935. Terrible Traffic Jams & Self-Driving Cars 🚗 (Topic & Vocabulary)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Speaker 4 (01:18):
You're listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information visit
teacher Lukes dot co dot uk. Hello listeners, Welcome back
to Luke's English podcast. Are you ready for some more
English listening practice? Yes you are, okay, let's get started then,

(01:38):
And just to begin this one, I want to tell
you about something that happened to me last summer. So
for our summer holiday last year, my family and I
went to Los Angeles to stay with my cousin and
his family. It was lovely and while we were there,
we rented a car. Of course, because you can't just

(02:01):
be you can't exist in Los Angeles without a car.
There's a lot of driving that has to be done
everywhere in the city. So we were driving around in
this car one day, driving down the highway on the
way to somewhere, my wife next to me, two kids
in the back, and driving along this big, multi lane highway,

(02:22):
and just in front of us there was this interesting
looking car with what looked like a sort of camera
attached to the roof, and I said, oh, look, is
that one of those Google cars. Is that one of
those Google Maps StreetView cars, because you know those, you
see them occasionally driving around. It's a Google car with

(02:44):
a camera on the top and it's capturing images for
Google StreetView. You know, when you go into Google Maps,
you can access StreetView and essentially you can just like
travel around most of the roads in the world and
actually have a look around. It's incredible. And every now
and then you see the Google car driving around. So
I said, is that the Google car? And I overtook

(03:07):
the car. And as we overtook it, we all had
a look at the car, you know, just sort of
had a look see who was driving. There was no
one in the car. It was completely empty. There was
nobody in the driver's seat. The car was just driving itself.
It was an automatic driverless car, a self driving car,

(03:28):
and it was a weird thing to see. I don't
know if you've ever seen one. Have you ever seen
a driverless car? A car just driving itself down the road,
surrounded by other cars, other vehicles. So we're all there,
all of us humans driving cars down the street, and
then there's just this driverless car with no one in

(03:48):
the driver's seat. It's bizarre. It's really bizarre to see.
But I think it's probably going to be something that
we see more and more, isn't it. Because as you
may know, driverless cars are going to be a thing.
They are the future, this is what people say. So
it's only a matter of time before we start seeing
these things every day, really, and you might you might

(04:11):
be able to point out the moment when you first saw,
you know, a driverless car, your first driverless car. Well,
that was mine on holiday in La And not only that,
there were other funny little things that we saw as well.
So we were having breakfast in a kind of cafe,
sitting on a sitting at a table outside the cafe,

(04:34):
just sort of in the street and eating our breakfast,
and this little thing, this little robot came rolling down
the street, a kind of a box on wheels, just
just came rolling down the street next to us, and
it was it's like a delivery droid, like a kind

(04:56):
of little robot that delivers packages. I think it was
a or something like that FedEx or something, just an
automated delivery bot, which was another funny thing. And my
daughter was very amused by this, and we kept seeing them,
kept seeing these things.

Speaker 5 (05:12):
It's so weird.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's like something out of Star Wars, it really is.
And I guess, I guess that's kind of normal in
La or I suppose or certain other parts of California
that you see these sorts of things, And yeah, we'll
probably see these things more and more in other parts
of the world as well. But have you ever seen
a driverless car? Can you remember where you were when

(05:34):
you saw your first driverless car? And have you come
across any similar kind of technology like that? Now, this
episode of the podcast, it's all about self driving cars.
It's all about traffic, it's about driving, it's about traffic jams,
and it's about technology and the future specifically how this

(05:54):
relates to driving. Another question for you at the beginning?
What is traffic like where you live? Do you live
in a city, do you live in an urban area?
What's the traffic like? Is it absolutely terrible like it
seems to be in most places. I feel like traffic
is a major problem in our lives. There seems to

(06:19):
be more and more cars on the road. Traffic jams
are just terrible. What is the solution? Are self driving
cars the solution to this? And how how could they
solve our problems with traffic jams and everything. That's what
this episode is all about. And just before I begin,
I want to do the usual thing and set myself

(06:39):
a thirty minute timer so that I can remember to
drink water, because this might be a long episode, and
it would be terrible, wouldn't it If I got so
dehydrated that I just passed out in the middle of
the episode. It ends up being like a ten hour episode.
You know, ten hours later I wake up, you know, water,

(07:00):
So I have to make sure I drink some water.
So let me just set my timer and it could
be a little reminder for you as well to have
a little drink of water as well. We have to
stay hydrated. Siri, set a thirty minute countdown timer.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
Please.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
Okay, it's happening right, So without any further ado, let's
get started, and I'm going to read from a PDF.
In this one, I've prepared it in advance. You can
get the pdf. There's a link in the description. Okay,
so let's go to the pdf in five four three
two one puh, here we go. Terrible traffic Jams and
self driving Cars topic and vocabulary you'll see on the PDF.

(07:40):
First of all, you've got the contents of the PDF.
It's in two parts. The first part is the transcript
or notes for the episode. That's what I'll be reading
through in just a moment. And the second part of
the pdf is a vocabulary list with definitions and examples.
If you look at the pdf, you'll see that some
bits of vocab are highlighted in blue. Those are the

(08:00):
things that are included in the list, and those are
things I will try to explain during the episode.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
If I can.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
So let's begin. Then this is an episode overview. First
of all, in this episode, I'm going to talk about
these things, the exciting topic of driving cars and getting
stuck in traffic jams, How exciting, why traffic jams happen,
how we can fix the problem of traffic in our lives,

(08:28):
self driving cars and how they might or might not
be the solution, and the future of urban spaces and roads.
And when we talk about urban we're talking about built
up areas in cities. For example, you have urban meaning
places like in the city, and then you have rural, right,

(08:49):
that's are you are al. Rural means in the countryside.
So urban means in the town or city, rural meaning
in the countryside. So I'm going to break down during
the episode. I'm going to break down a fascinating video
on YouTube about this subject and I'll go through the
transcript of the video, explaining vocabulary and giving my comments.

(09:12):
I'll look at several different arguments relating to self driving
cars and the future of our roads and urban spaces.
As I said, vocabulary highlighted in bright blue on the
PDF will be summarized in a list at the end
of my episode. At the end of the episode, I'll
also do my best to explain these bits of vocabulary
as I go, as well as any others I think

(09:32):
are worth pointing out. So there will be vocab. So
here's an episode discussing the problem of driving traffic jams
and the future of self driving cars, roads and urban spaces,
with plenty of vocabulary explanations and maybe a bit of
grammar we will see, plus some pronunciation practice too if
you like. That is what you can expect from this episode.

(09:53):
Technology and society, the sort of topic that could come
up in an eye outs test, in your reading, in
your in your listening part, it maybe even in the
speaking part. I expect this will end up being a
long episode. I don't know yet because I haven't actually
done it yet, but obviously, but you know.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
That's because it might be long.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
But that's because I'm going into the subjects in a
lot of depth, and I'll be dealing with quite a
lot of specific vocabulary as well. So the reason it's
long is because I'm taking a proper detailed look at
this subject with a lot of insightful English teaching as well,
so tons of content. So you're definitely getting your money's

(10:32):
worth with this one, and considering this is completely free,
that is a massive cost value ratio, isn't it. Also,
As I've said this already, but here we go again,
there is a PDF available for this with the text
of what I'm saying and a vocabulary list at the end.
That vocab list is extensive. There's a lot of good
vocabulary to learn about cars, driving, traffic, urban spaces, cities,

(10:55):
city design, and technology. The list is detailed with cofinitions
and example sentences. If you're motivated, it could really help
you improve your English with this episode, and it's completely free.
You can download the pdf from my website link in
the description. You'll welcome everybody. By the way, if you
appreciate my podcast, could you do me a favor? Could

(11:16):
you add a like and comment? Wherever you're listening to
this or watching this, subscribe to the show. If you
like my content, tell your friends about Luke's English podcast,
share the episodes online somehow. Maybe also, maybe treat yourself
to an ice cream because you bloody well deserve it today, Okay,
And if you want to support the show, you could

(11:38):
become a premium subscriber at teacher Luke dot co dot
uk slash premium or you can donate via PayPal at
teacher Luke dot co dot uk slash donate And the
amount that you donate is up to you. You could
donate one pound or one million pounds. If you just
have a spare million pounds lying around and you're thinking,
what shall I do with this million pounds? What could

(12:00):
I do with this? I know I'll give it to
Luke from Luke's English podcast. Good Idea. So first, a
bit of a ramble about driving and getting stuck in traffic.
Driving can be a nightmare, can't it. It's not always
like it is in the adverts, not for me anyway,
as a guy living in the middle of a busy city.

(12:21):
In car adverts, drivers are always sweeping along deserted mountain roads.
The empty tarmac that's the surface of the road. The
empty tarmac stretching out into the distance, the sunset reflecting
off the bonnet of the perfectly clean car. The bonnet,
that's the front part. You open up the bonnet normally

(12:44):
that you'll find the engine underneath. So that's the bonnet.
So sweeping along a deserted mountain road, the empty tarmac,
the perfectly clean, empty tarmac, stretching out into the distance,
the sunset reflecting off the bonnet of the perfectly clean car,
while the driver, some generic handsome guy in a nice shirt,

(13:07):
smugly grips the steering wheel and feels very, very satisfied
with himself because he owns a Hyundai or a Mazda
or something. Right, that's what car adverts are typically like.
In reality, it's more a case of being stuck in
an endless series of traffic jams, surrounded by other stressed

(13:28):
out drivers, your blood pressure rising and your leg aching
from constantly pressing down slightly on the accelerator to edge
forwards in order to close the minute gap that opens
up behind the car in front. This is what the
reality is, right, You just sit there staring at the
car in front. Any little gap that arrives, you just

(13:51):
edge forward to fill it. Right, the accelerator, that's the
pedal that makes the car go forwards. You just pressed
constant pressing down slightly on the accelerator.

