Driving Miss

More on driverless cars today.  There are 3 different article in the Guardian concerning driverless cars.  One is about unmanned 'pods' at Heathrow, a fairly low risk arena to test them I would have thought.  Another is from the USA where a town in Arizona have been selected to test 500 of Google's vans.  You volunteer to have one, then 'drive' it, well, you actually sit next to another person who is employed by Google (actually a subsidiary called Waymo) to oversee the software.  This means you don't need a driving license, be physically able etc. so quite an interesting development on the road to tarmacadam utopia.  The 3rd article was the ambition to drive a fleet of autonomous vehicles from London to Oxford by 2018.  Evidently they will have reached Level 4 by then.
So now we know.

Smiles All Round

If I chance upon an article about running, it is nearly always accompanied by a setup photograph of 2 or 3 happy, smiling runners effortlessly jogging down a leafy lane.  Well, sometimes a leafy lane, but you get the picture.  The point is, is that they convey a state of ecstasy that must be linked to running itself.
However, after my 22 mile epic yesterday, I can assure you that no happy smiling face could be seen until I was sat in my car driving home and even then it was tinged with pain as my muscles started the slow painful recovery.  It was never intended to be 22 miles, but 2 errant turns of direction extended the planned 15 to 22 miles.  The good thing is that I don't feel half as bad as expected to today, so that's a good thing.

Flight of Fantasy?

A Dutch engineer/student/nutter (delete as appropriate) has come up with an idea for a circular aircraft runway.  I find this quite intriguing, groundbreaking and potentially useful but in reality it will never make it to full use.  ...but what do I know?  Obviously I am a bit conservative when it comes to things like this and although flying has not been around that long (was it 1920 or thereabouts?) I know enough about flight theory to be quite skeptical regarding this.  ..but time will tell.  I didn't think I would live to see driverless cars on the streets.

Left, Right.

As usual, another of my predictions was wrong.  This was that sitting Labour MPs would be upset by the snap election because they would be up for reselection.  No reselection will take place because of the short timescales, so no left wingers will get the chance to take over the more common centre-left type of Labour MP, otherwise known as Blairites.  This will give us another 5 years of Corbyn battling the established parliamentary Labour party to no avail.
Still, they'll be plenty to have a laugh about I'm sure.
UKIP will probably come out of this the most worst off (unless this prediction thing of mine carries on).  They only won one seat in the 2015 election, and has gone back to the Tories so I can only see them picking up the extreme conservative right voters with the rest going back to Conservative.
The Lib dems vote will be interesting to analyze because they are firmly against brexit, the only party to have come out with that line.
Watch this space.

Voting Rights

Mrs May has today surprisingly called for a general election in the UK.  I expect that will have got Labour MPs groaning into their cornflakes as the local parties rub their hands at the thought of getting rid of established centrist MPs to be replaced by more left leaning versions.
We will have something to entertain us over the next couple of months anyway.

Racing Along

I've finally found a longish trail run worth entering without being over the top.  It's the Peak Skyline - a 29 mile trek across the Peak District.  It has the advantage of not being too far away from home, is long, but not very long and was only 32 quid. 
Mind you, even though its not a proper ultra, after my 9 mile race last Sunday over the Lincolnshire Wolds its clear that I need quite a bit more training between now and then.

Meanwhile, in the strange world of politics, UKIP continue to wrestle with their inner demon of  'We won it, now what?'.  Such a problem.  I was trying to think of anything that could match it and the best I came up with is that particular species of spider that mates, then crawls off the female and dies, it's sole purpose in life been satisfied.

Fly Me To The Moon

More on driverless cars today in the paper.  A luminary (or more likely just someone who drives cars) suggests that we need driverless roads, rather than cars.  His point is that vehicles need to be helped on their way rather than helping themselves, and I can see his point.  Competing commercial interest might stimulate technology, but will it be for the benefit of all of us?  Autonomous vehicles competing for road space is going to take some sort of co-ordination definitely, so why not build some of the technology into the infrastructure, a sort of road-traffic control centre like we have for airspace.  Just imagine if air travel didn't have air-traffic controllers and they relied on collision avoidance systems.  Carnage would ensue I'm sure.

Driving Around.

Uber, the upstart taxi company shaking up the traditional taxi businesses, state the it's future relies on self driving cars becoming a reality.  Unfortunately, they have had to recall their test vehicles due to excessive 'interventions'.  An intervention is where a backup driver has to take over if they think there is a problem of any variety. 
So there's 2 interesting discussion points.  One is that the aggrieved taxi companies that Uber has trampled on see fit, they will  do everything in their power to prevent or at least delay driverless vehicles hitting the high streets.
The other, is that the commercial future depends on rather dodgy technology which is (surely) way off from being used.  There seems no point at all in having a 'standby' driver just in case of interventions, when the business case demands no driver at all.
I watch this space with interest.