Signal to noise ratio
They could get rather a lot of 'pot hole' reports if it's taken where vehicles with a Landrover badge are supposed to be driven...
Future Range Rovers will report pot-holes directly to councils
Jaguar Land Rover is building an experimental Range Rover which can automatically spot and report potholes. The system is akin to one Volvo and Ericsson have been working on to spot icy patches on roads. The Jaguar Land Rover system uses the MagneRide suspension already offered on the Evoque and Discovery Sport. It records …
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Thursday 11th June 2015 16:49 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Signal to noise ratio
It'll probably have to suffer that indignity for a while, but even range-rovers sometimes get to enjoy themselves when they reach retirement age
That is not a RangeRover.
That is a DeRangeRover. I regularly see one in my local supermarket parking lot with mud up to the roof and exactly that spelling on the badge (with all the letters at different angles). An original MK1 if memory serves me right too.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 10:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Signal to noise ratio
Or they are smart enough to know they NEED 4x4 to survive the pot-holes...
My drive to town is an obstacle course where I have to drive over the entire road (both sides) to avoid pot holes and drops in the road! When a car is oncoming the sensible slow right down to a crawl..
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Thursday 11th June 2015 12:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Signal to noise ratio
"It's almost as if drivers of the chosen vehicles are not smart enough, or are too arrogant, to drive around potholes."
You don't always have a choice. The road I take to work is liberally strewn with potholes many of which you can only avoid by driving on the "wrong" side of the road - not easy when faced with an Artic filling that side and part of your side of the road as well.
And no, I don't have a 4x4 just an ordinay saloon.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 10:27 GMT Pen-y-gors
Re: What a great idea
Obviously they won't do anything - government policy for years (for all shades of government, but particularly the current lot) has been to give councils a long, long list of things they MUST do (house people, care for the elderly, educate children etc) but then starve them of funds to do them, so anything that isn't totally life-threatening doesn't get done - and that usually includes road repairs.
I think the theory has been that if we cut government services and functions(except surveillance), and thus cut taxes, people can choose how to spend their money and buy services themselves from private companies. Unfortunately I don't see how I can choose to spend my money on pot-hole repair. Are we expected to go out with our own bucket of tarmac and big boot to stamp it down? Or have a whip-round down the street and pay to get Wimpey's in with a steamroller?
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Thursday 11th June 2015 14:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What a great idea
"Unfortunately I don't see how I can choose to spend my money on pot-hole repair."
I offer you a 90% guaranteed solution that involves a small amount of your money and a permanent repair:
When nobody's around, stick a bag of post-mix concrete in the hole. No skill or talent is required on your part other than common sense of not being seen, and not getting run over. Then, when the post-mix has set, phone the council reporting that persons unknown have done a DIY pothole repair that you don't think is safe, and they'll be out like a shot to fix it, not because of the safety issue (as the original pothole was probably a bigger concern) but because somebody has infringed their monopoly of fixing potholes (or not).
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Thursday 11th June 2015 16:19 GMT Anonymous IV
Re: What a great idea
> When nobody's around, stick a bag of post-mix concrete in the hole. ...
> Phone the council ...
This would appear to work only for a single pothole, since on attempt #2 some suspicion may be engendered in even the most unintelligent member of the local Highways Department.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 15:35 GMT Mendy
Re: What a great idea
"Unfortunately I don't see how I can choose to spend my money on pot-hole repair."
This is something it's worth contacting your local councillor about as they can and do (within the constraints you mentioned) influence where money is spent. Trunk roads and Motorways are the responsibility of central government though.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 13:27 GMT TeeCee
Re: Christ, I though the roads were bad...
Range Rover and their cars don't care at all.