Speaker 5 (14:02):
Are you like me?

Speaker 4 (14:03):
Does your leg basically just start to kill you after
about an hour of this edging forwards, moving forward slightly.
No one ever shows this in adverts, although actually they
do show that sort of thing in adverts, But what
they always do is they'll show someone stuck in traffic,
maybe with a family, and the kids are complaining, and
then the car sort of something happens and all the

(14:27):
cars get eliminated, you know, or the car takes off
and flies or something like that, and then you get
that smug self satisfied I'm such a smug driver because
I'm driving a you know, I'm driving a Honda. I
don't know, but yes, in reality, pressing down slightly on
the accelerator to edge forwards in order to close the

(14:49):
minute gap, the tiny gap that opens up behind the
car in front, until the traffic jam miraculously just eases off,
and you wonder why it had happened in the first place.
Does that ever happen to you? You're just stuck in
a traffic jam on a motorway and you just say,
oh God, there must be an accident or something, and

(15:10):
then you just after a while the traffic jam just
stops and everyone carries on what was all that about?
But at least you have Luke's English podcast to keep
you company while you do it. Traffic jams are a
major problem, and there are different kinds. But what causes them?
Is it the roads? Is it lights, traffic lights? Is

(15:31):
it the number of cars? What is it actually causing
the traffic jams? I'm actually amazed by how roads and
highways are organized, and it's sort of incredible to me
how we don't have more accidents than we do. Although
to be fair, driving is probably one of the most
dangerous things we do, isn't it. Going on the road

(15:52):
is significantly more dangerous than flying, for example, although flying
is something that a lot of us are very anxious
about out and afraid of, which tells you something about
human nature. I suppose what we perceive to be a
threat to us is not always what really is a
threat to us. We think flying is a huge risk
because of course it's incredible to imagine a huge metal

(16:14):
plane full of people can actually fly in the air,
But we should be scared of plenty of other things.
In fact, the plastic kettle in your kitchen, which you
use to make tea and coffee every day, is actually
more dangerous than flying a few times a year. You're
more likely to die because of the plastic kettle than

(16:35):
you are from taking a flight. But most people are
way more scared of planes than cups of tea. Right,
what we think is dangerous is not always what is
really dangerous to us. Now I'm getting away from the
topic of my traffic jams here, but by the way,
the thing about the plastic kettles is this, so plastic
kettles can easily release harmful chemicals into the boiling water,

(17:00):
that's BPA or microplastics, which over time can lead to
various health problems, including an increased risk of cancer. And
this is especially true if the kettle is scratched or
damaged or old. And I'm not even mentioning the fact
that electrical products like kettles can malfunction and start fires,

(17:22):
or you could just end up having an accident and
just pour boiling water over your hand, or something which
I don't know might make you so shocked and surprised
that you lose your balance and fall out of a window,
or because you weren't scared of the kettle in your kitchen. Hmm,
you'll never look at your kettle in the same way again. Anyway,
I digress driving. Driving is actually really dangerous, but it's

(17:46):
totally normal and we rarely think twice about it, whereas
flying is something that makes us stress out madly but
is far less likely to result in us getting killed.
Do I need to prove Do I need to provide
some statistics? Not really, but I'll do it anyway. So
I'm going to give you some stats.

Speaker 5 (18:04):
Now.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
So these numbers are from the USA. Now, maybe other
countries drive more carefully, I don't know, But anyway, I'll
give you some data from the USA. And these numbers
come from sources such as the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration otherwise known as the nht NHTSA as you already knew,
and the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA, and are summarized

(18:30):
in transportation safety reports by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics
and other studies. Okay, so, in terms of fatality rates
that means death rates driving in the United States, there
are about one point three four one point three four
fatalities per one hundred million vehicle miles traveled. All right,

(18:52):
one hundred million vehicle miles traveled one point three to
four fatalities. Okay, is that a lot? It actually doesn't
seem that much. In terms of flying, though it's much lower.
Commercial airline travel has about point not three fatalities per

(19:12):
one hundred million passenger miles, making it thousands of times
safer per mile traveled in terms of the likelihood of
dying in either case. In terms of driving, the lifetime
odds of dying in a car crash are approximately one
in one hundred and one, one in one hundred and

(19:35):
one according to the National Safety Council in the US,
So the chances of you dying in a car crash
in America, in the United States at some point in
your life if you live there, in probably so, the
chances of you dying in a car crash at some
point in your life, probably at the end, let's be honest,

(19:56):
are one in one hundred and one, basically about a
one percent chance that you'll die in a car crash,
which I think is alarmingly high actually. Anyway, In terms
of flying, the lifetime odds of dying in a plane
crash are about one in two hundred and five five

(20:16):
hundred and fifty two. That's about a zero point zero
zero zero four to nine chance of dying in a
plane crash, clearly significantly less. So apologies for getting sidetracked here,
but this is fascinating. I've got some more data. I've
got a pie chart which explains it shows the estimated

(20:38):
lifetime risk of death from various case causes. Right, Sorry
for being distracted by this, but I do find this interesting.
The biggest one, twenty seven point five percent, the largest
piece of the pie is heart disease, followed by cancer

(20:58):
nineteen point three percent, and then Alzheimer's disease fifteen point
two percent, and then other significant large portions. You've got
accidental injuries, which I suppose would include car crashes, diabetes,
infectious diseases, having a stroke that's where you burst a

(21:20):
blood vessel in your brain, god forbids, liver disease, kidney disease,
chronic respiratory disease that's like your lungs. And then you've
got small slivers including suicide and the smallest one homicide
that's being killed by someone bear in mind this is
in the United States. The accidental injuries one does include

(21:45):
car crashes, and that breaks down like this, So falls
are the most common cause of death by accidental injury,
especially in older people. I suppose thirty percent roughly of
accidental injury.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
Drownings.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
That's nearly twenty five percent of death by accidental injury
is caused by drowning. That's where you fall in water
and you can't breathe because you can't breathe in water.
Can you can?

Speaker 6 (22:14):
You?

Speaker 4 (22:15):
If you can, I'd be impressed. Then you've got poisoning.
And by the way, poisoning refers to things like drug
overdoses of both prescription drugs or illegal drugs, carbon monoxide poisoning,
food poisoning, alcohol poisoning, household chemicals and industrial chemicals and stuff.

(22:35):
So that's what poisoning refers to twenty percent. And then
car crash is eighteen point three percent of accidental injuries,
and then you've got other injuries is six point one percent,
and then plane crash is in there with zero point
six percent, zero point six percent of death by accidental injury,
which itself accounts for six point nine percent of all death. Yes, Okay, anyway,

(23:02):
let me even make that point again. Driving is more
dangerous than flying, and it's just and that's just from accidents.
There's also the health risks related to air pollution from
both cars and planes. But I'm getting really distracted here
by very interesting statistics about how we're all going to
die in various ways. In any case, it will definitely

(23:23):
be something related to our health, I suppose. Ha ha, Okay,
so I ended up in a dark little rabbit hole there.
Let's now crawl out and re emerge, blinking into the
light to continue talking about traffic jams. So here we
are emerging from our rabbit hole of death to blink
into the light. Oh, that's right. We were talking about

(23:45):
traffic jams. So I was talking about traffic jams, and
I was saying that they are incredibly frustrating but also
a bit of a mystery what causes them. In many
cases it's obvious, but sometimes not jams happen because roads
and cities are badly organized. It depends on the city,

(24:05):
I suppose, But I think most road systems are incredibly
well designed to help manage the flow of traffic in
the most efficient way. In most of my experiences of
driving in cities. The way that the lanes are organized,
the way that lanes feed off into different slip roads,

(24:26):
you know, the way that the signage works, the lights,
all of it's incredibly well organized. Actually, driving is dangerous
and problematic, but it could be way worse if we
didn't have professionals planning our roads very carefully. Still, we
do have traffic jams, this is my point. So why
do they happen even when road systems are incredibly well

(24:49):
designed and carefully planned. I mean, it doesn't help when
drivers drive badly. When was the last time you noticed
someone driving badly? I mean, it happens just constantly. If
we all followed the rules, followed the system as we're
supposed to, and drove in exactly the right way, a
lot of traffic jams wouldn't happen. They wouldn't go away completely,

(25:11):
but they would be less of a problem I think.
Of course, we can also point out that there are
just too many cars on the roads, but the main
culprit is still the Homo sapiens behind the wheels of
the cars. Let's look at some different causes of traffic
jam though. Firstly, jams happen because there are too many
cars on the roads, and traffic jams and junctions slow

(25:34):
everything down. Traffic lights and junctions mean so lights we
know junctions that's where two roads meet. Junctions mean that
the traffic can't flow and the volume of cars on
the road is greater than the speed at which those
cars can flow through the system. Hence all the awful
congestion that happens in towns and cities. Another reason is

(25:58):
that people break the rule and enter a junction when
the exit is not free, causing the entire junction to
get blocked. Have you seen that happen. You've got to
let's say a cross junction, right, We've got one major
road going that way and another major road going across it.
You end up with a kind of square junction, and

(26:18):
there are lights that dictate how things are supposed to work.
Cars are not supposed to enter the junction if the
exit isn't free, But of course people do, right because
the light's green and people want to get through the light,
so they just edge roll forward and end up stuck
in the junction. Then of course the lights change and

(26:40):
you end up with a kind of gridlock situation. This
happens a lot where I live in Paris, and it
drives me completely round the bend because it could be avoided.
Here's what happens. So first people edge through red lights
because they attach themselves to the back of the car
in front.

