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That's why I said "traffic lights to regulate traffic between cars"

ch4s3 10y ago
Sorry I'm being a bit glib. What I'm poking at here is what I feel to be undue optimism about self driving vehicles. It almost appears as if people are describing the Beetle from Fahrenheit 451, with no irony intended. What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a lack of critical thinking about the potential negatives of self driving cars. We know for example that transit by car is extremely price elastic, and it is easy to infer that a self driving car imposes a very low cost on drivers, so we should expect trips by car to increase if cars are self driving. Is this good or bad? Its hard to say. But we do know that more car trips increase demand for roads. Is this good or bad? If all self driving cars are going to and from similar locations, eg exurbs to job centers, will congestion decrease? If one no longer suffers the penalty of having to drive in congestion, will more people voluntarily sit in traffic, thereby saturating infrastructure?
- icebraining 10y ago
  All was said is that traffic will be more predictable and safer, not that it won't have any possible negative effects.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  I totally agree that those are all valid concerns.However, I am confident we will get those things figured out. Maybe the congestion won't be that bad because autonmous driving services might encourage ride sharing. I for one already sometimes use Lyft Ride for longer trips. Maybe we can increase incentives for that? Communities could create a fee for single passenger rides. In a way car pool lanes are similar to that and already might accomplish something like that. On the less punitive side I can see something like convoys decrease fuel consumption. My university in Paderborn, Germany was working on something like that for self driving trains over ten years ago. Of course it's much harder with cars, but we also have come a long way.

ch4s3 10y ago

Sorry I'm being a bit glib. What I'm poking at here is what I feel to be undue optimism about self driving vehicles. It almost appears as if people are describing the Beetle from Fahrenheit 451, with no irony intended. What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a lack of critical thinking about the potential negatives of self driving cars. We know for example that transit by car is extremely price elastic, and it is easy to infer that a self driving car imposes a very low cost on drivers, so we should expect trips by car to increase if cars are self driving. Is this good or bad? Its hard to say. But we do know that more car trips increase demand for roads. Is this good or bad? If all self driving cars are going to and from similar locations, eg exurbs to job centers, will congestion decrease? If one no longer suffers the penalty of having to drive in congestion, will more people voluntarily sit in traffic, thereby saturating infrastructure?

icebraining 10y ago
All was said is that traffic will be more predictable and safer, not that it won't have any possible negative effects.
ajmurmann 10y ago
I totally agree that those are all valid concerns.However, I am confident we will get those things figured out. Maybe the congestion won't be that bad because autonmous driving services might encourage ride sharing. I for one already sometimes use Lyft Ride for longer trips. Maybe we can increase incentives for that? Communities could create a fee for single passenger rides. In a way car pool lanes are similar to that and already might accomplish something like that. On the less punitive side I can see something like convoys decrease fuel consumption. My university in Paderborn, Germany was working on something like that for self driving trains over ten years ago. Of course it's much harder with cars, but we also have come a long way.