I think Problem #2 in your list serves as an explanation for Problems #3 and #4. The temporary speed limits are ridiculous and rarely reflect the 'safe' speed for travel along that stretch of road. Antiseptic explains that quite well - I had never thought of it that way.

However, because the limit is so completely unreasonable, it gets ignored. Sadly, many drivers cannot distinguish between the necessary speed reductions when roadworks ARE happening or conditions ARE changed and the unnecessary speed reductions when the road may undergo some work in the near future or may have undergone work in the near past. This must endanger both the drivers and the roadworkers.

I agree - there must be a better way!

This is all just a temporary problem. It seems likely that within my lifetime the idea of a car being under the individual and idiosyncratic control of a driver will be seen as intolerably risky at all but the slowest speeds. The first steps toward autonomous vehicles have been taken, both in passenger cars that can drive on normal roads entirely without a driver and on mine sites, where robotic autonomous haul trucks are being deployed on some sites already.

When it becomes the norm, then the roadworks problem disappears (and quite likely, so do most of the roadworkers, replaced by robotic plant - sorry Belly). The passengers probably won't even notice, being too busily occupied within the vehicle and any time lost could be made up by increased speed on the open sections, assuming such an autonomous vehicle would even have to stop when it is in communication with the roadworks plant and safety systems.

I really love riding my motorbike fast and well and I'm an enthusiastic and fairly competent driver of all powered vehicles. I'm not looking forward to the day those things are only done as historical events (or likely, not at all), despite the danger and the inconvenience of imperfect roads and roadworks.

I was going to have a rant about automation and the place of humans in a world run by machines, perfect servants of process that never fail to cross every arbitrary "t", or dot every inconsequential "i", but I think I'll leave it for another thread. Suffice to say that it seems difficult to conceive of such a world being anything but dystopian, with the vast majority of people having little to occupy their time or stimulate their thoughts and spending a large part of their lives bored witless, unable to influence events and eventually, unable to even imagine it would be possible to do so.

Hi Antiseptic, they will have to drag my steering wheel out of my cold dead hands mate. There is no way I'm trusting a computer to drive my car. As we all know, it's not if, but when the damn computer will next stuff up or freeze.

I guess automatic control of motor cars will be a good way of reducing the population. Assuming they get the same quality control in the things as in all to many cars, the carnage will be horrendous.

Add to that the rate of desk top computer freezing episodes & the reduction in population should be quite rapid.

I wonder what would happen to a car, traveling at 100Km/H when the thing froze. Do you remember the demonstration by Mercedes of their auto brake system a few years back? Was it 2 or 3 of their top of the range things that wrote each other off.

I'm not going to worry about it, I reckon my grand kids will be old & grey by the time it is sorted. We will probably have teleporting before then, although the same worry about computers would apply.

I thought this true life story may be of interest here.
We have a truely dreadful road here.
It, understanding its construction methods and its under the road ground, can not be without many millions any better.
Council and its contractors are constantly rebuilding sections.
And while those sections too fail, it is at a slower rate [some improvements in construction methods]
Drainage to be specific.
Well a recently renewed and far better part of the road, has seen a death in a run off thev road smash.
Both sides of that part are far worse!
But the smash is being put down to the road.
Thousands of such storeys exist.
But when has anyone heard of road builders or funders trying to tell the public about the reasons our roads fall apart?

I kind of feel the same about riding/driving, Hasbeen, but at my age of 50 I fully expect the human-controlled motor vehicle to be obsolete well before I turn up me toes. There's no problem with reliability of control systems and it's a trivial exercise to design in negative-feedback fail-safe modes. We already trust computers to fly our planes in the form of fly-by-wire - the pilot chooses what he'd like the plane to do and the computer decides firstly, if it can be done and second, how to make it happen. The current generation of military fast jets will also very probably be the last to carry a crew and the heavies won't be far behind.

I'd really like to believe that the coming age of automated everything will free humanity from drudgery and enable a new golden age of creative endeavour in which every whim is readily fulfilled - something like Asimov's conception of the robot as faithful, untiring, servant facilitating human expression

On the other hand, simple observation of the tyrannies inflicted by assiduous workers in industry and bureaucracy diligently applying rigid processes with little concern for the outcome or any ability to modify the process leaves little doubt in my mind as to the likely stultifying nature of a machine-controlled world. When combined with the evidence that the vast majority of people are simply not interested in being creative, nor have any creative abilities, the outlook seems poor for such a renascence.

The roadworks story also provides a lesson in a human response to a rigidly prescriptive process that is judged to be inapproriate - the speed limits are largely unenforced and observed more in the breach. It's hard to imagine a "cop-bot" doing that...

Bring on the cop-bots!

They couldn’t do a worse job than the human variety!