Road Marker Marks You 731
If you could make a reflective road marker (a "road stud", in the jargon) that contained a small solar cell and battery, you would be able to: A) power a LED at night to provide lit lanes, not just reflection; B) monitor for fog or water on the road surface; C) monitor the temperature to detect ice; D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road; E) All of the above. If the company can make them cheap enough, they'll be everywhere in a few years.
Oh shit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh shit (Score:4, Funny)
Mile markers drive into privacy advocates.
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Informative)
If a snowplow isn't taking them out, neither will you.
solved (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we might just move to Mexico and give everyone the finger.
insurance is like gambling in reverse (Score:3, Interesting)
You bet you are going to die tomorrow, and that your babies need some dollars quick.
Once you pass a certain amount of time with the insurance company without anything bad happening to you, they start winning.
Solution:
1) take out insurance
2) OW OW OW OW!
3) profit!
Re:In my town (Score:3, Informative)
I've noticed new markers being installed on the highways. The markers in the opposite lane illuminate red, your lane is white, and the sides are yellow. I noticed the ones in the opposite direction aren't always visible though. any idea if this is related?
Almost completely unrelated.
Markers are setup to show white on one side and red on the other, so if you're going the opposite direction down the lane you should see red all over, and if you're going the right direction you see white. The sides are yell
Re:Oh shit (Score:2, Insightful)
Preemptively taken care of: from the in-soviet-russia dept
Re:Oh shit (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh shit (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh shit (Score:4, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, You mark Road Marker...
Skevin
Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Interesting)
My insurance has never gone down with the same company here in CA. I have to switch providers for a $100 break, then it goes up, up, then I have to switch again. Perfect record.
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, that'll happen. I'm sure I'm not the only one willing to bet my life savings that this type of thing will only raise rates.
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:4, Funny)
You're crazy. This is just like when we got CDs and DVDs. They were more expensive at first, but once they got the manufacturing issues worked out, the prices came down just as promised.
What? They didn't? Shit.
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The outer shell of my rear bumper is made of brittle plastic and painted to match the rest of the car body. If some poor bastard accidently rear-ends my car at 5 MPH, the bumber will have to be replaced ($400), and then a body-shop worker will have to carefully match the faded paint on the rest of the car when painting the new one ($350) and that's not even counting the lights and stuff. Also, if he hits me at anything over
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Informative)
Make cars that are designed to be easily fixed and that last forever(moving parts should be easy to replace). Sure the auto industry won't make billions and employ a few thousand. But the small local garages will have more work to make up for the lost jobs and you won't be using as much power/resources.
This model works, look at most professional trucks or equipment. Most trucks are expected to work for well over 30 years. They can last nearly for ever if you make
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you drive 20,000 miles a year, you can expect a 2004 car to get you to 2014 and beyond, by which time the cars coming out then will be so vastly superior you will want another new one anyway, especially since you will be 10 years older and probably in a higher income bracket.
Car bodies are now designed to give themselves up in high-speed collisions to save the lives of the drivers. I know, because a drunk driver hit my 2003 Nissan pick-up truck head on (off-set front collision... the classic horror story safety testers like to focus on), shattering the entire engine compartment to little pieced. When my ears stopped ringing from the air bag deployment, I noticed that I was not only unharmed, but listening to the music of my CD player, which continued to play through the entire accident!
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Interesting)
There have been a number of improvements, but also a lot of moving backwards.
Newer cars do a lot to protect the passenger compartment in an accident, as it should be. However, I saw tests of SUVs backing into those concrete posts in parking lots at less than 5 MPH and doing $1500 worth of damage to themselves (commonly, the rear windshield shatters). That's inexcusable, especially in a so called utility vehicle.
Of course, the worst I ever saw was a new Corvette with the entire body shattered after being
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not just bumpers that need to be fixed, a lot of cars now have an external spare tire on the rear that is positioned so that if you get into an accident with them with a vehicle taller than say a Geo Metro - you are not only going to impact the bumper but the spare tire - which in turn will impact the rear glass, 3rd light, frame for rear glass. Since that piece is usually one section, you end up not only having to replac
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:3, Informative)
The outer shell of my rear bumper is made of brittle plastic and painted to match the rest of the car body. If some poor bastard accidently rear-ends my car at 5 MPH, the bumber will have to be replaced ($400), and then a body-shop worker will have to carefully match the faded paint on the rest of the car when painting the new one ($350) and that's not even counting the lights and stuff. Also, if he hits me at anything over 15 MPH, the bumper will fail to absorb all the shock, causing damage to the body an
Re:Insurance go down?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do we get reports saying that speeding causes more deaths and accidents? Insurance agencies.
