Computer-controlled transport a recipe for disaster?
By: Robert Palmer | Posted: 27th March 2007
I think computers are brilliant.
I used one to write this article, and you're using another one to read it. In between us is a great sea of server computers, workstations, public access terminals, home PCs: the internet. It links us all together, it links us to a wealth of useful information, and, provided we take regular breaks and see the sunshine every once in a while too, it can genuinely enhance our lives.
Take cheap car insurance, to pick one out of millions of examples. Before home computers and the internet, buying motor insurance was a seriously hit-and-miss affair. Comparing quotes over the phone or going up and down the high street is an exhausting and hopelessly inefficient process � no wonder most customers back then stuck with the same car insurance firms year in, year out.
Today, finding and purchasing the best car insurance deals available is a quick, painless process � and it's all thanks to the internet.
The personal computer has surely earned its place in British homes. However, computers are increasingly to be found in other places - places where, in my opinion at least, they have no proper right to be.
Take trains, for instance, and the railways in general, where the integration of robot personalities never fails to offend. First we had the introduction of digital announcers on station platforms � something I've no problem with when the trains are running on time, but find uniquely unsatisfying when the train home is running twenty-nine minutes late and the pre-recorded, computer controlled, utterly unfeeling voice chimes in with: "I am very sorry to announce�"
The latest thing to go digital were announcements made inside the train. These are even worse than on the platform, because the majority of such on-board systems suffer from a glitch which prevents them from identifying certain stations, listing stops in the correct order, or just saying anything at all. In every case, the conductor � who is much better suited to this job than a computer could ever be � has to stand in, either by filling in the gaps or shouting over the top.
In fact, several times I've overheard train staff talk about �rebooting' a particularly difficult train, as thought it were one giant computer.
What makes computers so fundamentally unsuitable for use on the railways, and indeed in any other form of transport, is the issue of their reliability. Digital technology promises a great deal, but ultimately, it's just one more thing to go wrong.
A computer crash is no big problem if you're playing a racing game on your PC � but what if you're racing to a works' conference and it kills your sat nav? Or your traction control? The consequences of computer malfunction in this context could be all too serious, both for your health and your chances of finding cheap car insurance.
And how about if the software controlling your local robotic parking garage swallows your car up and won't release it?
This last one has actually happened, in Hoboken, New Jersey, in August 2006.
The city of Hoboken is one of a handful worldwide to have invested in a �fully automated parking structure': the Garden Street Garage. Billed as the ultra-high efficiency alternative to regular multi-stories, it's filled with a network of independently-roving robotic lifts in the place of standard parking spaces. According to the designers, these will whisk your car away on arrival and deliver it back within 30 seconds of your return.
However, that short delay increased to a wait of three or four days for some unfortunate motorists, when software licences on some of the systems managing the garage were not renewed.
In common with most commercial computer systems, the hardware at Garden Street � the structure, lifts, microchips and so on - is owned by the end user, in this case the city of Hoboken. But the software programs that tell that hardware what to do are licensed by the user, and expire after a fixed term.
When that term ran out at Hoboken the whole system ground to a halt, trapping hundreds of cars inside. Suddenly New Jersey motorists had a lot more to worry about than where the next cheap car insurance deal was coming from - their cars were trapped in a giant robot structure that had been designed specifically to keep them out.
Though the cars were freed in a few days, it would be months before the dispute between city officials and the IT company who controlled the software was resolved. And of course this resolution was a strictly temporary one, as the licence comes up for its next renewal in three years' time.
It just goes to show - computers may well be the way of the future, but, at least where transport is concerned, we need to be more careful before putting such blind faith in them.
Hoot Car Insurance - Computer-controlled transport a recipe for disaster?
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Hoot Car Insurance Providers of cheap car insurance for young drivers
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Tags: glitch, personalities, robot, trains, personal computer, conductor, home computers, workstations, public access, motor insurance, best car, railways, cheap car insurance, insurance firms