But their customers are mostly the sort of bling-obsessed rich twats who feel the overwhelming urge to fire a twat-o-tronic outburst at the local council if their backsides are faced with a less than cosseted ride and that's who this system is aimed at.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 10:19 GMT Douchus McBagg
used to work for a research team that had a 4096 parallel processor core machine. the main government contract they had was high resolution imaging, mapping, and processing in a unit small enough to fit in a van to analyse road surfaces for cracks, de-lamination, frost damage, all the way up to pot holes. roads could be monitored, and repaired before major problems occurred.
so while this is a step forward, I suspect this is basically getting someone else to do the data gathering using (what I suspect to be comparatively poor - but will probably get better) commodity hardware.
this idea has been around for years, and implemented in various ways, the advantage here now, is cheapness. Councils just get a bundle of data without the expenditure of money, time and effort, or having to go and get it.
http://www.netlib.org/utk/papers/advanced-computers/gamma-II.html
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Thursday 11th June 2015 17:43 GMT Tom 13
Re: Councils just get a bundle of data without the expenditure of money, time and effort,
Pointless. A couple months ago a buddy of mine lost two wheels (not tires, wheels) to a road in Philadelphia. There's no way in hell they didn't know that road needs to be repaired. It wasn't a case of trying to avoid some potholes, it was a matter of deciding which potholes offered the best chance at successfully traversing the road.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 19:23 GMT PNGuinn
Re: Potholes - theres tool for that.
More fool you. Try steel - its a lot stronger, and 20 or so years on after a lick of paint or two still looks like new.
Has another advantage - You don't get the problem of the pathetic coating of cheap varnish on the bead seats breaking down and letting than nice alkaline tyre fitters gunk delaminate the cheap varnish and corrode the ally beneath.
I've got better things to do than pump the bloody tyres every week.
Tip. When you've brought the rims back home from the fitter and cleaned 'em carefully with wet and dry get the blighter to fit the new tyres using Waxoyl rather than his patent bath soap. The small quantity of solvent wont hurt the rubber - it'll just diffuse through - and the wax will protect the rims and ensure a superb seal.
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:38 GMT MJI
I like running boards
I can get in them!
As to my car not being an off roader if it has them.
Got good stuff like high axle articulation.
Active anti roll bars which act as disconnected off road
4W traction control
centre diff lock
Off road height setting (on the back)
Correct badge on steering wheel
I have fitted extended breathers
Does green laning with no problems
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Thursday 11th June 2015 11:09 GMT Boris the Cockroach
when
the various councils can be arsed to make the repairs..
Eg a section of busy dual carridgeway near here was built using a concrete road surface, declared too noisey by the local people rich enough to afford better lawyers than the council , it was covered over in a layer of tarmac to quieten the noise.
Only trouble is.. the tarmac is seperating from the surface underneath and the holes are spreading fast....
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Thursday 11th June 2015 11:48 GMT JimmyPage
Oh for fucks sake
The problem with potholes in the UK is not because there's any lack of channels to report them. It's the fact that once reported, fuck all happens.
We had an ever growing crater in our road for 2 years - reported by every resident many times. It only got fixed when I enquired about purchasing the mineral rights.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 12:15 GMT Kubla Cant
Reporting potholes
I have read in the past that it's easier to get compensation from a council if the pothole has previously been reported to them, presumably because they have willfully neglected to repair it. If that's the case then it can only be a good thing if there's a continuous electronic stream of reports being submitted by cars.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 12:55 GMT Tristan
I believe (I read it on the internet...) that damage to your car caused by driving into a pothole which has not been reported to the the council is your problem, and if it has been reported it's their problem. So, reports generated and sent automatically (at least in Chelsea) can only be a good thing.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 15:34 GMT Mendy
"I believe (I read it on the internet...) that damage to your car caused by driving into a pothole which has not been reported to the the council is your problem, and if it has been reported it's their problem."
It's a bit more complicated than that. As I remember it (in days of higher funding)...
If a problem has been reported to the council and they have not fixed it in an adequate time for its severity they are liable.