Speaker 5 (27:00):
Do you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
So loads of cars are lined up at the entrance
to a square junction and the lights are red. That's
how we start. It's rush hour. There's a big queue
of cars. There are lights, and then a square junction,
and it's the same the other way as well. All
entrances to this square junction are very busy. Suddenly the

(27:22):
lights go green, but the driver in the car at
the front is daydreaming about cheese or holidays or something
and doesn't notice. Then all the cars behind the drivers
are staring at the light, the green light. They start
beeping the moment it turns green, beat, beep, beep. The
driver in the first car eventually wakes up from his

(27:43):
daydream and crawls through the lights, and the cars behind
follow right behind him, almost bumper to bumper. The bumper
is the part of the car at the front and
the back that I suppose is supposed to protect the
car if it bumps into something slightly, so the cars
are like bumper to bumper crawling through the lights. Everyone

(28:05):
is stressed out and frustrated that they're not at home
by now. One car passes through the green light as
it turns red, so that green light turns red as
one car is passing through, and the next car is
so close behind that the driver decides that they are
essentially all part of the same car. The driver thinks, well,

(28:28):
I'm so close behind that, Yeah, it's the same car.
My car, that car. Yeah, it's the same car. And
so it's okay if he passes through the red light
as well. So he sticks to the back of the
other car and essentially passes through as if they are
all one car. Amazingly, this continues to happen with cars
sneaking right through the red light until there are cars

(28:50):
stuck in the middle of the junction because the exit
is not free due to too many cars there too.
Then the light for cars going across the junction now
to and the other drivers coming across the junction can't
pass because of all the other drivers who sneaked through,
But this doesn't stop them because they have the right
to get through.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
After all.

Speaker 4 (29:12):
The light is green for them, so they attempt to
squeeze through the gaps in the line of cars blocking
the junction, and then everyone ends up all jammed in together,
all this way and that, and nobody thinks they've done
anything wrong. They all get furious, impotently beeping their horns
beat beep, and the entire city ends up angry and late,

(29:34):
just another day on the roads around Paris. If they
just respected the lights and left the middle of the
junction clear, everything would be fine. But no, these particular
humans can't bear to make that personal sacrifice and stop
when it's their turn to stop. So there are jams
caused by lights and junctions and traffic systems getting overcrowded

(29:57):
and people just being self centered and breaking the rules.
But then there are those mysterious traffic jams I mentioned earlier.
There are those jams that happen on the motorway where
you're driving along quite fast and suddenly you see up
ahead that the cars are slowing down. You see the
red lights flashing, some people put their warning lights on

(30:19):
the flashing yellow lights. Some people are slowing down, and
eventually you have to come to a complete stop. Then
you have to do that frustrating thing where you edge
forward bit by bit for an infuriatingly long time before
the cars ahead eventually speed up again and away you
all go. Sometimes there's an accident or road works which

(30:44):
which caused this. The accident can block the road, of course,
or simply drivers slow down to look, which holds up
traffic behind them. But sometimes you don't see any cause
of the traffic jam. There was just a big traffic
jam and then it stopped, and there's no obvious reason why.
So what's going on here? This brings me to a

(31:07):
really interesting video. So this is a video by a
YouTuber called cgp Gray. He makes sort of interesting videos
about a range of subjects, looking at situations in a
different way and commenting on some of the typical things
that we all experience, like, for example, systems like driving systems,

(31:28):
or the way that passengers are allowed to board airplanes
and how that's inefficient. So very interesting videos, this particular one.
You might have seen this video or one of his others.
He's got about six point five million subscribers on YouTube
and this video has forty million views, so you might
have seen it before. He makes short informative video essays

(31:51):
on a variety of interesting subjects. Some of those forty
million views of this video are me because I've used
this video quite a few times in my English lessons.
It's an engaging topic, a good listening exercise, a way
to learn some vocab and grammar, and also a good
way to practice pronunciation by reading out the text, considering
where to pause and which syllables and words to emphasize,

(32:15):
and how to use information to deliver the lines. Clearly,
I'm going to be reading through the transcript for the video,
and in fact you could do that yourself. You could
read it out loud yourself, okay, as an exercise in
pronunciation and using your voice to deliver information. So you
could try that. Pause the episode, scroll down the pdf,

(32:38):
scroll the PDF forwards a bit until you find the
script for the video which is just below, and read
it out loud and focus on pausing in the right
places to emphasize the information in the video. How can
you deliver this information as if you're doing the voiceover
of the video or doing a presentation, and that involves
pausing in certain places and using intonation. So you could

(33:01):
try doing that. Read it out loud, see how you do.
Then continue the episode and see how I did it.
Compare your version to mine. Okay, So that's just something
you could try doing. You could pause the episode now
and practice reading out loud, or you could shadow with me,
or you could just do it later up to you.
So the video is entitled The Simple Solution to Traffic.

(33:22):
It was uploaded eight years ago now, and as the
title suggests, it explains a particular solution to the problem
of traffic congestion. So we talk about traffic jams, So
a jam that is an accountable noun, which means it
can be plural, a traffic jam or some traffic jams.
But also we talk about congestion. Congestion is an uncountable

(33:45):
now and so we have some congestion. How much congestion,
how much traffic congestion is there today? How much traffic
congestion is there in your city? And congestion refers to
things being blocked, so traffic congestion traffic being blocked on
the roads. You also have nasal congestion, which is something
that happens in your nose. If you catch a cold,

(34:06):
you get congestion, and it means you get a blocked
up nose and you might need to take some decongestions.
Those are pills that will help to unblock the congestion
in your nose. So anyway, the video suggests a solution
to the problem of traffic congestion, while also explaining why
traffic jams often happen in the first place. So what

(34:28):
do you think what causes a lot of those traffic jams,
especially the mysterious ones, and what will his solution be?
You can probably guess from the considering what I've been
talking about. So first I'll read out the transcript of
the video. Then I'll summarize it and give some comments.
Then I'll go back through the script and will highlight
some bits of English vocabulary and maybe grammar. Will see

(34:52):
also when I'm reading out the script, just consider the
way I'm pausing, stressing different parts of each line and
using intonation. That's the way I've boys rises and falls.
If you want to practice your pronunciation, you could pause
the episode and repeat each line after me paying attention
to these details. Anyway, let me now read out the
script to you. So what causes traffic jams and how

(35:15):
can they be solved? And extra bonus question, do you
think this is written in British English or American English?

Speaker 5 (35:23):
And how can you tell? So?

Speaker 4 (35:25):
This is the simple solution to traffic by CGP Gray
video transcript. Here we go stuck at an intersection. You
always watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. On green,
the first car accelerates, then the next, and then the next,
and so on until you only to catch the red.

(35:46):
Had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it
through coordination. Not cars is the problem. We are monkey
drivers with slow reaction times and short attention spans. Even
if we tried getting everyone to press the pedal on
three to one now would be challenging. This lack of

(36:11):
coordination limits how many cars can get through an intersection.
When one intersection backs up to the next, that's when
city sized gridlock cascades happen, taking forever to clear. In general,
more intersections mean more disc coordination, which means more traffic.
This is the motive behind big highways. No intersections, splits

(36:35):
and merges. Yes, intersections, no no stopping, no coordination problems,
no traffic. Well that's the theory. Anyway, intersections outside of
a highway will back up onto it again. Human reaction
times limit how many cars can escape the off ramp

(36:56):
when the light changes. Hope, but even without intersections, there
would still be traffic on the highway. Phantom traffic. Traffic
can just appear. Take a one lane highway with happy
cars flowing until a chicken crosses the road. The driver
who sees it breaks a little, The driver behind doesn't

(37:18):
notice immediately and breaks a little harder than necessary. The
driver behind them does the same until someone comes to
a complete stop. Oh and oh look, cars approaching at
highway speeds must now stop as well. Though the chicken
is long gone, it left a phantom intersection on the highway.

(37:41):
This is what happens when you're stuck in traffic for hours,
thinking there must be a deadly pile up ahead. Then
suddenly the traffic's over, with no wreckage insight to your
relief if you're a good person, and mild annoyance if
you aren't. You just pass through a phantom intersection, the
cause of which is long gone, and this phantom intersection moves.

(38:05):
It's really a traffic snake slithering down the road, eating
oncoming cars at one end and pooping them out the other.
On a ring road, a single car slowing down will
start an auro borus of traffic that lasts forever, even
though there's no problem with the road. If drivers could

(38:26):
coordinate to accelerate and separate simultaneously, easy driving would return.
But they can't, so traffic eternal traffic snakes on highways.
On highways, traffic snakes grow if cars are eaten faster
than excreted, and shrink if excreted faster than eaten. They

(38:47):
die when the last car accelerates away before the next
car must stop. On multi lane highways, there doesn't even
need to be a chicken to start gridlock. A driver
crossing lanes quickly with cars too close behind is enough
to berth a traffic snake that lives for hours. This
quick crossing causes drivers behind to overbreak, starting a chain reaction.

(39:14):
But we can make traffic snakes less likely by changing
how we drive. How to drive better. Your goal as
a driver is to stay the same distance from the
car ahead as from the car behind at all times.
Tailgating is trouble, not just because it makes accidents more likely,
but because you, as the tailgater, can start a traffic

(39:37):
snake if the driver ahead breaks, always stay in the middle.
This gives you the most time to prevent overbreaking and
gives the driver behind you the most time as well.
When stuck in traffic, this rule would help all cars
pull apart the snake faster. That's the simple solution to
traffic getting humans to change their behavior. Perhaps sharing this

(40:01):
video would help explain how and why traffic happens, why
tailgaters are trouble, and how we can work together to
make the roads better for all. A structural solution the end.
Except yeah, wishing upon a star that people will be
better than they are terrible solution every time. Instead, what

(40:24):
works is a structurally systematized solution, which is exactly what
self driving cars are. Self driving cars can just be
programmed to stay in the middle and accelerate simultaneously. They'll
just do it. The more self driving cars at an intersection,
the more efficient the intersection gets. A solid lane of

(40:45):
self driving cars vastly increases through put.

