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Media watch
Page 15
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IN THE NEWS
Stuart Thomas brings you his regular round-up of the way our local and national press has covered the wonderful world of road transport this week..
We're frequently warned that one day robots will carry out the jobs we're too busy, too bored or just too confused by to do for ourselves. Last week that reality came a step closer, thanks to boffins figuring out how to distinguish men from mannequins.
And, as so often, it's down to our American cousins. It seem drivers in the Land of the Free have strapped dummies into their passenger seats to avoid charges for single-occupant car use on busy commuter routes. The Scottish Executive is now worried its citizens may also pass for blank-faced, pasty manequIns with no 10 levels (dummies, not Americans).
The Scotsman reported on plans to introduce an infrared system called Cyclops that can tell if a driver is introducing a mannequin to the joys of Heartland FM while crossing the Forth Road Bridge in a bid to cut his toll charges by 50%. Cyclops measures the water k content in human skin and uses this information to count the number of occupants. The trial alone is predicted to cost £40,000.
For the benef it of readers with no imagination, The Scotsman even illustrated what a dummy in a car looks like. Frankly, sat there with a seat-belt on, shiny bald head, no eyes, stickers on its bare chest and forehead and, frighteningly, facing the cameraman from behind the wheel, its easy to see how anyone could be fooled.
Sticking with Scotland, something fishy is afoot in Aberdeen. No not the warehouse manager making a killing smuggling mannequins out of his shop, but the fish warehouse that caught fire, leading to closed roads and diverted traffic Grampian Fire and Rescue sent 40 personnel and 10 vehicles to the Joseph Robertson warehouse in the city earlier this week following thc major blaze, according to the BBC News website. Captain Birdseye was seen hastily leaving the city and heading south, a stuffed haddock sat beside him. Or was it a dummy?
Only the good captain and Cyclops know...