Insurance companies base rate on points.
Number 1 reason for points, speeding tickets.
Number 1 lobbyer against repealing speeding laws? insurance agencies.
Non-insurance agency reports generally say that speeding doesn't make an accident any better or worse.
We don't like speeding laws but we never get the chance to vote them away based on companies funding campaigns full of biased data. This is a perfect example of a republic failing where a democracy would have succeeded.
The republic was made because tallying votes from every person wasn't possible so we tallied the votes for an area and let them vote as a block. Now that it is possible (diebold aside) it's time to implement the democracy.
Re:Oh shit (Score:3, Informative)
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Extra revenue.
You can take our Soviet Russia cliche, but you can never take our underpants gnomes cliche!
</Braveheart>
What is next, a "First Post" headline?
Frist Post? (Score:3, Funny)
Capitalist America (Score:3, Funny)
Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, this only applies to the US.
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't lived until you've torn a chunk of the drivers seat out with your ass because of an unexpected turn.
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of driving on a farm road in Texas, here's a brief description.
1.5 lanes wide
No shoulder
Painted lines optional
Random livestock
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:5, Funny)
Perry county, central PA. Any given road that's not an Interstate will have any number of the following defects or problems:
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're talking about the ones in the window: They were actually invented to deal with the concealed carry laws in certain states.
If you want to carry a gun in a car it has to be visible from the outside. Otherwise it's a "concealed weapon" because it's "concealed by the car". Thus the gun rack across the back windo
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just make them cheap enough? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I'm necessarily advocating "Big Brother"-type, camera-on-every-lightpost monitoring, but it would be foolish to rely on people correctly reporting what their vehicle is doing at all times.
Aqua-planing ? (Score:5, Funny)
5mm? 70mph? What if I'm driving in a quarter inch of water at 115kph?
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:3, Funny)
http://simpsons.shafe.com/hogshead.html
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:4, Funny)
That depends on how many Newtons your car weighs.
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:4, Funny)
Fig or strawberry?
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:4, Informative)
Weight (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:5, Funny)
You work in the aerospace industry?
KFG
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:5, Funny)
The important thing is to keep your mm*mph below 350. Just as 5 x 70 will cause you to lose control, driving on 1mm of water at 350 mph will also cause you to lose control. Similarly, driving 1 mph on 350 mm of water will also cause you to lose control.
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Aqua-planing ? (Score:5, Informative)
"Road Marker" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"Road Marker" (Score:5, Funny)
The theft of multiple road markers is therefore referred to as "compiling RPMs"
Or F (Score:5, Funny)
Money everywhere... (Score:2, Funny)
Reg Free Link (Score:3, Informative)
Lets just get it out of the way (Score:3, Funny)
F) CowboyNeal
Re:Lets just get it out of the way (Score:5, Funny)
F) CowboyNeal
In Soviet Russia, CowboyNeal F's you!
One problem: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One problem: (Score:5, Informative)
"The original Astucia markers were glued onto the road surface. That left them vulnerable to snowplow blades and to constant pounding from car and truck tires.
Mr. Dicks wanted to put the markers into holes drilled into the road surface. The key, he said, was finding self-healing resins for the top lenses that would be flush with the surface and subjected to much wear and tear."
Re:One problem: (Score:3, Insightful)
(A) an impossible angle and
(B) a very thick, slanted lens relative to the camera?
That would mean making the actual optics in the cameras much more complex to compensate, not to mention the fact that with a snowplow scraping over them, the exterior surface will be in no shape to act as a lens at all. These things would be way too expensive to be viable anywhere.
Sounds a lot like . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
By IAN AUSTEN
ABOUT 12 years ago, Martin Dicks was trapped in dense fog during a harrowing four-hour commute to his job as a firefighter in central London.
"Virtually all I could see on the road was a cat's-eye reflector every now and then," Mr. Dicks said, recalling his trip down one of Britain's major highways. "I figured that if I could make the cat's-eyes more visible, I could probably save more lives than I could in the fire service."
A back injury forced Mr. Dicks out of the fire department shortly afterward, giving him the time to pursue that goal. His training as an electrical engineer provided the necessary skills.
Now, after perfecting illuminated markers that are embedded in the road surface to guide motorists through bad weather or warn of dangerous conditions, Mr. Dicks's company, Astucia Traffic Management Systems, is going a step further. Its latest creation is an embedded stud equipped with a camera that catches speeders, monitors traffic for criminals or stolen cars and even checks for bald tires on the fly.
"Nobody knows it's a camera or a speed trap," Mr. Dicks said of his latest creation.