Otherwise a council has a defence under s58 of the Highways act if they can prove they weren't negligent in maintaining the highway. A council would have a policy for how often they would check different classes of road (so perhaps 3 times/year in the town centre, once in a remote location). The council would then dispatch a chap to go down the road and record any defects they found which if sufficiently serious would be fixed.
So - if you had damaged your car the process in addition to asking the council if they knew about the defect would be to ask for their inspection records to see if they covered that role. If they had you might also argue that the defect was of a kind that must have been present at the last inspection so they missed it.
Some councils have(had) decided that rather than spend money on a legal defence it was generally better to settle out of court rather than pay the costs associated in defending the claim.
"So, reports generated and sent automatically (at least in Chelsea) can only be a good thing."
Not entirely - at least from the council perspective. In an ideal world a council would never fix pot holes. Pot holes are (by area) very expensive to fix (perhaps less so than legal liability) and are just a temporary solution. The most efficient way of maintaining the network is to monitor and predict the wearing of entire sections of road (such as by using HGV traffic estimates) and then replace it at once before any appear.
It's a bit of a vicious circle as the less money a council has for preventative maintenance the more potholes will appear and the more of their budget will be taken up with these inefficient stop gaps.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 13:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
I live in a nation with better solutions..
.. if there are enough potholes in the road they get at least the budget for a "bad road surface" sign.
It doesn't fix the problem, but it's the cheapest way to still develop a feeling of accomplishment.
Now, as an aside, real time detecting and even signalling potholes is IMHO a far better solution than whingeing about it like Google does in relation to its automated cars.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 15:24 GMT Alan Brown
Re: I live in a nation with better solutions..
Councils _GOT_ extra budget for bad roads.
And generally pissed it away doing consultations on how to fix the bad roads, rather than actually getting on with the job.
The one who actually patch potholes often farm it out to the cheapest bidder, resulting in the same hole needing to be filled 3-4 times in as many months. I've seen patches disintegrating in less than 24 hours, reported it and then observed it not be repaired for months.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 13:32 GMT Jess--
around here the nearest "main" road is bad enough that is managed to break various parts of my rear suspension (on a toyota landcruiser) and rip the front fairing off at least 2 normal cars that I have seen (by normal I mean totally factory original / not lowered etc)
it's fairly common to see a fresh scrape in the road followed by a nice streak of black oil followed by a black puddle (suggesting someone has lost their sump)
the councils solution on this road has been to put up uneven road signs and steadily lower the speed limit on the road (it's currently down to 20mph from 60)
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Thursday 11th June 2015 13:32 GMT sandman
Poor orphan
We have a street next to our house, part of which is an "orphan road". Essentially it doesn't belong to anyone - not even the council. For quite a few years this little stretch was left unrepaired until NASA could have asked the council if they could use it for Mars Rover trials. Now it's beautifully smooth and used by some drivers to see if they can exceed Mach 1.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 16:21 GMT Mark 85
There's income (profit) potential here...
Hit a pothole, that car reports it to other cars and the local authorities. This infomations is immediately forwarded to an advertiser offering new tires and/or wheel alignments.
No dollar sign (profit) icon so I'll use the advertiser's icon ---------->
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Thursday 11th June 2015 16:24 GMT Luiz Abdala
Future Range Rovers will report inability to dodge pot-holes directly to councils.
Fixed it for ya. Because you only fall in pot-holes if you can't dodge them by going into oncoming traffic, killing pedestrians on the sidewalk, etc etc etc...
Unless you have a death wish and wants all the pot-holes in your route dutifully reported. But I recommend you do that with the mayor's car, not yours.
A little pedantic, but yes, some potholes around here are likely to break your car permanently and in such an horrific fashion that no transmitter may survive.
I would do it on purpose on speed bumps, though, thus declaring they are potholes, and have them leveled out.
