Scrutable

I suspect the actual asset knowledge to apply these obvious fixes is going to be the major limiting factor. I wouldn’t assume there’s a reliable database of all the bridges, junctions, power cables etc, services (like water, gas pipes) to avoid etc.

I would assume there will be a lot of people stood round holes in the ground scratching their heads for several decades.

Mate, there are only 2,300 miles of motorways in the UK, google could map it in five minutes.

Another memorable bridge strike, on the M20 a few years back. The digger on the back of the left lorry took out the footbridge and was stopped by it, looks like the lorry on the right was slowed a bit more gradually.

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:15 am

Mate, there are only 2,300 miles of motorways in the UK, google could map it in five minutes.

There are other overhead hazards. Fixed ones include gantries and signs which may not be so easy to identify from a satellite image. Temporary ones include scaffolding (eg reducing the height of a bridge or gantry) and power cables. They are unlikely to be picked up by Google.

This is so ridiculous. Google streetviewed every road in the country. A couple of cars could map every motorway every week. 2,300 miles is literally 65 hours 42 minutes and 51 seconds of driving at 70 mph. This madcap scheme is to invest billions in a recharge-as-you-go scheme for heavy freight and will include guide wires under the tarmac and whatever automation is available in the 2030s. They'll probably drive in conveys centimetres apart. I've no idea why people are obsessed with the idea that they'll be smashing into overhead stuff at every opportunity.

Probably because there are so many f.ckups at the moment, I guess. Lorry drivers often don't know how tall their lorries are, which is why we get all the fun smashies. No point in assessing every overbridge clearance to the milllllimetre if a divorced man with egg on his collar and a G in GCSE maths feels like chancing it.

TimW wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:25 am

Another memorable bridge strike, on the M20 a few years back. The digger on the back of the left lorry took out the footbridge and was stopped by it, looks like the lorry on the right was slowed a bit more gradually.

Can't make sense of what happened. The digger is on the hard shoulder and is undamaged, you'd think it would have been knocked off the back. I suppose the bridge could have just crumpled with a lateral blow leaving the digger undamaged. The lorry ran into the broken bridge presumably but didn't slow a bit more gradually, it'll have gone from 60 mph to zero in less than its own length.

I think the digger lorry was going fairly slowly, and ("therefore") driving on the hard shoulder, and was about to leave at the next exit having just joined at the previous one maybe. The lorry must have been stopped quickly, I guess the digger was moved backwards but the lorry had stopped before it went off the back.
The other one, I only mean a bit more gradually.

Whatever hit the pedestrian bridge must have managed to get under the sign gantry just before it. The arm of the orange digger is clearly too high to get under the bridge now but it's hard to be sure if it would have hit before the bridge fell. There's another yellow object on the low loader in front of the orange digger. It's hard to make out what it is but it's sitting at a rather jaunty angle. I wonder if that's what hit the bridge.

I suppose it's possible some part of the load swung out sideways and struck a support for the bridge rather than its deck.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/malling/ne ... ge-156977/

Google says he was only going 21 mph on the hard shoulder. Tip of the digger hit the footbridge. Presumably zero sideways rigidity.

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:27 am

TimW wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:25 am

Another memorable bridge strike, on the M20 a few years back. The digger on the back of the left lorry took out the footbridge and was stopped by it, looks like the lorry on the right was slowed a bit more gradually.

Can't make sense of what happened. The digger is on the hard shoulder and is undamaged, you'd think it would have been knocked off the back. I suppose the bridge could have just crumpled with a lateral blow leaving the digger undamaged. The lorry ran into the broken bridge presumably but didn't slow a bit more gradually, it'll have gone from 60 mph to zero in less than its own length.

There's a write up here. According to witnesses the digger on the back of the lorry hit the footbridge, and then the bridge collapsed and fell on the white lorry.

If you're into that sort of thing there's lots of footage on the interweb of lorries hitting bridges after a dump truck drove down the road with the trailer raised. That could be due to mechanical failure or driver error.

