h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Automotive Radar - A604513
Author: Sir Bossel --- Back from a weekend on the Bosselhamas - U132240

Ahem... there's a thread about killing the Writing Workshop (--> F47999?thread=180625)
which happened to somewhat stray off topic and the question was whether entries belonging to University projects could/should spend some time in Peer Review before the project is finished and gets frozen.


So here's a 'guinea pig' entry up for comments (but not for recommendation by a Scout). Let's see what happens


Oh, and yes it's about radars that you can mount in your car

Hmmm...

Do you want comments on the entry, or what?

Technically, I think that the problem is the myriad of not-edited entries this one is linking to. This could be a problem for the editors.

I don't understand the point of sending Uni stuff into the PR.

HELL

Yepp, comments please

Uni projects go into the Guide as they are (no copies for Subs), hence these links are pointing to their final destinations. An exception in this here case is the Stealth Entry A740288 which is still in PR but that'll be fixed once it has been recommended.

The point about sending Uni stuff to PR is that there rarely is a comment at the Uni, so you don't know where you've got broken lines of thought, mistakes, typos and all that. Leaving these to the discussion between some poor Subeditor soul would be a bit hard, wouldn't it.
Fixing these *before* the project gets in could be done by the researcher while s/he still possesses editing rights rather than by the Editors who've got better things to do.

Hope that helps

Hi Bossel,

This is a subject I've seen research material on, but haven't to hand at present. To be specific, the research was about driver behaviour and crash involvement with various types of equipment such as this fitted.

You are right to point up risk homeostasis (also known as risk compensation) as a risk. This is when safety improvements are swallowed up as performance improvements. For example, you have ABS brakes allowing you to stop more quickly, so you drive faster. Motorcyclists legend has it that the car most likely to hit you is a Volvo, as it's engineered to protect the car occupants, but not people on the outside of the car. (There's work going on to develop airbags outside the car to protect pedestrians now, interestingly.)

I think the results were that you have to be careful with the type of automated system that you employ, but some systems actually performed worse in certain situations that no system at all.

A couple of grammatical points. You can't plead 'unguilty'. Better to say 'Not guilty'. However, I strongly suspect that a court would not exonerate a driver from responsibility to drive carefully.

Also 'unhomogenities' reads strangely. It would properly be spelled 'unhomogeneities', but that sounds horrible. Maybe 'unevennesses'?? Or 'anomolies'?

Err.. 'Inhomogeneities'?

I still don't like the mixing up of Uni and PR (I don't really like the Uni, BTW - that's why I submit my entry-complexes directly to PR - First, more public, second each entry has it's own editor, third getting the links posthumously right hasn't been a problem yet). But what the hey?

I'm coming back to this one later.

HELL

Thanks everyone!

ZSF, I've changed 'unguilty' to 'not guilty' and 'inhomogeneities' seems indeed to be a word (so says my favourite translator at leo.org).

The point about people using new features to start speeding or get nasty is all too common. On German autobahns, the usual distance is somewhere around 5 metres ie: not much more than the length of a car. Everybody trusts in their ABS and besides, this keeps others from switching the lane.
I'm quite sure what'll happen once radars are common. Germans already have some long history of speeding through fog and being able to 'see' through it.. oh my!