Tuesday 6 April 2010

Heisenberg at Work

"You can't measure the mass of a particle without changing its velocity". Heisenberg said that. Early last century.

Here we see it on Arley Hill, the council traffic monitoring car WV09NYO, parking across a bike lane.

Yes, its the only way to collect data by hand, but you have to realise: your very presence alters the data itself. Move to the 21st century: track the phones.

4 comments:

Dru Marland said...

He appears to be holding a piece of paper up for you. Is he awarding you points? I hope you got a good score. I wonder if this idea, spread further, would be a Good Thing for Bristol's cyclists, to negotiate a junction and find that they'd scored a 10 or whatever.

SteveL said...

Some piece of colour paper saying they are allowed to park there. I have a video of the conversation but it is too dull. Apparently they had planned to park further up the hill, but were surprised (!) to discover that the car behind them hadn't moved in four hours. This means they don't get out enough. Residents don't move cars during working day mornings as there won't be a space afterwards; commuters don't move cars as they are at work. Again, a bit of data collection would prove this.

Unknown said...

SteveL,

I'm probably being blind, but how do I submit something? Can I just email it to you.....?

SteveL said...

-we are a team, you send it to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com and someone may pick it up. Remember to add upbeat commentary in line with the rest of the site, criticisms don't normally get through.