For most of 2019, the University of New England in Armidale hosted the trial of a driverless bus around our campus. And while I was able to take photos of the event, some of which were shown in an earlier post, I never hitched a ride. Now, the same bus is roaming around Armidale's CBD and a couple of days ago I decided to go for ride around town.
I headed down town and parked outside our police station, which is located c. 20 m from the main bus-stop, expecting I'd have to wait about 15 minutes for the bus to arrive. I got lucky. It had halted at a pedestrian crossing just a few meters away and I rushed across another road to take the first picture of the driverless bus arriving at the stop.
I got on board quickly to find that it had two occupants. One was the 'curator' of the bus who was the back-up should something go wrong with the system. On our trip, the only thing he did was to press a button to close the door. Oh well! To be fair, I should point out he insisted I buckle my seat-belt in case we had a collision! The other passenger was someone I assumed was a Chinese UNE student, though my assumption may have been wrong. We just smiled at each other and got on with the trip.
Here we are facing the driverless front of the vehicle about to go north along Faulkner street before taking a sharp right turn at the police station.
The trip went smoothly and a little bit faster than I was anticipating. And there were no fearful moments. Pedestrians and vehicles alike were given their respective rights of way and it was great fun. I took several movies with my smart phone, one of which is attached below. Apologies if it chews up too much of your internet download limits!
All up it was a great experience and a cute introduction to our likely motoring future. How many towns of c. 25,000 people around the world have an opportunity like this? Please let me know if you cannot see the video and tell me how to correct my error
AS
I headed down town and parked outside our police station, which is located c. 20 m from the main bus-stop, expecting I'd have to wait about 15 minutes for the bus to arrive. I got lucky. It had halted at a pedestrian crossing just a few meters away and I rushed across another road to take the first picture of the driverless bus arriving at the stop.
I got on board quickly to find that it had two occupants. One was the 'curator' of the bus who was the back-up should something go wrong with the system. On our trip, the only thing he did was to press a button to close the door. Oh well! To be fair, I should point out he insisted I buckle my seat-belt in case we had a collision! The other passenger was someone I assumed was a Chinese UNE student, though my assumption may have been wrong. We just smiled at each other and got on with the trip.
Here we are facing the driverless front of the vehicle about to go north along Faulkner street before taking a sharp right turn at the police station.
The trip went smoothly and a little bit faster than I was anticipating. And there were no fearful moments. Pedestrians and vehicles alike were given their respective rights of way and it was great fun. I took several movies with my smart phone, one of which is attached below. Apologies if it chews up too much of your internet download limits!
AS
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