Speaker 5 (40:49):
Hmm.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
Actually, if you ban humans from the road, which we
should totally do anyway, you can get rid of the
intersection entirely. After all, a traffic light is just a
tool for drivers on one road to communicate with drivers
on another. Poorly and coarsely red equals don't go. Now
we're coming through the intersection. Green equals good to go.

(41:14):
But self driving cars can talk to each other at
the speed of light. With that kind of coordination, no
traffic light is necessary. Just as with the highway, the
best intersection is no intersection. Humans will never drive this
precisely at the intersection. The fundamental problem of traffic that

(41:34):
you watch unfold like everything is people. So the real
simple solution to traffic no more monkeys driving cars. Okay,
So that was the transcript for a simple solution to
traffic by CGP Gray. And I'm going to summarize that
in a moment and maybe explain some bits of language

(41:56):
or highlight some things. But you heard my alarm going off.
That means it's time for me to drink some water
from a massive bottle, So let me do that right now.

Speaker 7 (42:11):
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(42:32):
it the till with a ten or fifty grocery voucher.
Dumb stores always better value terms of cogidant supply vocum
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Speaker 3 (42:40):
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Speaker 2 (42:43):
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Speaker 4 (43:34):
Lovely French mineral water from a from a part of
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the water through and the water's lovely and fresh. So
what did you think of that? I'll give you a

(43:55):
summary of the that transcript and some comments. Now, also
there was that question is it British English or American English?

Speaker 5 (44:01):
What do you think? Well, yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
American English, although obviously I was reading it out in
my British accent, but yeah, that's American English.

Speaker 5 (44:10):
How could you tell?

Speaker 4 (44:12):
It was a few giveaways, a few little clues that
gave it away, bits of vocabulary. The main indicators probably
are the words intersection and highway. In British English, we
would say junction and motorway respectively. So an intersection in
American English and a junction in British English, a highway

(44:33):
in American English, and a motorway in British English. Those
are the fastest roads that we have, right those a
highway or a motorway, the ones with no junctions on them.
So let me summarize the video. So the fundamental problem
of traffic. First of all, traffic arises. It happens from
poor coordination between drivers. This is the main reason we

(44:55):
have traffic at junctions or lights, drivers accelerate one by one,
but not in a coordinated way, right, So one driver
accelerates and the other one doesn't accelerate at exactly the
same speed. There's a little pause or something. This is
due to reaction time delays causing inefficiencies. Traffic gets worse

(45:17):
when multiple drivers. Sorry, traffic gets worse when multiple junctions
back up into each other. So let's say you've got
lights on a busy street in Paris, for example, a
street that crosses through the center of the city will
have loads of lights and junctions at regular intervals, and
you you know those. A traffic jam in front of

(45:37):
one junction will back up, meaning that the cars add
to the back of the line all the way up
to the next junction, which is why when the light
is green and you crawl through, often the exit of
that junction is blocked because there's a traffic jam for
the next set of lights, and the cars have all

(46:00):
backed up all the way up to the exit from
the next junction, right, which is why that square junction
gets filled with cars because the traffic jam from the
next junction has backed up. Okay, so multiple junctions back
up into each other. This is how you get gridlock.

(46:22):
Gridlock refers to all of the roads, all the junctions,
and in the USA, of course, most cities are designed
in a grid style where you have these blocks, and
so you get gridlock, which is where every street in
the grid is locked with cars. Then we've got phantom
traffic and traffic snakes. So even on motorways, traffic can

(46:44):
appear without an obvious cause. This is those mysterious, mysterious
traffic jams. So it could be anything that slows down
the traffic, such as a chicken crossing, not that that
happens very regularly, but just some little delay, or someone
suddenly breaking for some reason, or in a multi lane
high weight someone just moving from one lane to the

(47:06):
other and the cars are too close to each other
and the car behind has to break, meaning sort of
slow down, and that causes another driver to slow down,
and eventually one of them has to stop completely, and
then you end up with a traffic snake. So a
small slow down can cause a chain reaction where each
car behind has to slow down too, leading to traffic

(47:27):
snakes that grow or shrink based on driving behavior. So
cars are going one car slows down another car because
the driver is not really paying attention slows down a
little bit too late, and then the other driver slows
down a bit too late, and they actually have to stop.
And because one car stopped, that means it causes all
the other cars to have to stop as well while

(47:50):
they wait for that other car to accelerate off. And
that little bunching up where cars have to stop and
then accelerate. You've got cars accelerating from the front, and
cars are bunching up at the back. So the back
that's where that's the mouth of the snake as it
gobbles up cars, and the front, where the cars are

(48:11):
accelerating away, that's the tail end. And that's where the
snake is pooping out cars. And if it eats cars
more quickly then it poops them out. That's when a
traffic snake grows. If the cars accelerate away, if it
poops out, if it poos out cars more quickly than
it eats, that's when a traffic snake dies. Okay, So

(48:32):
traffic snakes that grow or shrink based on driving behavior.
Traffic snakes are caused by drivers reacting to other cars
slowing down. Their poor reaction times and lack of coordination
causing the flow of traffic to stop weight and then
start up again.

Speaker 5 (48:47):
As so, the traffic.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
Snake moves through the road along the highway, eating up
cars and then pooping them out at the other end,
causing a phantom intersection. So these snakes can pass down
a motorway and persist for hours even when the original
cause is gone. This is why traffic jams can appear
on motorways without an obvious reason. And there is actually

(49:08):
a video. The BBC One Show did a little feature
on this where they actually demonstrated this inaction and they
created a circular, single lane road and they put cars
all around it. And what the cars had to do
is just drive around and drive around, you know, just

(49:30):
keep the flow of cars moving. But of course, because
if one of them, because it's very hard to stay coordinated,
eventually one car drives a little faster than the car
in front and they have to break and then the other,
you know, and you can see the traffic snake in action.

Speaker 8 (49:47):
Time to get those wheels in motion so we can
see what's happening, Eddie, and I need a better vantage point. Ready,
steady off, Eddie.

Speaker 6 (50:01):
What are we expecting to see here? Well, what we've
got is a very simple mock up with a single
lane and busy motorway. Everyone's going to try and drive
the same speed, but drive behaves not perfect. Some people
go a little bit faster, some people go a bit
slower than the traffic will start to bunch up.

Speaker 8 (50:16):
As Eddie predicted, some of the drivers start to vary
their speeds and the distance between the cars changes. They
begin to bunch up, and sure enough, a cluster of
vehicles comes to a standstill. A phantom traffic jam has formed.
When we speed up the footage, we can see this
traffic jam starting to spread backwards around the circle. And

(50:40):
once it starts, it just keeps going.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
There's the traffic snake.

Speaker 8 (50:44):
So all it takes really then is a couple of
people to break or something, and that sets it all off.

Speaker 5 (50:49):
Sure, if there are.

Speaker 6 (50:50):
Enough cars on the road, something very minor can get
magnified into a traffic jam.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
Right, exactly right. Okay, So how drivers can reduce traffic
according to CGP Gray, So, first of all, avoid tailgating.
Tailgating is that incredibly irritating thing that people do on roads.
You know, you're driving along and then the car behind
you sits right on your ass. They sit right on
your back bumper. Basically driving really close behind you. This

(51:19):
is tailgating. It's very dangerous and it's very annoying. And
not only is it unsafe because obviously if you have
to stop suddenly, then they will crash into the back
of you. So not only is it unsafe, but it
also causes traffic snakes because driving that close behind another
car means that you can't it's very difficult to coordinate
with the car in front. If they have to slow down,

(51:41):
you'll have to slow down hard and it can result
in someone having to stop and so on. So avoid
tailgating and maintain equal distance from the cars in front
and behind. So always try and stay in the middle
between the two cars, the one in front and the
one behind. Events over breaking and stopping and helps dissolve

(52:04):
traffic snakes faster. However, relying on all drivers to behave
perfectly is unrealistic. This is the point. This is where
self driving cars come in. Self driving cars can coordinate
acceleration meaning speeding up, and maintain safe distances automatically. More
self driving cars at junctions would increase traffic efficiency. With

(52:27):
enough self driving cars, traffic lights and even junctions could
become obsolete, meaning just unnecessary. Right, we imagine a future
where roads can be filled with self driving cars that
interact perfectly and with complete coordination, reducing congestion while increasing
the number of cars. The ultimate solution then, replace human

(52:50):
drivers or monkeys driving cars with autonomous vehicles. That's another
word for self driving cars, to eliminate human error. Okay,
now we're.

Speaker 5 (53:00):
Going to look at.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
A response to that in a moment. But on the
face of it, what do you think? What do you
think of the idea of, first of all, replacing humans
with automatic vehicles. How would you feel in a car
with no driver driving down the road? Would you feel
more or less safe than being in a car with
some bloke called Dave driving the car? Who do you

(53:23):
trust more? And there are lots of issues. Actually, it's
not just about who do you trust and which one
is more safe? And I think that when the technology
gets to a certain level, I think we can be
sure that the technology would probably on average, would probably
be safer than humans. And like I've said in the past,

(53:45):
we will probably get to a point in the future
where self driving cars and that kind of automatic technology
is completely normal, and we will look back on the
days when humans drove cars at like eighty miles per
hour down busy motorways with other cars coming the other
direction at the same time and having to change lanes.

