sheep
BROAD Who’s Driving Your Plane?
Contents Small Ads 4 Art 6 Art workshops 9 Cinema 16 Dance 18 City tales 20 Food 21 Music 22 Music workshops 35 Venues 37 Band directory 38 Theatre 40 Word 44 Grass roots 46 Comp therapies 48 We take no responsibility for the veracity of the information herein Pete Mustill Mayfield, Stapleton, Nr Presteigne, Powys LD8 2LW Tel: 01544 260051 Email: info@broadsheep.com Website: www.broadsheep.com
Y
Rolling Stones B side ‘66
OU probably read about the first driverless car fatality. It happened a couple of weeks ago in Florida. A Tesla car with an automatic pilot system ran into the side of a white truck in bright sunlight while the driver was supposedly watching a Harry Potter film. Tesla immediately claimed this was the first fatality in 130 million miles of driverless cars, as distinct from the usual figure of one fatality per 90 million miles of conventional driving. Don’t worry, nothing is going to stop the march of the driverless vehicle, especially if Google has anything to do with it. They are up to their neck in driverless technology, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. (Google search refuses to tell me the exact amount!) So how is this going to pan out on the roads of Britain? I guess I can sort of imagine the M4 with three lanes of Google cars and the occasional Tesla, gently humming along exactly 30 feet away from the one in front and the one behind at a steady 69mph, while inside the vehicles contented little businessmen are busy clacking away on their laptops trying to finish their accounts before they get to Swindon. But there are a few typically British scenarios I find it much harder to envisage. 1. The early days. There will just be one or two self-driving vehicles on the motorway which is full of roadworks and traffic jams. Every time your self-drive tries to get 30 feet away from the car in front, some idiot in a white van jumps into the space. Your self-drive slams on the anchors, the bloke behind (a yobbo in a Citroen Saxo with a big exhaust) starts hooting and trying to ram you up the arse. Meanwhile the kids in the car next to you are leaning out the windows trying to watch your Harry Potter movie. It’s driverless hell on wheels. 2. Most people I know and 75% of the population (Broad Sheep estimated figures) drive ratty old 12 year old Renaults that barely scraped through the last MOT. Most of the rest drive uninsured 25 year old death traps (Broad Sheep estimated figures). What happens when they all start going wrong? What happens when the electronics on your computer start seizing up? One minute you are flat out, the next you are madly swapping lane to lane giving the passengers heart attacks and severly imparing your ability to concentrate on the plot of the Harry Potter movie. But most worrying of all - what happens to all those taxi drivers and posh people’s chauffeurs? Rolls Royce have already launched their new driverless prototype which is basically a large ‘World of Leather ’ sofa whith a roof and no visible wheels. It is also probably the ugliest car known to man. 3. This next is the really worrying point. How are driverless cars meant to cope with the Radnorshire lanes. When you get into that eyeball to eyeball situation on a single track lane, who backs down first if there is no driver? Will the autopilot know there is a large entrance to a field of cows just round the corner you can duck into? What happens when it encounters five very young and stupid six-week old lambs that need to be shepherded carefully back
through the hole in the hedge? I am also worried about the inevitable transfer of the technology to other transport vehicles. Obviously the tractor drivers are going to love it. (They are already on their mobile phones 24/7 as you may have noticed). In the future they will probably just be able to head off down the pub and leave the John Deere to plough up the bottom pasture on it’s own. But what about driverless motorbikes? How safe will they be? What about driverless bicycles? I mean literally driverless bicycles just driving around the roads getting in everyone’s way, with nobody on them! I’m sorry I know I’m a stupid old Luddite, but it’s just not going to work. We need a different vision of the future, something more sci-fi, something more HG Wells, and I think I’ve found it. For a long time I’ve been of the opinion that we need very small cars that don’t go very fast. It’s a no-brainer, especially considering how quickly we are trashing the environment. But being ‘only human’ we want something with a bit of style. The American car collector and chat show host, Jay Leno is a great fan of a designer called Randy Grubb. This is a picture of Randy’s Decopod scooter. My plan is you are given one of these fabulous Dan Dare looking scooters by the state when you are 18 and that’s it. If you want anything with a roof or that takes two or more people, you take a bus or a train on the new super countrywide national transport service. Otherwise you walk. Game over. All Britain’s congestion problems - gone. All emission problems - gone. All factories churning out Decopods as fast as they can. Hang on, this is beginning to sound a bit political. I was trying to stay off politics, I’ll leave that to Stef Mo. He’s much more amusing on page 20. Cover pic: Red Priest, Church Stretton Arts Festival, 8 August