I was watching this video of a live chicken trapped on a moving truck and thought it was strange that it’s not possible to say anything to them even when circumstances might warrant it. All we got is honking and waving. There could be a touchscreen interface with a map of nearby vehicles. It could be voice controllable or the passenger could do it for safety.
That sounds awful. But it does exist, its called a cb radio
Yeah no people are trash on average, I don’t want to get constantly pinged by trashy people while driving, I don’t even like proximity chat in games, imagine having that in real life, there’s a high chance of accidents happening due to distraction. Now if someone wants to add a little display on their car that can display some basic text messages, maybe that could be of some use
Hate to break it to you, but proximity chat is enabled in real life all the time.
People don’t have the balls to come up to you in real life and say the stuff they say from a place of saftey and anonymity.
Lady honked at me the other day for not turning left at a light (she obviously didn’t see the motorcyclists) and began making rude gestures.
Well anyway it’s probably better that we can’t talk to each other.
I had a similar thing happen this week. Left turn lane waiting for pedestrian and their dog to cross the road. Person behind me was losing their minds at me. I pointed at the pedestrian and shrugged.
I once had someone flip me off because I put my turn signal on. We were in the right lane, I was turning right, and the left lane was completely empty.
Guess we’re supposed to mow them down, idk.
This is what CB Radios are, and many more people used to have them before cell phones.
People in mountainous areas where a cell phone is useless still do.
It’s not a bad idea, but there are plenty of countries where it would be abused to xbox live chat levels.
The radios would need to have a very, very short range to avoid this. You’d need to know that everyone who can hear you can also see you (and potentially follow you if they’d like a word face to face), which is the accountability aspect that’s missing from online interactions.
Honking IS how you contact nearby vehicles.
This might shock you but I dont want nearby people to be able to talk to me. Chicken or not.
I used to have a cat that loved to jump up under any truck that would be delivering something. We used to tell them not to leave until we had eyes on our cat. Even with that, he was such a varmint that I’d give them my business card, and tell them that if they got to their next delivery, and found him in their truck, to call me, and I’ll come get him.
Luckily, our precautions worked, but he was a troublemaker.
Yeah, let’s add proximity chat to traffic. It’ll be great!
Bruh that’s just multiplayer game voice chat IRL. Imagine chaos and trolling.
I do a lot of water sports in the UK and we use VHF radios. Certain frequencies are used by marinas and the like, and nearby boats will be tuned into them. Then there is a frequency used for emergency calls - the coastguard listens on that and answers, and will move your call to another frequency for more details, leaving the mayday one open again.
We mainly use VHF for boat-to-boat comms, or boat-to-shore. The local range is decent - a few miles from our base, depending on atmospheric conditions, obstacles etc. I honestly have no idea if you could use VHF radios between cars though. It’s not private for a start - everyone can hear you - and once someone is yammering on the marina frequency no-one else can transmit. So it’s just brief messages with protocols.
CB radio was briefly very popular in the US in the 1970s. But the fad quickly died out among passenger car drivers, and now with cell phones, few truck drivers use it anymore. It’s mainly used to harass people.
Similarly, for a short time Airdropping on iPhones was always-on. It was mainly used to harass people.
GMRS has mostly replaced CB now. Cheap and works better than CB at short range. Adoption has been slow, however.
I keep a CB radio in my car, and have a few friends with them
It is actually really handy when you’re road tripping together in different cars to be able to just grab the mic and say something to the other vehicle when you need to stop for a bathroom break or you’re having an issue with your car or want to give them a heads-up about whatever.
If you’re fairly close together a set of cheap FRS walkie-talkies from Walmart does the job just as well. Probably worth stepping up to CB if you expect to lose sight of the other vehicle though, range is usually a bit better.
It’s especially handy if, like me, you go camping and such in rural areas with unreliable cell coverage.
You do occasionally also get helpful heads-ups from truckers if you’re listening to channel 19 about road conditions, police activity, traffic, etc. but mostly it’s just idiots babbling about conspiracy theories and immature bullshit.
Why is everyone so quick to recommend Walmart? Corpo advertising shouldn’t have a place on lemmy , intentional or not
Because they’re fucking everywhere, something like 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of one.
