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Inspiration, v. 4, issue 1, April 1946
Page 36
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TRAFFIC CONTROL Stanley presents some interesting ideas about the use of electronic control and other devices to aid in the speed, safety, and ease of driving in the future. It's true that motor car manufacturers are constantly making the operation of vehicles a more automatic matter, and it's about time that some thought was put into the possibility of working from the other end of the problem by making highways and streets more automatic. Electronic control on long stretches of intercity highway are probably quite feasable, and will doubtless be put into effect sometime in the future. Non-electronic devices, such as banked curves which will almost automatically take a car around a turn provided that it is going at the speed for which the curve is built have been in use for years, and their construction is constantly increasing. Driving on long stretches of a modern highway is an easy job, since a constant pressure on the accellerator and a light touch on the steering wheel are all that are needed. But it is still a fatiguing job, since the driver must be constantly on the alert, altho not so much as in city driving. Electronic control from the side of the road to keep the car constantly at a given distance from the edge of the road and at a given speed would probably be quite feasable, a joint hookup between steering wheel, throttle, and speedometer controlling the car in response to radio impulses. But I'm inclined to believe that a magnetic flow underneath the road would be even better, and might even operate as a power source, allowing the drive to turn off the motor and just relax until such a time as he wished to turn off the powered highway. One of the great advantages from a safety point of view in eliminating the driver from work and responsibility on high speed highways would be that he would no longer have the false speed conception he all too often has now upon switching from a high speed to a slow speed artery. I've noticed many times, after travelling for a long stretch at a high speed and then entering a city, that it's hard to slow down sufficiently to compensate for the change in traffic conditions. You may think that you have slowed down to a reasonable velocity because your new speed seems so much slower than the old. But even for the most experienced driver it is hard to tell for certain without constant observation of the speedometer. This factor is responsible for many accidents, and often serious ones because of the fairly high speeds involved. But it is in the cities themselves, especially the larger ones, that improvement in traffic control is needed. I like Stanley's idea of leaving the car at the edge of the city and then using small putt-putts for intercity travel. But unless our larger cities decrease tremendously in size, the distance factor from the edge of town to the center would be so great as to render the idea almost useless. A large city extends for miles, and is built up solidly with residences, factories, and business establishments thruout the entire area. In my own case, my job is some ten miles across town, and the distance has to be driven twice daily, yet both my home and business establishment are quite a distance inside the greater city area. I suppose that Stanley is considering some city of the future with a closely knit business center and homes stretching outwards from this center for miles, home which are not so closely packed together as those of today. Such a system is growing in popularity all the time, and every large city has many such suburbs whose inhabitants commute to the city itself to work. But it takes time to travel a great distance to work, more time than most people care to spend, and there will always be a tendency to live close to the place of employment. Also, businesses and factories tend to group fairly close together to make for more case in the interchangement of supplies and materials without which no business can survive. So I look for our city areas to grow larger, not smaller, from the standpoint of residences and business establishments both. I'm not enough familiar with any other of the really large cities, so will use
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TRAFFIC CONTROL Stanley presents some interesting ideas about the use of electronic control and other devices to aid in the speed, safety, and ease of driving in the future. It's true that motor car manufacturers are constantly making the operation of vehicles a more automatic matter, and it's about time that some thought was put into the possibility of working from the other end of the problem by making highways and streets more automatic. Electronic control on long stretches of intercity highway are probably quite feasable, and will doubtless be put into effect sometime in the future. Non-electronic devices, such as banked curves which will almost automatically take a car around a turn provided that it is going at the speed for which the curve is built have been in use for years, and their construction is constantly increasing. Driving on long stretches of a modern highway is an easy job, since a constant pressure on the accellerator and a light touch on the steering wheel are all that are needed. But it is still a fatiguing job, since the driver must be constantly on the alert, altho not so much as in city driving. Electronic control from the side of the road to keep the car constantly at a given distance from the edge of the road and at a given speed would probably be quite feasable, a joint hookup between steering wheel, throttle, and speedometer controlling the car in response to radio impulses. But I'm inclined to believe that a magnetic flow underneath the road would be even better, and might even operate as a power source, allowing the drive to turn off the motor and just relax until such a time as he wished to turn off the powered highway. One of the great advantages from a safety point of view in eliminating the driver from work and responsibility on high speed highways would be that he would no longer have the false speed conception he all too often has now upon switching from a high speed to a slow speed artery. I've noticed many times, after travelling for a long stretch at a high speed and then entering a city, that it's hard to slow down sufficiently to compensate for the change in traffic conditions. You may think that you have slowed down to a reasonable velocity because your new speed seems so much slower than the old. But even for the most experienced driver it is hard to tell for certain without constant observation of the speedometer. This factor is responsible for many accidents, and often serious ones because of the fairly high speeds involved. But it is in the cities themselves, especially the larger ones, that improvement in traffic control is needed. I like Stanley's idea of leaving the car at the edge of the city and then using small putt-putts for intercity travel. But unless our larger cities decrease tremendously in size, the distance factor from the edge of town to the center would be so great as to render the idea almost useless. A large city extends for miles, and is built up solidly with residences, factories, and business establishments thruout the entire area. In my own case, my job is some ten miles across town, and the distance has to be driven twice daily, yet both my home and business establishment are quite a distance inside the greater city area. I suppose that Stanley is considering some city of the future with a closely knit business center and homes stretching outwards from this center for miles, home which are not so closely packed together as those of today. Such a system is growing in popularity all the time, and every large city has many such suburbs whose inhabitants commute to the city itself to work. But it takes time to travel a great distance to work, more time than most people care to spend, and there will always be a tendency to live close to the place of employment. Also, businesses and factories tend to group fairly close together to make for more case in the interchangement of supplies and materials without which no business can survive. So I look for our city areas to grow larger, not smaller, from the standpoint of residences and business establishments both. I'm not enough familiar with any other of the really large cities, so will use
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