BBC 英语学习 News Review 无人驾驶汽车试验

Driverless cars? Would you travel in one?

Well, there's a trial taking place in the UK to see if they can be used on public roads.

Hello, I'm Robin. This is news review from BBC, learning English.

And to talk about this story, I'm joined by Neil.

Hello. Neil, hi. Rob. Hello everybody.

Yes, if

you'd like to test yourself on the vocabulary that you hear in this program, there's a quiz on our website at bbc learningenglish com.

But now let's hear some more about the story from this BBC news report.

Preliminary trials of the fetch driverless cars have been going on for some time around Milton Keen stadium, but the company and the local council now feel the time is right to take them out onto public roads.

The vehicles are not completely autonomous.

They are controlled remotely by an operator who has a 360 degree view of the roads from cameras mounted onto the body of the car.

And for the next few months, the cars will have a safety driver to intervene should there be a problem.

It's the 1st time that driverless vehicles have been tested in the UK.

So driverless cars, it's a technology that is coming, and they make people feel a little bit nervous.

But there is a trial going on in the UK at the moment in the city of Milton Kings, to test and see how safe they are before they can start being used properly.

Yes? And we've got three words and expressions that we can use to talk about this new story.

What are they? Please, neil, we have kick off large scale and hit.

That's kick off large scale and hit.

OK, well, let's have a look at your 1st news headline to learn about one of those words.

What is it? Please? OK, so looking in the Times newspaper, that's from the UK, we have the headline Driverless cars kick off by taking footballers to training.

That's kick Off. Begin start. That's right.

Kick Off is a frasal verb made up of the 1st part kick and then the particle off.

And we hear this expression used in football, don't we?

Yeah. So at the beginning of a football match, there is the kick off.

That's a noun, or the players kick off as a verb, and it means just start the game Oversee, in football, you kick the ball.

And so kick off means start the football match.

So are we talking about football in this story here?

Well, actually we're not. No. So kick off originates from football, but it can be used in a wide variety of other contexts, just meaning to start something.

Although actually in this story, there is a connection to football, because the trial involves footballers from the team mk dons transporting them around.

So the headline writer has had a bit of fun there.

He's using kick off to mean start something in general, but there is a connection to its original meaning, about football.

Yeah, I get that right. Okay.

And it's quite an informal expression.

This one as well, isn't it?

That's right. yes, you wouldn't see in, um, you know, sort of official documentation about the start of something, you wouldn't see the verb kick off.

But we use it all the time, and it's OK to use in headlines, obviously.

Yeah. OK, so we kick something off, or we kick off something, that's the kind of way we use it generally.

Yeah, that's right. The verb can be separated, so that means you can put something in the beginning, we can kick off the project or kick the project off.

OK, great. Let's have a summary then of that phrase.

So we've been talking about kick off, but we used the word kick in another English expression, to kick something into the long grass.

And we talked about this expression in one of our videos, the English we speak.

How can we watch that video again, please?

Neil? Yes. Don't kick it into the long grasp.

Watch this video by clicking on the link below.

Yeah, it's just down below there.

Great. OK, let's have a look at your next headline, please.

OK, the next headline comes from BBC News, and it is Milton Keens to hold large scale driverless car trial.

That's large scale, involving many people or things.

Yeah, so large scale. Here an adjective made up of two parts large.

Obviously that means big and scale.

And scale refers to the size of something, and it isn't

necessarily something big or small scale in itself is neutral and needs something to modify it, like large, in this

example, large scale. OK? But when I use maps, I see scale on there similar things that related.

Yeah, that's right. So when you look at the look at a map, you'll see that there is a scale,

and it tells you what the relationship is between the size of the map and the size of the real thing that the map is describing.

Yeah, very useful, indeed. So large scale is about lots of things and people, or about a large area.

So sometimes we might see large scale flooding after a storm over a large area.

Yeah, that's right, rob. So as you said, in this example, it's a large scale project or experiment and involving a lot of people.

But large scale can also be used to describe a geographical area that's affected by something.

So, as you said, large scale destruction or devastation caused by a natural disaster.

Hmm. And we also know that the recent covied pandemic that's had a large scale impact on the economy, on businesses.

That's right, yes, exactly. Yeah. The covin 19 has had a really large scale impact, a huge scale.

OK, let's now have a summary of that expression.

Something that had large scale devastation last year was the tornadoes that happened across parts of the USA.

And we talked about that on News Review, and you can watch that video again.

So tell us how. Please kneel yet to see that story about the terrible, large scale destruction caused by those tornadoes.

Just click on the link below.

Thank you. Right? It's time now to look at your next headline, please.

Yeah. My next headline comes from Auto Car, a magazine dedicated to cars, and the headline is, driverless cars to hit public roads in Milton Kings.

So the word is hit make an impact on Yeah?

Now, hit is one of those words in English.

There has lots and lots and lots of different meanings, as we've discovered researching this program, haven't we?

Rob But in this headline, we have a quite common expression hidden in this headline, hit the road.

Now, we use the expression Hit the road to mean go go somewhere, leave E.G.

Um. If we read a party, and you Rob wanted to stay longer than me, and it was getting really late, I might say, she Come on, robert's time to hit the road.

And it means leave. But actually, in this, the sense of hit in this sentence is not connected to that.

It's more to do with impact in general, isn't it?

Yeah, and we're not talking about physical impact.

I mean, this could, we could argue this is a bad choice of word, because hit sounds like something's gonna crash.

But we're using it more figuratively, aren't we?

Yeah. So we are talking about the impact, the metaphorical or figurative impact, of this trial on the roads of a city in the UK, milson Kings.

So when we say that it's going to hit, it means that it's going to start and that there will be an impact, because it's a noticeable thing for driverless cars to suddenly be used on the roads.

And say, heat is a good headline word to use in this context.

Yeah, it's short and it's dramatic, so that's perfect for a headline.

Yeah. We could say, going back to the corona virus pandemic, we could say that, you know, the effects of corona virus, it's hit the economy.

It's had an impact on the economy.

Yeah, it's hit the economy. It's hit the whole population.

And we can also talk about, you know, a new piece of technology has hit the shells or hit the market, A new type of phone may have hit the market again, is connected to impact, which makes it close to the meaning of that original hit, meaning, you know, smash something with force.

Great. Thank you for making that clearer.

Let's have a summary of that word hit.

OK, it's time now, neil, to recap the vocabulary that we've discussed today.

Yes, we have heard kick off, meaning begin or start large scale, involving many people or things, and hit make an impact on

And now, don't forget, you can test yourself on the words and the phrases that we've talked about today in a quiz, and that's on our website

at BBC learning english com. That's the place to go to to check out

all our learning English materials. And don't forget a course, we're on social media as well well.

That's the end of news review for today.

Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time.

扫码查看听力音频