Mr. Dicks's original idea was quite simple in concept. He wanted to create an illuminated road marker containing its own power source, a solar cell. At night or in bad weather, light from approaching vehicles would generate enough power to light up the marker, which consisted of light-emitting diodes. An illuminated marker would be more visible than a plain reflector, and the idea was that a car passing over the markers would cause them to stay illuminated long enough so that they would provide a warning trail of lights for any vehicles close behind.
The trouble, at first, was the technology available in the early 1990's. Photovoltaic cells were not as efficient as they are today. And at the time, Mr. Dicks recalled, "the concept of a white L.E.D. was nowhere."
Working mostly with family members at first, Mr. Dicks produced a prototype marker within two years. He dodged the white L.E.D. problem by combining the glow from red, green and blue arrays. The group not only overcame the limitations of solar cells, but also managed to engineer markers that turned red to warn when the gap between two cars was dangerously small.
Mr. Dicks said the technology both impressed and alarmed British government highway officials.
"They were frightened about everyone using the product on roads from one end of the country to the other," he said. "They thought it would make their budgets disappear."
The first markers cost roughly twice the price of conventional embedded road studs. As a result, their use was restricted at first to especially fog-prone or dangerous sections of roads as well as crosswalks, including some in the United States.
Mr. Dicks was not the only person with a desire to illuminate to road markers. After a friend struck and killed a pedestrian in 1991 at a crosswalk in Santa Rosa, Calif., Michael Harrison developed a system that uses flashing L.E.D.'s in the road surface to make crosswalks more visible. The company he founded in 1994, LightGuard Systems, now has about 700 installations in the United States.
A study of 100 illuminated crosswalks by Katz, Okitsu & Associates, a traffic engineering firm based in Southern California, estimates that adding the blinking L.E.D.'s to crosswalks can reduce pedestrian accidents by 80 percent.
The original Astucia markers were glued onto the road surface. That left them vulnerable to snowplow blades and to constant pounding from car and truck tires.
Mr. Dicks wanted to put the markers into holes drilled into the road surface. The key, he said, was finding self-healing resins for the top lenses that would be flush with the surface and subjected to much wear and tear.
"It's like running your fingernail on a rubber sheet," he said of the plastics' behavior. "The mark it leaves goes away."
A
Re:Article Text (Score:3, Insightful)
Fat frickin' chance. Price went down for CD manufacturing. Did the price at Best Buy drop any? No. Are the Insurance companies any more ethical than the RIAA? Hell no.
Re:Article Text (Score:3, Funny)
I had the same thing happen to me, except all I (thump) could see (thump) was the occasional cat's eyes. (thump)
Thrilling, kinda like adding millions of cops... (Score:2)
The thought of the road markers being lit by led though sounds great - too many foggy nights when its hard to see them and this could help a bit.
Needs more cameras to be legal... (Score:3, Informative)
In many states, you need to photograph the face of the person driving in addition to the license plate. These little markers would need some sort of WiFi coordination with a camera positioned higher up in order to capture the drivers face.
My only concern would be with night time. Unless these would only be used on highways with street lights, I can imagine all sorts of safety problems
Road studs (Score:3, Interesting)
They placed the road studs on one of these roads and they practically glow compared to the paint. If the self-illuminating kind become readily available and easily placed it would be great for areas that see a lot of inclement weather.
Might cut down on the number of oncoming cars that drift into my lane on during the commute home as well. Now if we could just jam cell phone use in cars.
What would be very cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, you could make lanes that are dynamic during the day and night. (They already have those with changing street signs).
Real time stopping distance approxomations (are you following too close?). Lane change "handoffs" (the road infront of you goes orange because someone is turning into that lane.)
It's would be the same technology used for those rotating led clocks.
Of course, it'll all be moot when people finally let computers do the driving for them.
What would NOT be very cool (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the better option would still be to have the messages sent by wifi to the car's computer and displayed on its screen, so you can read them easily. Reading stuff off the pavement while driving is not exactly convenient.
Interesting point though. It will probably happen, too (in one form or another), but not very soon.
Re:What would be very cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Click me! [indot.org]
A ./ first? (Score:3, Insightful)
On another note, at least mention the fact the article is New York Times.
Now for on topic stuff... I like the idea of flashing lights for crosswalks, but not so much the cameras. It's sort of messed up to think that every single reflector in the road can be a camera.
Also, at what point does this start becoming a distraction? Can I see the lights from my front window? Being LEDs, I would hope not, but it'd be nice to know. I also would be interested in seeing whether these things stand up to the weight of a Chicago winter... regardless of what the article says. :-)
Don't ticket me - control my car's max speed (Score:5, Insightful)
I claim that if no one could go over the speed limit, traffic would flow much more smoothly, and if the limit is too low (because you are expected to speed 10 mph), we will all complain loudly enough to get it changed.