(54:08):
We will look back at these days and we will
think that we were insane.

Speaker 5 (54:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
It'll be like the way we look back at the
days when certain kinds of healthcare were wrong. You know,
we used to tap holes in people's heads to release
evil spirits, or when people used to doctors would recommend
smoking because it was good for the lungs. We'll look
back at the times when we drove cars on roads

(54:33):
and we will think that it was completely insane. When
automatic cars are normal or some other system. So, yeah,
that's one solution. Then a situation where the world is
full of just loads of automatic cars, all communicating with
each other simultaneously. But can you see any issues with

(54:53):
this idea. We'll come to that in a moment. Let's
do a little language review though.

Speaker 5 (54:58):
First.

Speaker 4 (54:58):
Let me now go back through the transcript and just
point out some of the vocabulary and maybe any grammar
that I think is worth noticing. So at this point
I'm going to go back up to the top of
the transcript for that video, which is further up the page.
Here somewhere, let's go, let's keep going.

Speaker 5 (55:15):
So here we go.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Let me just read through it again and just maybe
point out some language, so stuck it at an intersection.
You always watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic. If
you watch something unfold, it means you watch it happen.
So something can happen, something can unfold, something can take place,
something can arise. These are all different ways of saying happen, happen, unfold,

(55:41):
take place, arise. Those are the ones that just come
to me. You can watch unfold the fundamental problem of traffic.
That's a slightly odd structure. I would normally say you
can you always watch the fundamental problem of traffic unfold,
but we've got unfold first right here. I think it's

(56:05):
mainly for emphasis, right, you can watch unfold the fundamental
problem of traffic. It allows the fundamental problem of traffic
to go. At the end of the sentence, which is
just a bit more emphatic on Green, the first car accelerates,
so we know accelerate means speed up. Then the next,
and then the next, and so on until you only
to catch the red meaning you're the one who gets

(56:26):
the red light. Had the cars accelerated simultaneously, you would
have made it through. So there's a couple of things
in this sentence. So we've got a third conditional. Had
the cars accelerated, you would have made it through. It's
a slightly odd third conditional, though, isn't it, Because normally,
as you know, with conditional sentences, we have if if

(56:49):
the cars had accelerated. But we can make third conditionals
in another way with had at the beginning, had the
cars accelerate simultaneously, you would have made it through.

Speaker 5 (57:02):
Had I what I don't know.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
Had I not eaten breakfast this morning, I would be
feeling hungry. Now that's actually a mixed conditional past and present.
Had I not eaten breakfast, I would be feeling hungry. Now,
had I not eaten breakfast, I would have felt hungry.
Is past and pasted anyway, if I had it can

(57:27):
be expressed had I had I done it right? If
I had accelerates, if I had eaten breakfast, or had
I eaten breakfast? Third conditional. It's about the past. We've
got had and a past form right, if I had
done it or had I done it? The second clause

(57:49):
in that sentence is with would have done right, you
would have made it through, you would have felt hungry. Yeah, okay,
all right, then coordination, not cars is the problem. We
are monkey drivers with slow reaction times and short attention spans.
So you have a reaction time, that's your ability to

(58:11):
react in a certain time, and your attention span is
how long you can stay focused on something. So do
you have a long attention span or a short attention span?
If you've got a short attention span and you're the
sort of person who just likes to watch TikTok, like
my friend Amber, although she's got a pretty good attention span,

(58:32):
she can focus on reading complex history books about Paris
and stuff. But anyway, short attention span means you can
only focus, You can only hold your something can hold
your attention for a short time. You can have a
long attention span. As attention span and reaction times, you
know your ability to react to a stimulus quickly or not. Okay,

(58:56):
even if we tried getting everyone to press the pedal
on three to two one now would be challenging the pedal.
Your feet operate the pedals in a car If it's
an automatic car, you've got two pedals. You've got stop
and go right or accelerate and break. Accelerate meaning speed up,

(59:17):
break meaning slow down. If it's a manual car with
a gearstick in a gearbox, then you've you've got three pedals.
You've got accelerate, break, and clutch. The clutch is the
one that disengages the gearbox and allows you to change gears. Okay,
this lack of coordination limits how many cars can get

(59:37):
through an intersection. Fine, when one intersection backs up to
the next. When, as I've said before, it backs up,
meaning more cars add are added.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
To the back.

Speaker 4 (59:48):
The back of the queue extends to a certain place.
It backs up.

Speaker 5 (59:56):
What else can back up?

Speaker 4 (59:57):
And obviously you can back up your hard drive, but
something can back up. It's h yeah, accumulate, accumulate, but yeah,
accumulate behind something build up a bit like build up
or back up, meaning at the back. So a queue
of people can back up. Maybe if you've got water

(01:00:21):
running through a system and something blocks the water, the
water will back up. Okay, so it's accumulate. When one
intersection backs up to the next, that's when city sized
gridlocks happen or gridlock cascades. A cascade is when one
thing flows over into another one, like a waterfall, in

(01:00:42):
this case, like a backwards waterfall. I suppose where cars
instead of flowing through, they flow backwards and end up
causing big gridlocks. So, as I said before, a gridlock
is when all the roads in a system get completely jammed.
A grid you know, that's where you've got a kind

(01:01:03):
of grid system with roads, parallel roads going up and
parallel roads going across. That is a grid and a
gridlock is when all of those roads are blocked. In general,
more intersections mean more disc coordination, which means more traffic.
This is the motive behind big highways. The motive is
the reason for doing something right. Often we talk about

(01:01:25):
motive in crime. What was the motive for the murder?
What was the reason for the person to commit the murder?
In this case, the motive behind big highways the reason
that big highways or big motorways are created. There are
no junctions, no intersections, which allows for car flow. Flow
is the movement, the free movement of something. In the

(01:01:48):
design of city spaces or buildings, we talk about people
flow or car flow. The free movement of people through
a system or cars through a system is fascinating to
me studying people flow, you know, the way that buildings
are designed, or train stations, for example, a train station
has to be designed in the most efficient way possible

(01:02:09):
because you get these crowds of people moving through, often
in different directions. And you've probably been in train stations,
for example, which have very poor people flow, where people
end up sort of jammed up and it's hard to
walk through because everyone's going across in different directions. A
place like Chatelat station in the center of Paris is

(01:02:31):
famous for this, and I've talked about this station before
on the podcast. Famously, you can get lost there very
easily and you get sent in the wrong direction. The
way the signs work is really important to make people
flow very efficient. Splits and merges on a highway, so

(01:02:51):
motorways can split. You know, when you're driving down a
motorway and if you want to go to London, for example,
you might need to stay in the two left hand
lane because that motorway will split off and turn into
a motorway that heads towards London, whereas the other side
of the motorway will split off turning into a motorway
that will head towards Bristol or something like that. So

(01:03:14):
a split and a merge e merges the opposite. Basically,
that's where two roads become one. Or maybe when you
are entering a motorway and you have a slip road
which merges with the motorway right to increase the flow
of traffic or to help the flow of traffic. Splits

(01:03:35):
and merges, splits when the road divides, merges when two
roads join together seamlessly, no stopping, no coordination problems, no traffic.
That's the theory. Intersections outside of a highway will back
up onto it. So when basically a highway, when there's
a slip road that leaves a highway and then there's

(01:03:57):
lights at the end those you know that intersection there,
that junction will cause traffic jams to back up onto
the highway. So that you see that of course, where
everyone's trying to leave the motorway and that causes a
traffic jam where the traffic backs up onto the motorway

(01:04:18):
and human reaction times limit how many cars can escape
the off ramp when the light changes. So that's the
off ramp, that's the slip road leaving the motorway. But
even without intersections, there would still be traffic on the highway.
This is where we talk about phantom traffic, traffic snakes.
Traffic can appear, It can just appear. Take a one

(01:04:40):
lane highway with happy cars flowing, just like the one
in the BBC TV show with a circle of cars,
and so a chicken crosses the road. The driver who
sees it breaks a little, so to break or to
hit the brakes. The brakes are the things that slow
down and stop the car. Right, It's a verb and

(01:05:01):
a noun. The driver behind doesn't notice immediately and breaks
a little harder than necessary. The driver behind them does
the same until someone comes to a complete stop. To
come to a stop, to come to a complete stop,
not just stop, but come to a stop. Slow down,
slow down, slow down, and come to a stop. And

(01:05:21):
oh look, cars approaching at highway speeds must now stop
as well. Though the chicken is long gone, So though
is the same as saying although. This is one of
those words that's like saying butt. But notice that though,
and all though, especially all though, go at the beginning.

Speaker 5 (01:05:40):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:05:41):
Although the chicken is long gone, it left a phantom
intersection on the highway. If we were to use the
word but, it would be the chicken is long gone,
but it left a phantom intersection on the highway. So
butt goes in the middle of one sentence. So although
goes at the beginning and though go those words go

(01:06:02):
at the beginning of a sentence with two contrasting clauses.
Although the chicken is gone, it left a phantom intersection.
Though the chicken is gone, it left a phantom intersection.
So same meaning, same grammar of though and all. Though
but goes in the middle of the two clauses, right
that where the comma might be in one sentence. We

(01:06:23):
also have other words, don't we We have however, and
we have despite and in spite of, So let me
talk about those, and I also talk about though a
little bit as well. So in terms of however, however
goes in the middle as well, like butt, but it
goes at the beginning of a new sentence. So you'd

(01:06:45):
have to put a full stop where the comma is
the chicken is long gone full stop, however, it left
a phantom intersection on the highway. See so, however goes
in the middle between the two clauses with a capital
letter at the start and a stop let me write that, okay,

(01:07:07):
that's however in the middle, but always at the beginning
of a new sentence, whereas butt doesn't have to be
mm hmm, and that's obviously you don't have though, so
the chicken is long gone full stop however right comm however, comma,

(01:07:28):
it left a phantom intersection, or the chicken is long gone, comma,
but it left a phantom intersection, like going back to
the original sentence, though the chicken is long gone, we've
also got despite and in spite of, And those two
things are exactly the same, despite in spite of, They

(01:07:49):
have the same meaning and the same grammar.