On second thought, around here I would reverse the transmitter to broadcast which sections of road are NOT potholes. Less data to transmit.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 19:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Now if they could fit this to all the lorries/trucks that are destroying our roads, that would be great. It irks me that the powerful road haulage lobby want to pay next to nothing in taxes and duty, which got to repair roads, but yet rely on these roads for their profits.
It's even worse here in the States, the freeway system, supposedly the life-blood of commerce, is crumbling and nobody wants to pay to fix it.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 23:09 GMT asdf
careful
I too am one to complain about the lorries/trucks as their drivers are often arseholes to boot (wasn't always the case until recently) but considering many urban people (at least in US) are three days away from being out of food without the trucks, they serve their purpose. To bring us shit we want/need.
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Thursday 11th June 2015 20:38 GMT x 7
if fewer people drove these oversized gas guzzling overpowered road-shredders around town, then there would be fewer potholes to repair.
part of the problem with road wear is when these overpowered beasts accelerate in low gear and rip the tarmac surface away. Yes I realise buses and trucks are to blame as well, but theres little alternative there. However most people who use 4x4s around town really only need a mini. These things should be taxed out of existence
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:52 GMT MJI
Re : s 7
I have an off roader and it has a smaller foot print on the road than some Minis.
So I am supposed to get another car for the occasion I drive into the town centre? Whereas I commute into the country along roads liable to flooding if the rain is a bit heavy.
Rip tarmac to shreds, don't think my car has the power, but it does spread all the power to 4 wheels. UNLIKE a wrong wheel drive Mini. Less likely to rip roads apart.
I am also supporting British industry. OK mainly British.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 17:17 GMT x 7
Re: Re : s 7
@MJI
If you have a 4x4 that small I can only assume you have a FIAT Panda - in which case my comments clearly don't apply to you. Otherwise claiming you have a 4x4 with "a smaller footprint....than some minis" is probably total bull.
As for " I commute into the country along roads liable to flooding if the rain is a bit heavy.".......Oh yeah? Wheres that and how often does it happen? A few puddles doesn't equate to flooding. Flooding is what happened in Somerset last year, or Carlisle a few years back. No 4x4 is going to get you through real floods unless its waterproofed and snorkeled. Whereas most normal road cars can adequately cope with puddles - unless theres a problem with person controlling the steering wheel.
As to your question "So I am supposed to get another car for the occasion I drive into the town centre?" the answer is clearly YES!!!!!! If you have enough money to throw away on vapid vanities like pointless 4x4 vehicles then you can clearly afford a normal car for normal use.
Lets face it, three kinds of people make up the majority of 4x4 drivers
1) Rich gits who use them as status symbols (often as vanities for their trophy wives)
2) Fat bastards who can't fit into, or are too lazy to get down into, normal cars. (Note - often synonymous with (1)
3) Caravan dwellers / scrap dealers / tarmac gangers- often synonymous with both (1) and (2), but with the added bonus that the car is of dodgy heritage.
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:00 GMT All names Taken
Best approach?
(But first - Joke Alert: Local guvmint in the UK should have a large penis drawn about it?)
Any way it doesn't matter too much if the data were uploaded realtime - guvmint computer operators are dab hands at manipulating the databases anyway.
So really the best place the data should be uploaded to is our UK friendly and independent motoring bodies (RAC, AA, National or even Halfords?) with copies going automatically to guvmint database.
In fact, the data should be uploaded to an independently run database allowing free access by all and any with no editing rights afforded to either?
Definitely not to Highways Agency, local guvmint, central guvmint or any direct/indirect guvmint funded organisation.
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Friday 12th June 2015 13:25 GMT 2Fat2Bald
You'd have thought...
Range Rover (who only make SUV-Type vehicles) would be all over the idea of Potholes on the UK roads.
On every rational level a traditional saloon would make more sense for the vast majority of drivers. About the only rational argument for the RR is the supposedly appaling state of the roads, so clearly it isn't in RR's interests to be repairing the roads!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