Here's some examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynoHxIzlbVA
https://youtu.be/O0c9DH9ZooI

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:06 pm

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/malling/ne ... ge-156977/

Google says he was only going 21 mph on the hard shoulder. Tip of the digger hit the footbridge. Presumably zero sideways rigidity.

Digger and a lorry have a lot of momentum

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:17 am

This is so ridiculous. Google streetviewed every road in the country. A couple of cars could map every motorway every week. 2,300 miles is literally 65 hours 42 minutes and 51 seconds of driving at 70 mph. This madcap scheme is to invest billions in a recharge-as-you-go scheme for heavy freight and will include guide wires under the tarmac and whatever automation is available in the 2030s. They'll probably drive in conveys centimetres apart. I've no idea why people are obsessed with the idea that they'll be smashing into overhead stuff at every opportunity.

Fair enough, they could outsource the sensors and use google cars or similar to make regularly updated digital maps of the motorway system. I was assuming that by google you meant using the satellite images used for Google Maps.

Woodchopper wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:09 pm

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:17 am

This is so ridiculous. Google streetviewed every road in the country. A couple of cars could map every motorway every week. 2,300 miles is literally 65 hours 42 minutes and 51 seconds of driving at 70 mph. This madcap scheme is to invest billions in a recharge-as-you-go scheme for heavy freight and will include guide wires under the tarmac and whatever automation is available in the 2030s. They'll probably drive in conveys centimetres apart. I've no idea why people are obsessed with the idea that they'll be smashing into overhead stuff at every opportunity.

Fair enough, they could outsource the sensors and use google cars or similar to make regularly updated digital maps of the motorway system. I was assuming that by google you meant using the satellite images used for Google Maps.

Why would you assume that? The several highest levels of detail in the "satellite" view in Google Maps are from aerial photography. Meanwhile, commercial photo satellites have a resolution of ~1 m. Google probably uses a wide variety of techniques to make the navigation maps, and not just (if it uses it at all) satellite photography.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:19 am

Probably because there are so many f.ckups at the moment, I guess. Lorry drivers often don't know how tall their lorries are, which is why we get all the fun smashies. No point in assessing every overbridge clearance to the milllllimetre if a divorced man with egg on his collar and a G in GCSE maths feels like chancing it.

The navigation system in an electric lorry equipped with overhead pantographs would very likely know how tall it is, though. After all, the pantographs will have to be at the right height (to some tolerance) to contact the overhead wires.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:21 pm

Woodchopper wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 1:09 pm

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:17 am

This is so ridiculous. Google streetviewed every road in the country. A couple of cars could map every motorway every week. 2,300 miles is literally 65 hours 42 minutes and 51 seconds of driving at 70 mph. This madcap scheme is to invest billions in a recharge-as-you-go scheme for heavy freight and will include guide wires under the tarmac and whatever automation is available in the 2030s. They'll probably drive in conveys centimetres apart. I've no idea why people are obsessed with the idea that they'll be smashing into overhead stuff at every opportunity.

Fair enough, they could outsource the sensors and use google cars or similar to make regularly updated digital maps of the motorway system. I was assuming that by google you meant using the satellite images used for Google Maps.

Why would you assume that? The several highest levels of detail in the "satellite" view in Google Maps are from aerial photography. Meanwhile, commercial photo satellites have a resolution of ~1 m. Google probably uses a wide variety of techniques to make the navigation maps, and not just (if it uses it at all) satellite photography.

You are of course correct. I don't know why I assumed it. I write in haste and repent at leisure.

Can't we just make Lorries shorter?

We could even move less sh.t about all over the place.

dyqik wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:26 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:19 am

Probably because there are so many f.ckups at the moment, I guess. Lorry drivers often don't know how tall their lorries are, which is why we get all the fun smashies. No point in assessing every overbridge clearance to the milllllimetre if a divorced man with egg on his collar and a G in GCSE maths feels like chancing it.

