In uk.transport.london message , Wed, 30
Jul 2008 10:51:34, Roland Perry posted:
In message
ps.com, at 01:36:45 on Wed, 30 Jul 2008,
remarked:
Just have some bleeper which gets more and more urgent and if the
computer thinks the bus is going to strike the bridge then it slams on
the breaks. The technology exists to do it.

"just" Hmm... Given that many bridges have very little clearance under
them, how will this device tell from sufficiently far away whether the
bridge is six inches too low, or six inches higher than required?


A large bar code on each bridge, and a scanner on each bus. With a
constant angular rate of scan, the bus could also tell its distance and
speed. One could use, for safety, a non-visible wavelength of light;
and the bar code might be all-gray in the visible.

Or use a dot-matrix font of cat's-eyes on the bridge; modern OCR should
be able to read that reliably, even in the presence of some white
dielectric substance.

Or sit the driver on the top deck.

--
(c) John Stockton, near London.
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