thinking about the dangers of tinted windows, a lot of risks will immediately pop into a driver’s mind: dangers of changing lanes in the dark, parking in an insufficiently lit garage and so on. Conclusion? Don’t tint your windows.

http://driving.ca/chrysler/300/auto-news/news/the-dark-side-of-tinted-windows^

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The Elevated Bus That Rides above the Traffic

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With ever-undented ambition, China rediscovers its innovative mojo. In the past decade, we’ve seen quite a few impressive Chinese projects. It doesn’t matter if this bus will not see wide-spread use, it still stands (ahem, rolls) as a testament that China Has Talent.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/china-has-actually-built-that-elevated-bus-that-travels-above-car-traffic/^

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/china-s-futuristic-straddle-bus-goes-test-drive-n622131^

Still, I’d rather see China’s Talent invested in ways that can reduce motor traffic rather than work around the problem by throwing more metal (and fuel) at it. Beijing and other major cities around in the world would love to get rid of the smog epidemic.

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