Other aspects of this project sound interesting though.
Dara Parsavand
Re:Don't ticket me - control my car's max speed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't ticket me - control my car's max speed (Score:4, Insightful)
There are times when going over the speedlimit not only legal, but done for saftey reasons. Passing another car on a two lane highway is one case where it's perfectly acceptable to go 10 or 15mph over the posted limit depending on the state's local laws. Even smaller towns near where I live who depend on speeding tickets for income when I told the judge I was passing a truck halling rocks, he understood and threw it out.
I wouldn't object to a system where my car would understand the speed limit and beep at me if i'm going over, nor would I object to a cruse control i'm able to set at that speed, so long as I can override it for passing or other emergencies.
Re:Don't ticket me - control my car's max speed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't ticket me - control my car's max speed (Score:4, Funny)
Score -1: Get a life (Score:3, Insightful)
I also didn't buy a car with a 4.6L V8 to be hampered by built-in speed controls. Some people find driving fun you know.
Re:Score -1: Get a life (Score:3, Insightful)
It is fun, but unfortunately that's one reason we have to have speed limits and rules out the ass. There will always be people who don't know how to control their fun-having properly. That said, I think it is dangerous to have auto-limiting of a vehicle's speed, for various reasons. However, there is a bright spot in this sort of advancement... If the system can become smart enough, and do the actual driving for you, we'd probably be allowed to go much faster anyhow.
Incorrect Assumptions (Score:4, Informative)
Three things: braking (slow spots), inattention/under-limit driving, and fear.
- Slow Spots
What slows down traffic flow most is people braking when they don't need to, or braking more than they need to. The problem is that in congested traffic, once one car slows in one lane, a wedge of cars behind him slows, and behind them everyone slows.
Then when that one driver speeds up (and it takes much longer to speed up than slow down), the next cars THEN speed up. They don't speed up exactly when the lead driver does because it takes them time to see the change. This carries on behind them.
This creates a slow spot on the freeway. Once a slow spot is created, it only goes away once a gap backwards in traffic is large enough to allow the slowed vehicles to speed up to normal speed before the gap is completely closed by the approaching traffic.
- Under-limit Driving
This is obvious. Left or center lane driver drops below speed limit, cars behind have to slow (often they use their brake instead of coasting down), and you're in the situation above (slow spot).
- Fear
Car needs in another lane. Most drivers, if there is room ahead of the vehicle beside them, will still brake and try to fall in behind the neighboring vehicle. The following vehicles in that lane may not be friendly, and may not allow that. So fearful driver brakes even more, hoping to eventually get over. I've even seen some fools come to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway so they can hopefully work across 3 lanes to exit. They should have either sped up and pulled in front, or if that took too long, gradually worked their way over, missed their exit, and looped back.
These things don't mean you should never brake, or that you should always drive aggressively, but some middle ground approach would surely improve things. The time cost for a full traffic jam is enormous. 5 minutes times 200,000 vehicles is 11 days of time. In a perverse way that's a really significant amount of power that one driver can exercise. Create a good traffic jam and you've just wasted 11 days of your town's time.
Won't work in many parts of the North (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, figure out how to do all that in a paint and then you're a kabillionair!
Re:Won't work in many parts of the North (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shades of Orwell (Score:3, Insightful)
Because driving slower kills fewer pedestrians, and no matter how many times we *ask* drivers to obey the law, they won't. So we have to make them.
>I mean, I guess it could be argued that if you obey the law you have nothing to fear
Yes, you could argue that.
Re:Shades of Orwell (Score:3, Interesting)
Will these things light the interstate up red if a pedestrain is walking there?
Those pedestrians shouldn't be walking along the interstate! That is just asking for a Darwin award. I know it would suck if you had a flat or ran out of gas, but really you shouldn't walk on the shoulder of the interstate. You should be off the road entirely if you ever need to walk there.
Re:Not Without Benefits (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, speficically regard objections to automated traffic enforcement scams such as this a lot of object because we know that the stated objective, "increased safety", and promised benefits, "lower insurance rates" are total bullshit. If increased road safety were the goal then stealth enforcement wouldn't be seen as a benefit, bright red flags and flashing lights would mark the intersections dangergous enough to warrant traffic spy-cams and people would slow down, thus saving lives. That and having traffic engineers set the speed limit to a speed that the road can safely handle, or better yet pump the money being tossed into spy-cams into smart roads with adaptive speed limits. So yeah I'm afriad of any revenue generating, control increasing technology marketed as a safety device.
sorry but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sorry but... (Score:3, Funny)
I've thought about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've thought about this... (Score:3, Funny)
Anything that can be hacked will be hacked.