Speaker 5 (01:07:51):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
A mistake that people make is that they say despite of,
they mix the two up. But don't do that. It's
either despite or it's inspe okay. And the thing about
this is that despite and in spite of are followed
by a noun. They're not followed by a clause, which
is a subject verb, although though, however, but they are followed,

(01:08:14):
they can be followed by a subject in a verb.
Although the chicken is long gone, although the chicken is right,
though the chicken is however it left, but it left.
So all of those are followed by a clause that's
a subject and a verb. But the words despite and
the phrase in spite of they're followed by a noun.

(01:08:35):
So you'd have to change the sentence somehow, despite the chicken.
How do you do that? You can't say despite the
chicken is long gone, because despite has to be followed by.

Speaker 5 (01:08:45):
A noun, not a clause.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
So you'd have to change that clause, that verb in
that clause, which is the chicken is. You'd have to
change that is into a gerrand, to turn it into
a noun. Despite the chicken being long gone, it left
a phantom intersection on the highway. The same with in
spite of, in spite of the chicken being long gone,
let me write that despite the chicken being long gone,

(01:09:12):
it left a phantom intersection on the highway. Or if
you don't want to use that gerrand, if you want
to keep it as a clause, the chicken is, then
you can just say despite the fact that, despite the
fact that the chicken is long gone, it left a
phantom intersection on the highway.

Speaker 5 (01:09:31):
Why would you do that? I don't know. It's you
might as well just.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
Say though or although, Okay, are you keeping up with
this everyone?

Speaker 5 (01:09:43):
I hope?

Speaker 4 (01:09:43):
So although the chicken is long gone, it left a
phantom intersection, okay. And finally, one more note about the
word though, just though, not all though, just though. You
can put that right at the end if you want,
which is quite informal, quite common in spoken English. The
chicken is long gone, full stop. It left a phantom

(01:10:09):
intersection on the highway, though, which does the same thing,
but it's more common in spoken English. I would say,
quite informal, you know, like we've got no tea, I'm afraid, sorry,
We've got some coffee though, Yeah, okay, so let me
just put that centence back to how it was. It
was though the chicken is long gone, commer it left

(01:10:35):
a phantom intersection on the highway, okay. This is what
happens when you're stuck in traffic for hours, thinking there
must be a deadly pile up ahead. There must be,
I'm sure of it, a deadly pile up. A pile
up is a big crash involving a lot of different
cars that have all crashed into each other. Then suddenly
the traffic's over with no wreckage.

Speaker 5 (01:10:56):
In sight.

Speaker 4 (01:10:56):
Wreckage would be the sort of remains of damaged cars,
like cars that have been that have crashed into each other,
maybe like a car on the side of the road
with the front of the cars all smashed or something
like that. That's wreckage, the remains of broken cars. No
wreckage insight to your relief if you're a good person, ah,

(01:11:19):
what a relief, no accident, or to your mild annoyance. Oh,
if you're not a good person, meaning you just don't
care about people, you just pass through a phantom intersection. Phantom,
of course, is like ghost, isn't it like a ghost?
A ghost intersection or a phantom intersection, the cause of
which is long gone. I need to start myself another
thirty minute timer, Siri, set a thirty minute timer, please, Okay,

(01:11:45):
that's happening, because I think that I'm going to need
some more water soon. In thirty minutes. In fact, and
this phantom intersection moves, it's really a traffic snake slithering
down the road. Something a snake slithers, that's.

Speaker 5 (01:11:59):
What it does.

Speaker 4 (01:12:00):
You know, the way snakes slide forwards. They slither, eating
oncoming cars at one end and pooping them out the other. Pooping,
poop with a P at the end. That's American English.
Pooh is British English. They're both nouns and verbs. So
in America they talk about poop and to poop, and

(01:12:21):
in Britain British English, it's pooh and to pooh as well.
Right on a ring road, that's just a road that
is a circle, but also a ring road. Do you
find ring roads around cities? For example, London has a
ring road around it and you've got the North it's
the North circular and the South circular. That's what it's called.

(01:12:43):
That is the ring road. Paris has a ring road,
a motorway that goes around. It's called the Peripherique, the
Boulevard peripherique, a ring road. On a ring road, a
single car slowing down will start an aura boris of traffic.
So an aura boris, I understand, is like a snake
that eats its own tail. An aura bor us that

(01:13:05):
that lasts forever, and so on and so on. You
know what, I'm going to skip forward a bit because
I'm conscious that we i'd like to make progress with this.
I've talked about tailgating, I've talked about gridlock. I've talked
about multi lane highways. Let's skip forward a bit more
systematized solution, a solution that is based around a system,

(01:13:28):
in this case an automatic system of self driving cars.
Through Put is mentioned. A solid lane of self driving
cars vastly increases through put. So we've got output, which
you know is the number of things coming out and
input the things coming in. Through Put is the things
going through. So cars go through an intersection. Throughput is

(01:13:53):
like the way that the way that cars go through,
or how you can make cars go through the number
of cars that go through. That's throughput. Okay, we're going
to move on now to the response to that. Okay,
there is a response to this. I've done the language review.

(01:14:14):
Let's move on to criticism of CGP Gray's video, and
I'll read out another transcript. I'll read through it, and
then we'll conclude the episode. Okay, so criticism of CGP
Gray's video. So what do you think of CGP Gray's
take on this subject? Do you agree it sounds good

(01:14:37):
on paper?

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
Self driving cars reduces the human element. It causes cars
to be synchronized, and therefore you don't get these kind
of like traffic snakes and you get fewer traffic jams
at intersections. In fact, you don't even need intersections at all.
You just have constant flow of cars that are completely

(01:15:00):
synchronized with each other. What do you think of that?
Can you think of any problems with his understanding of
the subject and his proposed solution. So this video has
received some criticism, including the fact that CGP Gray's ideas
are misinformed and that the video promotes solutions to traffic
which could in fact be very harmful. How So, the

(01:15:24):
video received a response from another youtubeer called Adam Something,
that's the name of the channel, which was very critical
of CGP Gray's proposed solution to traffic. I think it's
important to also mention this side of the argument. So
let's check out what Adam said, and here is the
transcript for that video. But before we do that, I

(01:15:45):
need to make a quick trip.

Speaker 5 (01:15:47):
To the loo.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
I'm going to go to the toilet, So let me
just pause while I go to the loo. Because you know,
drinking lots of water, you don't just get input, you
also do get output as well. So let me go
to the loo and then we're going to read Adam
Something's response to CGP Gray here we go. Okay, okay, ready,

(01:16:27):
let's go. So Adam Something's response to CGP Gray. Here's
the transcript. Hello everyone, This video is a response to
CGP Gray's painful take on traffic.

Speaker 5 (01:16:40):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
I don't have an issue with CGP Gray or his
content in general, but I do believe that his video,
entitled the Simple Solution to Traffic is wildly misinformed and
propagates some very harmful solutions, both to people and to
our built environment. I've put a link to his video
in the description so you can check it out yourself

(01:17:03):
and ensure I don't misrepresent any of his ideas. So
let's get to it, shall we. In the video, CGP
Gray begins by laying out what he sees as the
main problem with traffic coordination. He describes the scenario like this,
Stuck at an intersection, you always watch unfold the fundamental
problem of traffic on green. The first car accelerates, and

(01:17:27):
then the next, and then the next, and then the next,
and then you only to catch the red. Had the
cars accelerated simultaneously, you would have made it through coordination.
Not cars is the problem because we are monkey drivers
with slow reaction times and short attention spans. Gray posits
that traffic could be vastly improved if all cars could

(01:17:49):
accelerate and decelerate simultaneously, as if they were connected to
each other.

Speaker 5 (01:17:56):
Oh man, so.

Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
Far this sounds dangerous, lee dangerously like a train. CGP
Gray then proposes his first practical solution, just don't tailgate,
stay in the middle. That should fix the problem, right,
of course not, and CGP Gray acknowledges this, so props

(01:18:17):
to him. That's the simple solution to traffic. This is
quoting CGP Gray again, getting humans to change their behavior,
perhaps by sharing this video to show how and why
traffic happens, while why tailgaters are trouble and how we
can work together to make the roads better for all
the end. Except yeah, wishing upon a star that people

(01:18:37):
are better than they are is a terrible solution every time.
CGP Gray then posits that we need a structurally systematized solution. Wow,
you mean public transport again, quoting CGP Gray, which is
exactly what self driving cars are. Oh and right here

(01:18:58):
is the main point I'll be our uing against that
self driving cars are a solution or even the solution,
to our traffic problems. Within the framework of self driving cars.
CGP Gray proposes that once all cars become self driving,
we can finally get rid of intersections, Traffic will flow
evenly and nobody will have to sit in a traffic jam.

