h a l f b a k e r yExpensive, difficult, slightly dangerous, not particularly effective... I'm on a roll.
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No sale
A sponsored reminder-system | |
You’re a tourist from a keep-to-the-right country, driving a just-hired left-drive car.
You’ve had lots of information and help, so you feel quite confident.
But the crash-rate is high, so your hire company has installed a [sponsored] reminder system in each of its cars.
Every time you
use a direction indicator a pleasant voice will speak to you in your own language SD-AND-SO HOTELS REMIND YOU TO KEEP TO THE LEFT. HAVE A SAFE DAY.
You can switch off the system, but it comes on again with each engine restart.
If the audio system and the reminder are both on, the reminder switches off the sound while it is speaking.
I know the system will work because when voice-chips arrived 5 years ago, I hired at great cost a clever technician who made an excellent retrofit prototype.
Yeah, the system worked, but the concept didn’t because it was halfbaked from the start. No hire company or insurance company showed the slightest interest. I don’t blame them. I’d done no prior research.
“Never again,” said my wife, and I said, “Yes. Never again. I’ve found this site called The Halfbakery.”
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Annotation:
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While I haven't been in the situation of driving in a foreign country on "the other side of the road", I have driven rental cars with reminder stickers on the dash, aimed at the tourists. I found the stickers to be visually obvious without being "in your face", and that is how I would prefer it to stay. |
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Any sort of reminder that would constantly "remind" me would quickly become a pain (even if you can switch it off), and anything with negative connotations linked to an advertiser is in turn going to engender negative feelings toward the "sponsor", at least in my view. |
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This could be why no-one was interested in it before. |
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Mind you <chuckle>, a voice-chip programmed to say, in the event of an accident "I told you to keep left" might be amusing. |
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I've switched between driving in the UK and the US a number of times and found that the biggest reminder to staying on the correct side of the road is that you're sitting on the other side of the car from usual, changing gear with the other hand, looking the other way to check the rear view mirror, the brake and accelerator pedals are reversed(*), and so on.
(*) - only joking. |
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Am I missing the obvious? Surely the biggest reminder to drive the correct side of the road is the oncoming traffic if you get it wrong ? |
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Absolutely right. So it's very easy on long straight empty roads to find that you've drifted onto the other side of the road (happens a lot to British people visiting France). |
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What are you saying about my driving [po]? |
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Surely the solution is to teach all
nations how to drive properly on the left
as god intended? |
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This [rayfo] was one prolific baker. Not much lately, though. Hope he didn't lose a few billion more neurons. |
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