It’s basically shorthand for “this is a common and readily available thing that you can acquire anywhere in the country for cheap even if megacorps have driven all of the local specialty retailers out of business in your areas”
As opposed to something like a HF ham radio which is a specialty item that no big retailers like walmart, to the best of my knowledge, carry, and so you’re probably not going to be able to find it locally.
But I can buy that thing on eBay for 3X more plus shipping!
I get that it’s short hand for that --but I still don’t think it’s good to push people forward to stores with so many moral and economic issues like walmart as the first suggestion.
A simple trucker’s radio is a common item in gas stations and truck stops–not that they’re necessarily better than walmart, but they’re just as common and weren’t put forth as a suggestion
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A “truckers” (CB) radio is exactly what I was suggesting FRS radios as an alternative to.
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I suggested them because they are much simpler to use. With a mobile base station you need to figure out where to mount it in your car, where to mount an antenna, tune that antenna, how to hard-wire it into your car’s power (or splice an adapter onto it to power it from the cigarette lighter), whereas with a walkie talkie you just need to turn it on, put it on the right channel and push a button.
(Handheld CBs do exist. I’ve very rarely seen them for sale in a brick and mortar store)
- It’s probably gonna depend on where in the country you are, but CB radio equipment is in fact not commonly available at gas stations and truck stops around me. It’s something I actually actively look for and take notice of because I’m a bit of a radio geek. In fact, if I needed to tell someone where to get a CB locally, their best bet for that would probably also be the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something, and even that would be hit or miss, some TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOSes don’t actually seem to carry them, but every TSWNYSTTTNOSSLIFVOS I’ve ever been in absolutely has at least one set of FRS radios for sale.
the-store-whose-name-you-seem-too-think-that-no-one-should-say-like-its-fucking-voldemort-or-something,
Believe it or not. Shopping at unethical companies is unethical . I don’t like people advertising for a terrible corp.
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As evil as Walmart is it’s undeniable they do have everything you could think of under one roof. The idea isn’t awful if it wasn’t so harmful.
Well, not always. Mine apparently doesn’t have any vanilla extract right now. I can only assume that it’s tariff related
CB radio? That shit is for truckers and nerds but it was solid.
Luckily, you’re on Lemmy, and we’re all nerds here
Use it all the time (UHF). But only get comms on other off-roaders, all the trucks, or caravamers. It’s very useful. I give out handhelds to friends if we’re travelling together.Honestly, phones are pretty shit in comparison.
I’m glad it’s not popular for other drivers, though. One of the main benefits is most people don’t use it, so the bands don’t get clogged with shit.
Seconded on their usefulness on the road. Incredibly easy to just reach over, hold the PTT button and get your message across. One time purchase for something that won’t get shut down or unsupported ever.
If you try communicating with a phone, the only safe way to do it (assuming one person per vehicle) is to start a phone call before leaving, and keep it running constantly. If you have a passenger, they become your secretary. If the call drops then that’s all comms lost until both pull over and redial. Requires mobile coverage everywhere on your route which in Australia isn’t the case, even on major routes like A1 Bruce Highway.
Walkie talkies are king for travelling with mates
Here in South Korea every car has the phone number of the owner displayed through the windshield so you can always call them when they parked false or so.
Really? That seems like it could be an issue of privacy.
I mean I can only imagine that people might be harassed in some way or another.
Road rage.
I think the inability to communicate makes road rage worse, actually. Simple matters that could be solved by a quick comment become rage inducing because there’s literally nothing you can do about them.
I think you are severely overestimating the average maturity of humans, especially when they feel powerful as they do when driving.
They feel empowered, partially, because they’re basically anonymous. Everyone is basically a faceless tank on the road.
Exactly this. I’ve long had a thought that if all automobiles were like the Invisible Boatmobile from SpongeBob, then most of the suble cues between humans would make it easier to understand intentions, with corresponding reduction in misapprehension and collisions.
That said, humans simply are poorly adapted to traveling at 100 kph, so who’s to say if these cues are even understandable at high speed. And of course, it’s downright impossible to see those details when blinded by mutual headlights on a rural highway at night.
This guy gets it.