(01:19:22):
That being said, my question to you, CGP Gray, is
how in the name of Christ will a pedestrian cross this?
This right here is my central issue with this video.
It looks and sounds like it was made by someone who,
if they want to go running, takes their SUV from
their copy paste suburban home to the strip mall ten

(01:19:44):
kilometers away, then takes the escalator instead of the stairs
to the gym, then runs on a treadmill for half
an hour. It's a terminally car brained mindset, as if
CGP Gray cannot imagine life without motorization. This becomes in
increasingly evident when he says a solid lane of self

(01:20:04):
driving cars vastly increases throughput neat So if twenty thousand
cars passed under your window every day, it's now going
to be sixty thousand yay. CGP Gray then suggests banning
humans from the road, assuming this video refers to urban
areas where clogged intersections are a problem. Banning humans from

(01:20:26):
driving ironically bans humans from roads physically, in the sense
that pedestrians wouldn't even be allowed to cross at grade anymore,
wouldn't be allowed to cross anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:20:40):
Off the road.

Speaker 4 (01:20:40):
Peasant, you're messing up our perfect techno future car flow.
How dare you disrupt traffic with your existence in this
settlement where people live. If this dystopian nightmare ups I
mean traffic solution became a reality, we'd need to invest
in costly underground and overground pedestrian passages. These are exactly

(01:21:01):
what cities are trying to get rid of because they're awkward,
inaccessible to many, and horrible to climb for wheelchair users,
older people, or anyone with limited mobility. They are downright
exclusionary unless we shell out for elevators. Shell out, meaning
pay a lot of money for them, even for able bodied,

(01:21:26):
Even for the able bodied. Imagine spraining your ankle and
having to climb ten flights of stairs just to buy groceries.
Turning urban areas into obstacle courses for pedestrians benefits drivers
and makes everyone else miserable. This is peak nineteen sixties
city planning and CGP. Gray's video is from twenty sixteen,

(01:21:48):
which is impressive. Separating cars from people inside cities for
better traffic flow leads to all kinds of negative outcomes.
I know this because it's been tried before. For example,
look at the area in front of Prague's main station
from back in the day. It was an archaic, low capacity,

(01:22:09):
inefficient design, but then future visionaries turned it into an
eight lane urban freeway with high capacity, fast grade, separated
transit solutions. Beneath this monstrosity is a network of underpasses
that are awkward to navigate and downright dangerous at night.

(01:22:31):
Sure they solve the traffic problem if you don't count
the free mugging experience they offer. Underpasses and overpasses only
benefit drivers. People argue they're safer for pedestrians, but they're
only safe because roads are dangerous thanks to cars, and
that's the crux of it. Cars are the worst mode

(01:22:52):
of transportation, even electric cars. Outside of pollution, the biggest
issue is geometry. One car fits in a city, one
million won't. No matter how well coordinated self driving cars are,
they'll still back up if they don't fit inside the city.

Speaker 5 (01:23:09):
Period.

Speaker 4 (01:23:10):
It's either a car friendly city or a livable one.
You can only pick one, okay, So that's quite a
kind of car skeptic car skeptical response there, obviously. And
you know, you start to think of cities where the

(01:23:33):
environments are built around pedestrians and maybe cyclists, which is,
you know, what happens in a lot of cities, and
in Paris, like the mayor of Paris has been trying
to encourage that in this city and has received all
sorts of opposition from people arguing that it's not working. So,

(01:23:55):
you know, just like with everything, you end up in
some sort of ideological situation where you have it ends
up being political where some people argue that, you know,
we should prioritize pedestrians and others saying we should prioritize drivers.
And then there's the people who are saying that we're
destroying the city by adding so many cycle lanes and this,

(01:24:19):
that and the other.

Speaker 5 (01:24:19):
And then there's the.

Speaker 4 (01:24:20):
People who don't want things to change and the people
who want things to change. And oh dear, so let
me go through. Let me just go through some of
that again. Actually i'll do it like I did before.
I'll give a summary of that to make sure you've
understood it, and then perhaps I'll just point out some
bits of English and then we will end the episode.
So this criticism of CGP Gray's video. The video claims

(01:24:43):
that CGP Gray's solutions to traffic are harmful to people
and urban environments. The focus on self driving cars as
a solution is seen as misguided and overly car centric.
The main issues highlighted are the issue with coordination. Gray's
idea that simultaneous acceleration could solve traffic is compared to

(01:25:04):
a train like system deemed impractical or at least suggesting,
why don't we just have trains or other forms of
public transport. Simply asking drivers to behave better is unrealistic,
but CGP Gray does acknowledge this self driving cars. The
claim that self driving cars can eliminate intersections is criticized

(01:25:24):
for ignoring the needs of pedestrians, which is a fair point.
If you've got these roads, these big multi lane highways,
full absolutely packed with train like numbers of cars, and
no intersections because they're not necessary, because somehow the self
driving cars are able to coordinate and cross over each other. Somehow,

(01:25:49):
how does a pedestrian cross the road? I suppose you
could just walk through and presumably the self driving cars
would be able to stop, but that's that doesn't seem
like a good solution, allowing people to just step into
the flow of traffic, So you end up with like overpasses. Underpasses.
Overpasses are things that go over that pass over, like

(01:26:13):
roads or bridges that go over underpasses, you know, things
that go under and you think of tunnels and stuff.
You know, we've seen them in major cities. You have
these underpasses where the footpath goes under the road through
a tunnel, and it's kind of dodgy and a bit dangerous.
We've all, you know, had those moments where we've had

(01:26:33):
to walk through and underpass at night, and you really
it's very it can be a very dangerous thing. Banning
humans from roads for the sake of car efficiency is
described as dystopian and exclusionary. Dystopian meaning sort of like
a vision of the future that is quite negative, quite dark,

(01:26:55):
a dark vision of the future where pedestrians are not
allowed to walk in these car oriented spaces.

Speaker 5 (01:27:04):
You end up with a kind of.

Speaker 4 (01:27:07):
Scary, dark, nineteen sixties version of a city. And exclusionary
that means that pedestrians people are excluded from these spaces.
Grades separated crossings for pedestrians, for example, overpasses are criticized
as costly, inaccessible, and inconvenient. Yeah, okay, and there are

(01:27:29):
broader concerns the impact on cities. Prioritizing cars over pedestrians
results in unpleasant urban environments, as seen in past city
planning experiments like the one in Prague. High capacity car
solutions still face fundamental issues of space. Cities cannot handle
millions of cars, self driving or not. And there was

(01:27:51):
also the point of like, you know, twenty thousand cars
under your window becomes sixty thousand cars doesn't sound very nice.
And then ability versus car friendliness, cities must choose between
being car friendly or livable. And when we talk about liverable,
you know, we talk about pollution issue, the accessibility issue

(01:28:13):
of being able to walk around the city, and yeah,
just the inconvenience of having to go up and down
in order to get past roads. Self driving cars don't
solve the geometric limits of road capacity, just the simple
maths of space bit availability. So the conclusion of the
video is The response argues that CGP Gray's video overlooks

(01:28:36):
critical human and urban factors in favor of a techno
future car centric vision. You think of those sort of
images from the nineteen fifties or sixties where you have
these cities with all these different roads on different levels,
all going across each other and stuff. In the minds
of the design as this was like some sort of

(01:28:58):
utopian vision, but in reality it became urban spaces became
filled with dark tunnels and corners, which was dangerous. Cities
became dangerous, dark, shadowy sort of places. A better solution
would focus on reducing car dependency altogether. So that's the

(01:29:22):
solution to traffic is just that we should learn as
a species to be less dependent on cars. We need
to find other ways of traveling around our cities. Uh huh, okay,
let me go through the article, I say article the
video transcript again. There are a few little bits and

(01:29:42):
pieces of language that I want to just look at,
So I'll do this quite quickly. This video is a
response to CGP Gray's painful take on traffic. Take is
normally a verb, right, you take something, take a cup
of coffee, take a cup of tea from the table,
But a take can be a sort of like an opinion.

(01:30:06):
What is your take on this. What's your opinion on this?
How do you respond to this? What's your response? What's
your opinion? So this, this video is a response to
CGP Gray's painful take on traffic. His response, it's misinformed.
Apparently it propagates or spreads some harmful solutions. Yeah, okay,

(01:30:32):
I'm just trying to go through this quickly. Gray posits
that traffic could be vastly improved if blah blah blah.
If you posit something, you present it as your case.
You sort of propose something, right, You posit an argument,
meaning present your argument as being true. Right, So you

(01:30:55):
posit an argument. In this case, Gray posits that traffic
could be improved if all cars could accelerate and decelerate simultaneously.
Decelerate obviously the opposite of accelerate slow down. Mm hmm,
just don't tail gate. Blah blah blah. Of course, CGP
Gray acknowledges this, so props to him. If you give

(01:31:19):
someone props, it means you give them respect, proper respect.
Props sort of informal slang term meaning respect. If you
give props to someone, it means you give them proper respect.

Speaker 5 (01:31:32):
Mm hm.

Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
Okay, CGP Gray then posits that we need a structurally
systematized solution. Oh, you mean like public transport. It looks
and sounds like it was made by someone who, if
they want to go running, takes their suv from their
copy paste suburban home to the strip mall ten kilometers away.

(01:31:56):
So this basically means the sort of person who, if
they want running, they drive to a shopping center ten
kilometers away. They take their SUV. That's a certain type
of car, sports utility vehicle. It's like a kind of
four by four car, like a bigger car which could
be four wheel drive but probably isn't. Just looks like

(01:32:17):
it very normal kind of car design these days.

Speaker 5 (01:32:21):
The suv.

