All posts tagged roads

  • The Weekend Australian Magazine story: ‘Roll On, Robot: Self-driving cars’, June 2016

    A feature story for The Weekend Australian Magazine, published in the June 18-19 issue. Excerpt below.

    Roll On, Robot

    Self-driving cars are fun, and they might improve safety, but are the regulators ready for them?

    The Weekend Australian Magazine story: 'Roll On, Robot: Self-driving cars' by Andrew McMillen, June 2016. Photo by Eddie Safarik

    On a midweek afternoon I’m standing on a busy street in inner-city Brisbane, watching traffic. The clock has just struck three, which means that school pick-ups are coinciding with tradies knocking off for the day from nearby construction sites. In a few minutes I’m passed by dust-flecked utes, sedans with baby boosters in the backseat, four-wheel drives, council buses, vans, motorcycles and hatchbacks. In control of each vehicle is a regular human driver – a fallible, distraction-prone entity with a limited field of vision.

    It could be any day, anywhere in Australia. But then a sleek grey car glides up to where I’m standing. If I wasn’t expecting it, I wouldn’t have heard it: the Tesla Model S is practically silent, powered by electricity stored in lithium-ion batteries rather than petrol. Its best trick, however, is hidden within the array of computer systems behind the dashboard, and it’s a feature that’s likely to change the nature of personal transport. In contrast to the other vehicles that have passed me this afternoon, this one has the ability to drive itself.

    The car’s owner, Jon Atherton, loves Tesla’s Autopilot feature. He recently engaged it at 4am one Saturday, soon after leaving his inner Brisbane home and merging onto the near-empty M1 motorway. For 75km or so, all the way to the Gold Coast, the car drove itself and its human cargo – Atherton and his 16-year old daughter, Minna – to swimming practice. From the driver’s seat he recorded a short video of the trip showing the car holding firm in a central lane and taking a slight corner at a steady speed of 103km/h. The steering wheel turns without Atherton’s touch. The footage, posted on Facebook, is at once eerie, futuristic and hair-raising.

    This technological shift towards automation presents a raft of challenging and complex issues for state and federal regulators. Adding to the complexity is the fact that Atherton woke up one morning late last year to find that the software system had automatically updated itself. Suddenly, Autopilot became a standard feature for tens of thousands of Tesla Model S owners across the world. How can state and federal governments regulate that kind of overnight innovation?

    ++

    I hop in the Tesla with Atherton that midweek afternoon and as we head north towards the airport he engages Autopilot with a subtle double-pull of the cruise control stalk located behind the wheel. In that moment, the trip shifts from test drive to joyride. It’s not until I witness his car driving itself, with my own fallible optical sensors, that the possibilities of this technology unlock in my mind.

    As we pass through the AirportLink tunnel at 80km/h, Atherton says, “It’s doing a pretty good job of keeping us safe, and balancing the distance between all of the things around us.” Just as a human would, I note. “The thing is, this computer is not distracted, or distractible,” he replies, looking me in the eye, hands off the wheel. “Even if somebody comes screaming up beside us, it’ll try to keep us out of trouble. If you started to show me a message on your phone, I could get distracted and veer off the road. But the car’s less likely to do that.”

    When Autopilot was first released, Atherton – a tanned, 50-year-old mobile app developer and entrepreneur – compared the feeling of handing over control to the software to relinquishing the driver’s seat to a learner driver. “I didn’t feel 100 per cent comfortable with something else being in charge,” he says. His anxiety soon passed when he saw how well the technology worked. That 4am trip to the Gold Coast in January is a perfect example. “It drove the whole way, and I didn’t touch the steering wheel or change the speed,” he says. “A couple of times cars pulled in front of us and it just slowed down, sat in the middle lane and cruised along.”

    At this stage, Tesla’s Autopilot cannot wholly replace a human driver: it requires well-painted line markings to locate the lane, its cameras can’t tell the difference between green and red traffic lights and it won’t obey stop signs – that’s still up to the human behind the wheel. Tesla advises against total hands-free driving and if a driver removes their hands, a display near the dash shows the message: “Please keep your hands on the wheel”. But essentially, the responsibility lies with the driver as to whether or not they do so.

    To read the full story, visit The Australian. Above photo credit: Eddie Safarik.

