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Traffic exists because human drivers form a compression wave. The car in front of you accelerates, then you accelerate, then the person behind you, etc. Every t

Traffic exists because human drivers form a compression wave. The car in front of you accelerates, then you accelerate, then the person behind you, etc. Every time someone taps the brakes, they create traffic behind them. Self-driving cars would presumably synchronize, allowing all of the cars to start moving at almost the same time and move in unison at high speeds. Also, people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't. This should be no problem for a computer, so you could have a densely packed highway but traffic still moving at very high speeds. Basically, flow velocity could remain constant as the highway becomes more congested. On city streets, your car would route around traffic light timing, in coordination with other vehicles, to distribute traffic and prevent unnecessary stopping. Edit: One caveat worth mentioning is that these optimizations would be most effective if a road is 100% automated cars, though maybe dedicated lanes are a good transition mechanism. Once the safety benefits are clear, I think adoption will be very fast. The societal cost of car accidents is absolutely massive.

paulddraper 11y ago
"people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't" Not only do they not feel safe, they aren't safe driving bumper-to-bumper. Computers will have better reaction times, so much of that goes away. But it's still dangerous. If two cars ahead of me slows, and the car ahead doesn't slow and collides, it will decelerate very quickly, perhaps too quickly for my brakes at 60mph.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  You're right, the failure mode for self-driving cars at high speeds is catastrophic, but that's no different from many safe technologies. And the bar here is pretty low. You'd have to really screw up when designing the system for it to be even remotely as dangerous as human drivers. If everyone switched to self-driving cars, serious car accidents would probably become something you hear about in the news, not something that's happened to many of your friends.
st3v3r 11y ago
That kind of technology won't be commonplace, available, or in a position to do anything about the problem for a long, long time. Meanwhile, the traffic problem exists today. I'm all for self driving cars, but I'd like to see solutions for the problem today, not just letting things get worse until something magically makes it better.

paulddraper 11y ago

"people don't feel safe driving at 60mph in a densely packed road, so they don't" Not only do they not feel safe, they aren't safe driving bumper-to-bumper. Computers will have better reaction times, so much of that goes away. But it's still dangerous. If two cars ahead of me slows, and the car ahead doesn't slow and collides, it will decelerate very quickly, perhaps too quickly for my brakes at 60mph.

marcoperaza 11y ago
You're right, the failure mode for self-driving cars at high speeds is catastrophic, but that's no different from many safe technologies. And the bar here is pretty low. You'd have to really screw up when designing the system for it to be even remotely as dangerous as human drivers. If everyone switched to self-driving cars, serious car accidents would probably become something you hear about in the news, not something that's happened to many of your friends.

st3v3r 11y ago

That kind of technology won't be commonplace, available, or in a position to do anything about the problem for a long, long time. Meanwhile, the traffic problem exists today. I'm all for self driving cars, but I'd like to see solutions for the problem today, not just letting things get worse until something magically makes it better.