Do you really want to see a picture of the goatse man on your windshield as you are driving on the highway?
Re:We've got them in scotland (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, it's a problem. We just had the Trans-Canada Highway closed for a couple of days due to heavy snow. Increased lane visibility would eliminate one part of the problem. Cheers!
My reaction (Score:3, Insightful)
LED lit roads - good
Roads that track you everywhere you go - Bad
So why does such a good idea have to become "real-world bloatware"?
Speed enforcement (Score:5, Interesting)
-b0s0z0ku
The big question is costs.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Outdoors in extreme temperature ranges,
2) Very high humidity, and often corrosive atmosphere,
3) Physically very small,
4) Reasonably immune to physical damage (salt/sand sludge + snowplows do _nasty_ things to optical windows.)
Power has to come from batteries at night; what is the battery life under industrial temperatures (-20 to 150F, forex.) Concrete doesn't get quite that hot, but asphault does.
You can get away with powering LEDs with a supercap and a switcher, should have a better lifespan than a NiCD or SLA, but they're physically larger and not as robust (As well as pricey.) But that won't cut it for cameras or radios. So you have to replace the batteries every few years.
These are not traditional road studs. 5" wide?? These are huge; the normal installation methods won't work.
I'd like to see their business case. Almost certainly relies on questionable safety increases or revenue from being a speed trap.
My state is running a multi-year reliability study on more traditional road studs (including those nifty blue reflectors) on various roads around the area.
Enforcing the speed limit... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just like the weekly poker night that I host. I tell people: "Show up no later than 8:00, or cards will be dealt and your hands will be folded." Now, we don't really enforce that rule, but there has to be some rule in place, just because, otherwise, if I said, "Show up anytime from 7:00 to 9:00," then the first guy would show up at 9:30, and the game would start sometime around midnight.
There has to be some speed limit, but strict enforcement just isn't good for anyone -- especially the police.
Why not use an RFID tag in the licence plate (Score:3, Interesting)
They won't come to Minnesota (Score:3, Funny)
Nice idea for SoCal, tho.
Ain't gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
States rely too much upon the fines for speeding. They have optimized their income with the current system. If speed detection was made 100% reliable, no one would do it and the states wouldn't make any money off of it.
This is a part of the reason why interlock devices aren't placed on all cars at the factory. Everyone hates "drunk driving", but they make so much money off of it that they don't want it to completely stop.
LK
Another speed/ticket issue (Score:4, Interesting)
In my Z3, I can (safely) take corners at speeds far in excess of the posted "recommended" limits. Indeed, I frequently don't actually need to slow down for the corners. That's because the car's center of gravity is extremely low, the wide tires provide huge contact patches, and the car is almost perfectly balanced (50/50 front/rear). Add to the mix the outstanding OEM suspension, and it is completely safe to take the corner above the recommended speed.
In my sisters Ford Excursion, however, a speed below the posted recommended limit is necessary to keep the behemoth between the lines. It has a high center of gravity, a terrible contact patch/weight ratio, and bad front/rear balance. Plus, being made by Ford, the suspension feels like a pair of overstretched rubber bands. The posted recommended limit is too high for that thing.
Impossible, but I'd like to see speed limits take into account the physics that control how safe a vehicle is at speed. Much more frightening to me than a sports car travelling at 100 mph (not me
That'll probably arrive right after the IQ requirement for driver's licenses.
Dan D
Release 2.0 . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Since they can also form packs, they can turn into a revenue center for municipalities either by extorting money from homeless people in the neighborhood or by breaking them up for parts.
Version 2.5 will include the ability to self-assemble, leading the end of life as we know it. Personally, I salute our new artifically-intelligent speed bump overlords!
RFID tags in tires (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With the sensors in them, ... (Score:3, Funny)
Actually doors are kind of nice for other reasons:
- They keep (most) people out of my house.
- They hide Old People Sex so I won't go blind while driving down the street (and mask the sound of wrinkly liverspotted skin rubbing on wrinkly liverspotted skin).
- They provide us exercise by making us get up to let cats/dogs in/out.
So rather than take off all doors, just plan on having a BigBrotherCam(tm) installed for your protection instead (the 1
Runway lights (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's a very clever thought: if they could be set to sequence at exactly the speed limit, they'd be a great 'heads-up' speed (and speed limit) indicator - "if you're passing the little flashing lights, you're speeding."
Better try a pickaxe (Score:3, Interesting)