There was an article recently I spotted about the founder and chief executive of the British driverless car company FiveAI.
Just the sort of driverless car I would consider buying as it would not only have been built in Britain, but it would have been fully tested against all the British driving foibles that we have.
But hang on a minute the article says it is running driverless car tests in South London.
South London is the area south of the River Thames consisting of the London Borough of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Richmond, Southwark, Sutton and Wandsworth.
I must admit that this is an area I know very little about and was curious as to whether South London would be a good place to run tests and what unique situations would it throw up. So, I hit the search engines and apologise if the following are not true South London.
My initial observations are that the driverless car tests will pick up the usual hustle and bustle and the various peculiarities involved with school drop offs/pick- ups. Also, there are tourist sites like the Cutty Sark so the test should be able to cover crowds of tourists wandering around aimlessly forgetting about roads and road users.
A few obvious things that the test is not likely to cover in South London are midges, sheep on the roads, towns with long name lengths and complexity as can be found in parts of Wales, tractors/combine harvesters…, areas i.e., North Norfolk where there is no/very little Wi-Fi or places like Scunthorpe which has unintentional blocking on some computer systems/search engines because it contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene meaning.
Unfortunately, the test car will not come across any of the UK’s creepiest roads in South London either. The test cars cameras will not pick up the ghostly peasants/ghostly horse drawn carriages/ eyeless ghouls and screaming hags that live on the A75 in Scotland. Its cameras will also miss out on the ghostly figure that inhabits The Devil’s Highway (A666, Bolton).
If the testers do want to test its cars for ghosts though a short trip across London to B519 in Hampstead might be worthwhile in the hope that it might come across the highway man ghost that stalks the road.
I did come across an article though about the Catford Centre where it appears there is a large cat attached to the sign that over hangs the road. Driverless cars will have cameras looking out for any obstacles or dangers and so I wonder what the test driverless car would make whilst approaching a large airborne cat ready to pounce on it. Perhaps it would it see it as a danger and therefore plan a safe route around to avoid it which could be a problem if you do actually need to go to the Catford Centre.
On a similar vein I did see that if you go to Borough High Street there is Maya House which as part of an art installation “Walls and Trumpets” has 3 blue men that depending on your view are either climbing up or falling down the outside wall of the building. Driverless cars I would suspect would be programmed to report through if they see anything/anybody in danger. I suspect the driverless car would, unless otherwise programmed, mistake the 3 blue men as having fallen off the roof and report it to the local police. I can see police in Borough police station commenting “not another bloody driverless car reporting an accident at Maya House”
I did come across Leake Street which has London’s longest graffiti tunnel. The walls of the tunnel are covered in graffiti. I am not sure if cars can still use it but looking at the amazing drawings, I did wonder what a driverless car would make of the pictures as it drove through it. I expect it could be a slow process as the car would need to analyse each drawing and need to work out whether it was still safe to continue. Obviously, graffiti of this standard is not going to be found all over Britain, but a driverless car may still have to scan graffiti whilst on its travels. You might find that the more realistic murals might slow the driverless car down whilst it decides that the painting can be ignored, unless of course it finds a new Banksy and you would obviously want the car to stop and tell you so.
I also came across Roupell Street that has Georgian houses, a Victorian school and you will have seen it used in lots of television programs set in older times. It says that it is like stepping back in time so curious what a driverless car would make of it then.
My search also revealed that there is a dinosaur park at Crystal Palace. Invariably parks like this will have exhibits around the entrance and car park. I wonder therefore what a driverless car would make entering the dinosaur car park to be met with a tyrannosaurus rex exhibit in the car park, if it trolled though the internet it might come across scenes from Jurassic Park and as such will beat a hasty exit with alarm bells going off in the car.
Another article I came upon was concerning Brixton which historically has never had the best of reputations. This article didn’t help the reputation either as it sadly reported about a drive by shooting. Unfortunately, this highlighted that there may well situations in the future where the benefits of a driverless car will be used to benefit the criminal fraternity.
Driverless Cars will never take off 