Speaker 4 (01:32:24):
Not necessarily the best for the environment, because I think
the the emissions that they put out is probably quite
high compared to other types of car. So the sort
of person who takes their SUV from their copy paste
suburban home. Copy paste is what you do on your computer.
You you know, you select text, you copy it, and

(01:32:45):
then you go to another document and you paste it in.
So this is copy paste, just taking one thing and
pasting it somewhere else. So if you talk about a
copy paste suburban home, that means we're talking about homes,
houses which are just like base on designs that just
get copied. You know, all the houses on the road
all look the same. So he's criticizing the kind of

(01:33:09):
worldview of the kind of person who would present this
argument of self driving cars being the solution. The same
sort of person who would live in this environment where
they're driving the standard suv. They have these sorts of
copy paste suburban homes where driving is the norm, you know,

(01:33:29):
as a way of getting about driving to the strip
mall ten kilometers away, takes the escalator instead of the stairs,
so the escalator is the moving staircase to the gym
and then runs on a treadmill for half an hour.
A treadmill is a running machine. So criticizing the kind
of worldview of the sort of person who would do

(01:33:50):
that instead of just getting out of their front door
and running in their local area, they're actually get in
the car, drive, take the escalator, and then run on
the treadmill. So just criticizing a whole system, a whole
worldview which is a very sort of inefficient and very
kind of wasteful vision of things, rather than, for example,

(01:34:14):
finding some way of doing exactly the same thing that
doesn't involve driving ten miles, using an escalator, going on
a treadmill, maybe just running around the block or running
to your local park or something. It's a terminally car
brained mindset. Terminally means that it's ultimately going to lead

(01:34:35):
to lead to death. Right, So if you talk about
a terminal disease, terminal illness, it's one that is going
to kill you. So it terminally car brained means it's
it's a mindset which can only imagine having cars. You know,

(01:34:56):
it's just and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
CGP Gray cannot imagine life without motorization. This becomes increasingly evident,
It becomes more and more obvious when he starts talking
about solid lanes of self driving cars. Mm hmm, okay,

(01:35:18):
I think that'll do.

Speaker 5 (01:35:19):
That'll do.

Speaker 4 (01:35:20):
There's more stuff in there. You could research that yourself
using the usual online dictionaries. But I think that we
need to kind of wrap this up actually, So, yes,
I have talked about traffic, I've talked about driving, I've
talked about traffic jams, what causes them, what it's like
being in traffic jams. And then we looked at the

(01:35:41):
CGP Gray video transcript describing automization self driving cars as
the solution. But the vision that he has for this
is very car centric, and for the pedestrian wanting to
walk through the city, it's not ideal. And also you
end up with this kind of vision of a city

(01:36:01):
which is designed around cars, and it's not very attractive
and probably not very healthy either. The response to that
criticized it and said that essentially we need to find
a solution, which is where we just are not dependent
on cars anymore. We're not addicted to cars. People can
be dependent on drugs, We apparently are dependent on cars.

(01:36:23):
We are addicted to them, we need them, we rely
on them. We need to find a whole new system,
a whole new paradigm where we find other ways of
traveling around, maybe emphasizing public transport solutions or just walking,
cycling or something else. Even electric cars, because the electricity
that's used to drive those cars is still produced maybe

(01:36:49):
with fossil fuels in some factory somewhere or some other system.
And then of course there's all the batteries in those
electric cars. It's not like a perfect solution. The battery
contain chemicals that have to be mined from various places.
Those chemicals can be dangerous to dispose of. Ah dear,
it's all very complicated. Anyway, let me do my ending

(01:37:12):
and then we'll finish the episode and we can all
go back to our normal lives. So the ending, Well,
now that we've sorted out the whole issue of driving,
traffic jams, overcrowding, pollution, city design, and the urbanization of
everything and our dependents or cars, I suppose I should
end the episode then, but joking aside, to end the episode,
here are some final comments and questions, and some questions

(01:37:33):
for you as well, so conclusion and closing thoughts. So,
after all that, what have we learned about traffic jams,
self driving cars, and the future of our roads and cities.
I'm not sure really, but I suppose it's something like this. Firstly,
traffic jams are not just an inevitable part of modern life.
They're often the result of small human mistakes and a

(01:37:54):
lack of coordination. This much is true, whether it's someone
hesitating at a green lie light, tailgating too closely, or
simply reacting too slowly. It's clear that we humans where
our slow reaction times and occasional daydreams about cheese aren't
the most efficient drivers. This is true, and we could
all learn to just maybe try to try to try

(01:38:17):
to avoid tailgating.

Speaker 5 (01:38:18):
That's one of the lessons. Yeah, So what.

Speaker 4 (01:38:21):
I've personally have taken from this is that it's really
important to keep the flow of traffic moving. I personally
always try to keep my distance from the car in
front and avoid tailgating, not just because it's safer, but
because I'm less likely to come to a complete stop
if the car in front slows down, and this can
help reduce the instance of traffic snakes. Actually, I like

(01:38:43):
to play a game when I'm driving where if there
are lights up ahead or traffic is stopped up ahead,
I actually try to slow down, like really slowly. I
never let the car stop moving. This is my game.
Let's say I'm coming up to some cars that are
stationary in front of me. Instead of just like going

(01:39:03):
up right behind them and then just stopping at the
last minute, I will slow down really early and try
to let the car keep rolling as long as possible.
Never let the car come to a complete stop, let
it keep rolling very slowly until the cars in front,
start to accelerate, and then I just carry on.

Speaker 5 (01:39:22):
That's my game.

Speaker 4 (01:39:22):
Never stop the car, slow down early, and just let
it roll right, gradually crawl towards the car ahead, and
most of the time they start driving off before I
get there, and I can just keep rolling forwards and
then accelerate. That's my game that I like to play.
I think if we all did a similar thing, we
might get fewer phantom traffic jams.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
Right, we might do. What about self driving cars? Though?

Speaker 3 (01:39:49):
So?

Speaker 4 (01:39:49):
Self driving cars offer an interesting, even exciting, potential solution.
Their ability to communicate and coordinate faster than we can
react might reduce congestion and improve road safety. There's also
like moral issues that people often point out. You know,
time to drink some more water. Moral issues like what

(01:40:11):
happens if there's if a self driving car has to
make a decision. Let's say in the road, there is
a child, but if the car swerves, it'll hit a
bus stop with a bunch of adults there. So what
should the car do? Should it hit the child or
hit the bus stop with five adults? You know that

(01:40:34):
kind of decision is that well, you know that's a
moral decision that still exists anyway, because if a human
has to deal with that, it's also doesn't know what
to do. But if there's an accident, who's responsible? So
if you're in a self driving car, it's driving itself,
it's you know, I don't know, like Ford or Honda
or something, it's a Honda self driving car or any

(01:40:55):
other car manufacturer. And that car gets into an accident
and and kills somebody.

Speaker 5 (01:41:01):
Who is responsible?

Speaker 4 (01:41:02):
Is it you as the owner of the car, is
it the is it the company that made the car?
Is it the people who designed the city? Who's responsible?
So they are sort of legal not eagle? Eagles are eagle?
What about eagles? No one's mentioning eagles in this situation?
Are they responsible? What if there's an eagle in front

(01:41:23):
of your car, what are you supposed to just crash
into it?

Speaker 5 (01:41:26):
If it's an eagle and a child? What if it's
a baby eagle?

Speaker 4 (01:41:33):
No, there are legal and ethical issues relating to this
as well. But anyway, continuing here, it's going to be
really interesting to see how this develops. Maybe they will
really improve our lives, maybe hopefully, But as we've heard
from Adam something, this isn't a silver bullet meaning a
sort of a perfect solution to the problem. A future
filled with self driving cars could risk turning our cities

(01:41:55):
into places designed more for machines than for people, And
if we're not careful, we might might solve one problem
while creating others, like cities that are harder to navigate
on foot and less welcoming for pedestrians. So maybe the
answer isn't just about better cars, but better thinking, smarter
city planning, more public transport, encouraging better driving habits today,

(01:42:17):
and perhaps sometimes just being willing to leave the car
at home. And maybe that's the biggest takeaway. Whether it's driving,
city design or just life in general, the solutions we
choose say a lot about the kind of world we
want to live in, a world designed for cars or
a world designed for people. So final comments, what do

(01:42:38):
you think you got any thoughts rattling around in your head?
Are you is your brain still working? Is your head
still attached to your body? Are you a skeleton slumped
over your keyboard at this point?

Speaker 5 (01:42:50):
I don't know?

Speaker 4 (01:42:51):
But what do you think our self driving cars the
way forward? Or should we be thinking about reducing our
reliance on cars altogether? Have you seen self driving car.
Would you be happy being a passenger in one? How
is traffic congestion where you live? What causes it? Do
you have any ideas about this? Let me know your
thoughts in the comments. I love hearing from you.

Speaker 5 (01:43:12):
And if this.

Speaker 4 (01:43:13):
Episode made you think, made you chuckle just once, or
even just kept you company during a traffic jam, consider
showing some support like comments, subscribe and share the podcast.
And if you're feeling generous, check out my premium subscription
where you can get more episodes every month, or you
can donate via PayPal, So teacher Luke dot co dot

(01:43:36):
uk slash Premium or teacher Luke dot co dot uk
slash donate. But even if you just listened and enjoyed,
that is enough for me. Thank you very much for
being part of the journey in this episode. Right, and
if you're looking at the PDF, you'll see a vocab list.
We've got vocab in different categories driving and cars, traffic

(01:43:56):
and road systems. We have what else technology and autonomous vehicles,
and civil engineering meaning city planning and urban design as well.
So a list of vocab with definitions and examples across
the various topics that we've looked at. But that has

(01:44:18):
been this episode of the podcast. I look forward to
reading your responses. Thank you so much for listening. I
will speak to you next time, but for now, it's
just time to say goodbye, bye bye bye Boe. Thanks
for listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit
teacher Luke dot com dot UK. If you enjoyed this

(01:44:54):
episode of Luke's English Podcast, consider signing up for Luke's
English Podcast Premium. You'll get get regular premium episodes with stories, vocabulary,
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(01:45:15):
project possible. For more information about Luke's English Podcast Premium,
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