The navigation system in an electric lorry equipped with overhead pantographs would very likely know how tall it is, though. After all, the pantographs will have to be at the right height (to some tolerance) to contact the overhead wires.

Yeah, except they achieve that at the moment with springs, and no need to know how high the contact wire is at any given location.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:47 pm

dyqik wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:26 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:19 am

Probably because there are so many f.ckups at the moment, I guess. Lorry drivers often don't know how tall their lorries are, which is why we get all the fun smashies. No point in assessing every overbridge clearance to the milllllimetre if a divorced man with egg on his collar and a G in GCSE maths feels like chancing it.

The navigation system in an electric lorry equipped with overhead pantographs would very likely know how tall it is, though. After all, the pantographs will have to be at the right height (to some tolerance) to contact the overhead wires.

Yeah, except they achieve that at the moment with springs, and no need to know how high the contact wire is at any given location.

They know the range of travel of the pantograph. Any system that has one must have a specification of the range of heights that the wire could be in, and that the rest of the vehicle is always below.

lpm wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:27 am

TimW wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:25 am

Another memorable bridge strike, on the M20 a few years back. The digger on the back of the left lorry took out the footbridge and was stopped by it, looks like the lorry on the right was slowed a bit more gradually.

Can't make sense of what happened.

It's difficult to tell without seeing the bridge before the incident, but according to the reports linked in this thread the driver of the lorry carrying the digger had previously noticed something odd (which was the digger barely striking a previous bridge) and stopped to check (allegedly also to measure his vehicle). This, presumably, left him on the hard shoulder when he resumed the journey, explaining why he was there rather than in lane 1. Then he hit the bridge. An important factor is probably that bridges are not at a single fixed height - many have different height at different points with the lowest points being at the edges. It looks like that the struck side of the road is lower than the far side (see pic at https://www.kentonline.co.uk/malling/ne ... ge-156977/), so the bridge was probably at its lowest over the hard shoulder where it was struck. That would also explain why the digger went under the gantry yet hit the bridge. Or, alternatively, the earlier strike had moved the digger arm upwards.

Millennie Al wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 18, 2022 2:01 am

It's difficult to tell without seeing the bridge before the incident...

On Google maps you can click back through several previous photos back to 2015 when the old bridge is there. It looks as if it had its handrail replaced with a temporary railing for quite some time before the accident. Suggests it wasn't in the best of condition. There doesn't appear to be a significant deck height difference across the width of the road and it looks unlikely that one of the piers was struck.

https://goo.gl/maps/p5fZehVVmjJ3Swj16

Thing on BBC news tv this morning about some fancy new electric double decker bus with 5 batteries and a super efficient AC to extend its range (no pantygraphs needed).

I watched for about 5 mins and they still hadn't said what the range was, so I gave up.

Sounds promising anyway.

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:45 am

Thing on BBC news tv this morning about some fancy new electric double decker bus with 5 batteries and a super efficient AC to extend its range (no pantygraphs needed).

I watched for about 5 mins and they still hadn't said what the range was, so I gave up.

Sounds promising anyway.

Buses always seem to have a bit of a pause at the end of their route before turning round and heading back again. It should be trivially easy to put a few fast chargers at the bus turning roundy place (not a depot, as such) and give them a bit more juice anyway. Also, bus routes aren't all that long in most cities.

tom p wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 19, 2022 1:50 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 19, 2022 10:45 am

Thing on BBC news tv this morning about some fancy new electric double decker bus with 5 batteries and a super efficient AC to extend its range (no pantygraphs needed).

I watched for about 5 mins and they still hadn't said what the range was, so I gave up.

Sounds promising anyway.

Buses always seem to have a bit of a pause at the end of their route before turning round and heading back again. It should be trivially easy to put a few fast chargers at the bus turning roundy place (not a depot, as such) and give them a bit more juice anyway. Also, bus routes aren't all that long in most cities.

I suspect the idea is that they can run for a whole day's worth of routes without needing to stop and charge.