Driverless vehicle that uses sensors to measure road surface quality and repair small cracks to stop them turning into potholes and hopefully decreasing the cost of road maintenance while improving average surface quality.

  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    You mean trains, bikes, and good public transit? Because those all mean less wear and tear on the roads overall. Trust an American because we’ve been at this for seventy years. If you guys go all in on car dependency, it’s not only going to break the banks of government from local to national, but it’s going to break your bank and destroy what small businesses you have left.

    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
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      8 months ago

      Good public transit does not mean less wear and tear on the roads, absolutely not. As I stated in a different comment, a bus that replaces 10-20 cars causes similar road damage as 10000 cars. Which is fine, but for completely different reasons. Public transport is good because it allows more pedestrian-friendly cities, reduces pollution, etc; just road wear and tear is not one of the reasons why it’s good, it’s one of the drawbacks.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        Well, at least trams and trains don’t produce wear on roads, and a good freight train network reduces the need for heavy trucks.

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Good point, thanks for holding me accountable to the truth. We can’t set things right if we’re selling people a bill of goods; that’s what got us here in the first place.

    • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This guy acting like US invented cars and have divine knowledge from this experience.

      Dude, Europe got 10x better public transport and are far less car dependent than the US.

      Our cities are too old to be build with cars in mind.

      • schnokobaer@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        Our cities are too old to be build with cars in mind.

        Vast parts of the cities I lived in were completely bulldozed to accommodate cars.

      • Traister101@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        And yet you guys are attempting to follow in our footsteps with new construction. Also the US was also too old to be built with cars in mind, we bulldozed our cities for the car (ಥ_ʖಥ)

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The problem with potholes and road damage in the UK isn’t to do with not knowing where potholes are, it’s to do with councils having their central government funding taken away (cough 14 years of Tory rule cough)

    Local government funding has been cut to the bone, and roads, paths, community centres, libraries, council housing, homeless shelters, etc have all been paying the price.

    Assuming it works, this is still a cool project though.

    • QuantumBamboo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago

      Totally agree! This kind of technology will pay divends I’m sure in the long term as it matures, but as with all technological development it’s not likely to be a scalable, cost effective solution. For now, a government that understands the importance of infrastructure maintenance would do wonders.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    8 months ago

    Self-driving? Better round up a mob and torch it.

    They’d better not be training that AI on any potholes I helped create!

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I was just thinking about something like this for fixing road cracks, it could work like a 3D printer with a scanner on the front to follow the crack.

    As usual, my great ideas are about half a decade too late.

  • lemmus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Or just pay humans a living wage to do it today, no trial required.

    • RoboGroMo@slrpnk.netOP
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      8 months ago

      tarmacking is a horrible job especially at night, personally I’d rather reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance using automation and then pay people a living wage to do nicer jobs.

      • Spuddlesv2@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Bets on this actually reducing the cost of maintenance? I’d hazard a guess that it will cost more, fix less, and result in fewer local jobs. But the VC-backed overseas startup CEO will profit, so that’s something I suppose.

        • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It’s a fair guess, but my guess is the opposite. Prevention is far cheaper than repairing.

          And technological advances almost always comes out on top in terms of costs in the long run.

          And this is saving money for the government, not some CEO.

    • vext01@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      Looking at the decline around me, I doubt my local council has any money to employ said people. Our roads are full of potholes. Had a blowout on one not so long ago.

      If the government can’t get more money coming in to councils, this will have to do.