OT: cars at traffic lights

Better would be to reduce the intensity of brake lights at night.

Maybe it’s just a realisation by motorists that braking space needed increases with speed?

Tailgating really close used to be common. Thankfully these days people have more sense.

Tim

It's probably better than everyone trying to set off prematurely, then having to brake when they realise the car in front set off slower than they thought and having to brake, and that ripple of braking feeding backwards until they can all set off again for real.

No white van men, couriers, middle-management German car drivers, etc, round your way?

It never ceases to amaze me how car software engineers can come up with sensible new designs yet *never* seem to think them through properly. My Jazz has a very effective speed limit sign detector, but once the engine has been turned off it isn't intelligent enough to return to that limit when it's restarted. And, that, of course, is most likely to happen in a

Does it detect those speed limit indications on the backs of some continental HGVs, like mine does? Thus having the car think the speed limit is 120mph?

Though not completely simple in that case. Often a new start is a new driver (it is with our cars) and the new driver may prefer not to have to undo settings that the previous driver made, but to start from a known setting.

But not everything resets!

nib

No, that's always been the case. In a traffic queue of competent drivers, one car per lane will pass a green light about every one and a half seconds. This does not seem to depend on green phase length. Gaps of more than that appear when someone is definitely slow off the mark, taking time to remember where the gear lever is or something like it.

I don't think that's changed a lot, at least in urban or suburban driving. You're implying that general driving standards are improving, and I've certainly seen no evidence of that happening.

Cars work better now, which paradoxically may be making driving worse, as drivers no longer have to be so careful about some things.

and 4x4s

and ULVs.

While causing rear brake dazzle in the dark, to the car behind, which is annoying, especially when it is raining.

I think we have a long stretch of phased lights near where I live. I think the problem occurs when there is congestion and it is not possible to maintain the target speed. We have or had CITRAC which I suppose may follow a slightly different approach.

Just what you want when a stream of fast-moving cars comes to a halt, and you are at the end. Several hundred yards back you see another vehicle approaching you at speed ...

In message <v43npb$39bjl$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Jeff Layman snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid writes

Mine sort of does that. I think it has a database of speed limits for public roads (which can be wrong), so if I've stopped on a public road, then it gives me what it thinks is the right speed limit. However, if I've parked in a car park, then it doesn't.

Where it can get it wrong is when it sees a speed limit on a road that diverges at a gentle angle, so I could be told that the limit is (e.g.)

Adrian

Is it true or urban legend that a trolleybus could out-accelerate a sports car?

Well, it never sets the limiter anyway, that only happens when I press the button when the speed limit has been noted. That's fine and would meet your requirements. All I'm trying to get it to do is just note the speed limit when I turn the engine off and reset it to that number when I restart the car. As I mentioned above, It doesn't by default set the limiter with that number - I have to do that.

It's done it once or twice as I overtake the HGV, but it would be 60mph on the HGV in the red circle. Anything above that it ignores as being above the national speed limit, and marks the speed as derestricted (not as 70mph). As Adrian noted below, it does read side roads (and occasionally roads over the motorway if there's a sign there!). What it doesn't do, fortunately, is slam on the brakes, but just beeps loudly to warn me.

Almost certainly an urban legend after the first 5 yards! A trolleybus weighed around 10 tons empty, so would need quite a good power/weight ratio and good torque to out-accelerate a 1950s sports car. I have little doubt that the electric motor could supply the torque, but what was the power? Unfortunately a search failed to find specs for a relatively modern trolleybus motor - just that (mainly) it ran at 550V. If it's assumed it used 100A, that's still only 55kW, or just under

Having said that, I know that if you were standing and weren't holding on tight on a trolleybus and the driver accelerated away rather too quickly, you would soon move backwards down the bus!

For older trolleybuses, see