Average sort of news day, war in the middle east, former superstar dies at 90, politician charged with corruption, nothing out of the ordinary except for the one story at the end that suprised me and I would think, many others.
In Sydney, there was a guy on his way to work and was involved in a collision when a tyre blew and his car swerved into another. Fortunately there were only minor injuries and the road was cleared by Sydney automated Crash Clear in a few minutes. Traffic control central issued an automated alert and all other vehicles changed lanes and continued with diversions to allow the emergency vehicles through in priority mode.
Most people were only delayed for a minute or two at most, but the unusual point was that this was the first collision that involved human injury in the entire city in over a month.
With the passing of the new autonomous vehicle law and its enforcement last year, it meant that manual driving within the metropolitan area was now illegal. Since then the collision rate, and particularly the death and injury rate had dropped to historic lows.
I finished eating and voice called Valet. "Leaving for work 5 minutes"
I cleaned up, picked up my gear and walked out the front as the car pulled in to my drive.
It changed to my favourite colour and spoke as the door opened. "Good morning George, heading for the office as usual"?
I grunted an affirmative and engaged the in car display to get an early start on the day.
Having achieved several emails, two video calls and a lot of reading I had clocked up 30 minutes from my work quota before I got there.
I left the car at the kerb as it reconfigured itself for the next user.
I crossed the nearly deserted road to get coffee.
The coffee shop was a retro kind of place with old posters, one of which was a street scene taken from across the road looking back at this store from about 50 years ago. The contrast was striking. There were masses of cars waiting at the long since removed traffic lights and people waiting for them to change so they could cross. To the side was the multi story car park which is now an open area with gardens and fountains where I quite often spend some time at lunch.
As I get my coffee I hear an ambulance approaching, siren blaring to warn the pedestrians, the light poles start to flash automatically in a pleasing calidescope of colour as they receive the alert to warn the deaf people, and the not so deaf immersed in their music. The vehicle passes swiftly, unimpeded and the sound fades into the distance.
I walk back to my office for the rest of the daily grind.
At 3pm I have Valet call a car to take me to home and I get another 30 minutes work done on the way.
I find a parcel waiting at the door that I ordered online this morning and the auto delivery got it here before I did, better than standing in a queue as I used to do.
Tonight I will have a car pick me up and several friends on the way and we can have a nice evening at a restaurant without having to worry about a "skipper" staying sober to drive home or worrying about finding parking in the city centre.
There was a brawl in the street tonight and the police were there within a minute. No traffic patrols, breathalisers and high speed pursuits for these boys in blue.
They now get to focus more on real policing and the response time shows, as it does for ambulances and emergency rooms with car crashes out of the scene.
We can all feel safer on the street now on multiple levels.
Valet gets me a car and I can catch a few minutes of my favourite streaming show on the way home after checking and responding to a few private emails.
I reflected as I drifted off that night about how much more time I have now, useful time that I can enjoy with far lower stress levels than I used to have driving or on public transport.
At last Technology has caught up with people and become transparent, where things like Valet have become pretty much a silent servant.
Now technology works for us, we don't have to work to make it work, and it works very, very well.
No comments:
Post a Comment