  • The Vine interview: David Roads of Airbourne, June 2011

    An interview with Airbourne for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Interview – Airbourne

    Airbourne are a rock and roll band from Warrnambool, Victoria. On face value, it appears that they like loud guitars, open chords, beefy drums, headbanging, and climbing scaffolding at festivals. They write songs with titles like ‘Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast’; ‘Blonde, Bad and Beautiful’; and ‘Cheap Wine & Cheaper Women’. At times, they sound a lot like AC/DC; which is to say, all of the time they sound a lot like AC/DC.

    Their website URL claims ‘Airbourne rock’. The cover of their most recent album, No Guts. No Glory. (yes, the punctuation is compulsory), features an artful drawing of the four band members looking very rock ‘n’ roll amid evocative “rock” symbolism. Which, to their credit, tells you exactly what Airbourne are all about before you even hear a distorted G chord.

    Witness: a smoke-belching industrial factory, including masculine workers exiting the gates, fists aloft; a doe-eyed woman in a bikini drinking a martini while covered in cash, empty shot glasses by her side; some young rockers/punks hoisting a skull-adorned flag on the edge of a cliff; and, best of all, a semi-trailer busting through a wooden barrier while being pursued by two helicopters and a light aircraft. The semi-trailer is driven by Lemmy – of Motorhead fame, who also appeared in their video for ‘Runnin’ Wild’ – but that’s not even the weirdest part of the album cover; which essentially a combination of everything that any teenaged male has ever mindlessly doodled in the margins of his high school notepads. No; the weirdest thing is that Lemmy’s semi is inexplicably pursuing a mini tornado. Yes.

    All of which makes them a very easy target for ‘serious music fans’—which, if I’m being honest, I probably consider myself to be. Meaning I’ve never paid much attention to Airbourne. The closest I’ve come is seeing them at festivals, watching from a hundred metres back with a smirk on my face, not really paying them attention or respecting them in any way whatsoever. Yet they’re probably among the most recognisable Australian bands at an international level—they’re signed to Roadrunner Records and are frequent festival bookings in both Europe and the United States. Yes, although there is a fair bit of cultural cringe attached to Airbourne,  it’s tough to deny that they’re good at what they do. And strangely, I couldn’t help but develop a newfound respect for Airbourne after chatting to guitarist David Roads (above, far right) for the first time, here now on TheVine.

    What does an average day look like for you, when you’re not out on tour?

    We’re very busy lately. We’re currently working on album number three. So at the moment we’re just kind of based in Melbourne and we’re rehearsing a lot. With the tour coming up next week, we’re starting to rehearse a lot more because we’re going back and [getting] the old stuff ready for the tour.

    What gets you out of bed each morning? What do you look forward to when you first wake up?

    Well lately, a sunny day! [laughs] The weather’s been so crappy here down in Melbourne. But, you know, we’re focused on what we’re doing at the moment with the album—I want to get in there and just make a rockin’ album. I guess our head’s in that at the moment, but [we’ll be] back around Christmas time. And we just got back from tour. We’re trying to have a bit of a break. We still did Big Day Out and stuff, but we’re kind of still in ‘work mode’.

    Do you view music as a job?

    Yeah, we’re full-time with the band. If we’re not off the road, we’re on the road, touring. And when we release new albums, we go overseas for the majority of the year. Last year we were over there for 10 months touring for No Guts. No Glory.

    If music is a job for you, what’s the most stressful part?

    You can call it a job. It’s our living but it’s not really…I guess job’s a bad choice of word. It’s a lifestyle for us. As musicians, we love playing rock and roll, we love touring as a rock band. There’s nothing real stressful. There’s a lot of fun involved. It’s like, if you love what you do, you’re living the dream, I guess. We have a lot of fun when on tour and all that kind of stuff.

    I guess sometimes it can get a bit stressful when you’re on the road. Sometimes when you’re sick of touring you can get sick with the flu, or a bad cold. That gets pretty hard, because the show goes on. You get up and have got to play that night. That can be about as stressful as it can get, really, I guess. But when you’re making an album it’s a bit stressful, because you’re still writing an album that’s going out to the world. You get in there and just do the best job that you can.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine. The music video for their song ‘Bottom Of The Well‘ is embedded below.