Orthogonal Procedures by Adam Rothstein

Author:Adam Rothstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63023-056-2
Publisher: Resurrection House
Published: 2017-09-09T03:03:58+00:00

Broadcast transcript begins:

"In a terrible accident, sixteen people in Denver were killed today when the radar scopes on two P-cars malfunctioned simultaneously, resulting in a horrific collision. Traffic throughout the central Colorado area is backed up as far as Boulder while emergency crews tend to the wounded, and engineers try to estimate the extent of the damage.

"Although accidents involving P-cars are rare, in this case a double failure between two different P-cars' radars caused a three-car collision at a relative speed estimated by authorities at sixty miles per hour. Our resident engineer, Dr. Patricia Underwood, explains:

"‘Under normal conditions, each P-car's computer only controls itself. It relies on the changing radar signal from the cars around it to know what they are doing, and to react to it. If the signal is delayed in any way, or gets distorted, sometimes the cars come together a little fast and bump together, like pedestrians jostling into each other on the sidewalk. It can also happen if a track signal is distorted, and the P-car tries to make a navigational adjustment to switch tracks too fast.

"‘As you can see in this diagram, the front car is transmitting a radar image to the rear car, augmented to include a bit of extra information. In addition to looking for other cars, it broadcasts information, and listens for other cars broadcasting in turn. Each broadcast is unique, so the receivers can tell them all apart. Its "shape," so to speak, is the adjustment of the broadcast image, augmenting what the other cars "see," if you follow me.

"‘The rear car can sense not only how far away the front car is, and its speed relative to ours, but also whether that car is in a formation with cars ahead of it, and how far it thinks it must travel before its next track switch. The rear car will only get behind it if it is going less distance than it—therefore preventing the entire formation from slowing when it decreases speed to change tracks. The cars behind it will do the same. That way, formations of cars build that can assemble and disassemble without any centralized control.

"‘In this case, both cars' passive mode radar failed. The cars could see each other, but they couldn't tell their distance to switching. They both attempted to take a switch at the same time. The rear car hit the front car, and derailed it on the switch, sending it crashing into a third car, here, on the right-hand switch track. Then, the rear car impacted that collision. Debris from the collision caused several other derailments in nearby cars, which then were hit by more cars piling up, unable to stop in time due to the speed and extent of the damage.'

"Thank you, Dr. Underwood. A rare and scary situation indeed, as well as certainly tragic for those in Denver tonight. At this time, the Assistant Secretaries for Safety of the National Automated Transport Safety Bureau, the Mass Transit Bureau, and the Postal Bureau are on the scene of the investigation in Denver, where they will make a combined public statement.

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