Live blog: More than 20,000 miles of GB roads need urgent repair, 2020 Road Worlds set for Netherlands and more

Regarding the Ozzy police story - respect to the police for straightforwardly admitting they got it wrong!

This will be used to justify banning cycles from the road, same as jaywalking rules were brought in in the US in the 20s in response to huge numbers of pedestrian fatalities. Note that sheriff's report mentioning that she wasn't on a crosswalk? Inherent, endemic victim-blaming is the norm for US police forces when it comes to RTCs.

 Agree about the pedestrian fatality. RIP and condolences to the family.

Cant help thinking thought that if it had not been a dirty great SUV that had hit the poor lady but had been a normal sized saloon she might have had a chance of surviving the impact. 

Maybe Uber should consider testing this technology in something that would have a slightly less devastating effect when something goes wrong, which by the way it appears to on more than one occaision.

It's rather sad about the fatality involving a self-driving car - RIP and my condolences to the family. I have to say that from what I know about the technology, it's perhaps not a surprise. The European motorcylist body FEMA has been warning about the risks from cars with semi-autonomous technology for some time. FEMA worked with some university researchers to study the shortcomings of semi-autonomous vehicles, following its initial concerns over the system used in the Tesla models. I've given a link to the study here but the basic problem is that the semi autonomous vehicle spot what's directly in front of them, but not to the side. Now since motorcyclists often don't ride in the centre of a lane due to issues such as road markings, metal access covers, potholes and asphalt joints, that's a fairly serious problem. The same problem will hold true for cyclists too and there have been concerns over how semi autonomous vehicles will detect a bicycle also.

The fully autonomous vehicles under test tend to have more technology onboard than the semi autonomous ones, but questions have to be asked about the algorithms used for predicting the behaviour of other road users and also about how these vehicles scan for other road users. Being able to detect just the vehicle ahead is not good enough. They have to be able to scan the road ahead across several lanes at once and there is laser and radar technology that will do this, but whether it has been fitted to the Uber vehicle has yet to be revealed.

Here's the link to the report.

http://www.fema-online.eu/website/wp-content/uploads/Final%20Report_moto...