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There are also some demands that will be placed on local governments and municipalities. For example, what will autonomous vehicles do when encountering huge p

There are also some demands that will be placed on local governments and municipalities. For example, what will autonomous vehicles do when encountering huge potholes ? This is something that is widespread in the northeast US in the spring. Today, drivers will often swing slightly into the other lane to avoid them, provided that there is no on-coming traffic. So, either the autonomous vehicles will be able to deal with them independently, or local governments are going to need to be a lot more proactive about road maintenance. That's going to be a hard sell for a lot of municipalities that simply refuse to raise taxes and often fund most of their operation via punitive speeding/parking fines and other types of regressive taxation, much of which will probably also go away, based upon this blog post.

macintux 10y ago
With the exception of the loss of gas tax revenue, I think potholes become much more manageable in such a world. No lanes and cars constantly talking to each other means that potholes are simply avoided with no meaningful loss of momentum. It's also not hard to envision automated pothole filling vehicles that are constantly roaming, waiting to hear other autonomous vehicles discovering road damage, and then drop their load (colorful metaphors abound) over the hole. Maybe it's a temporary patch for humans to follow up on later, maybe it's a permanent fix. Seems like this could actually lead to the elimination of large potholes entirely. They start small, are detected and reported by autonomous vehicles, and are fixed by other autonomous vehicles running 24x7.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- microcolonel 10y ago
  If inter-vehicle communication can be standardized, and human drivers aren't on the road, then what's the point of cars (self-driving or otherwise)? What you're describing is basically a rail system.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Sure, if rails were extended to every single possible destination.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ollie87 10y ago
      To quote Ali G: "What if terrorists drove a train into the White House?"
  - jowiar 10y ago
    Rail is particularly effective for navigation of a linear space where large numbers of people cover arbitrary segments of the distance. On a larger scale, think Italy, Japan, or the US East Coast. On a smaller scale, think avenues in NYC. Once navigation is extended to a two-dimensional area, Rail requires serious compromises. To the extent that you are going for arbitrary point-to-point travel in two-dimensional space, whether the vehicles are traveling on rails or tarmac is irrelevant -- the problems are largely the same, and it is easier to lay tarmac.
  - michaelt 10y ago
    Existing car infrastructure is much denser, and in many areas provides direct door-to-door travel. If I want to travel from Coventry to Cambridge [1] departing at noon today, it would take 1h50m by car but 2h26m by train, because the train journey follows a V shaped path through London. And that's assuming my travel was literally from train station door to train station door. If I want to travel from Warwick University's maths department to Cambridge University's maths department, the travel time by car is 1h56m while the time by public transport is 3h39m with five changes. Of course, if one was going to London the heavy traffic, poor parking and high public transit density would reduce the benefits of driving. If what you have in mind is some sort of switched rail network, built as densely as our current road network is, and with vehicle spacing as close as our road network allows, I agree that autonomous cars and that would be pretty similar. [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Coventry,+Station+Square/Cambridge,+Station+Road/ https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Coventry,+Station+Square/C... [2] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/CV4+7AL,+Coventry/Cambridge+CB3+0WA/ https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/CV4+7AL,+Coventry/Cambridg...

macintux 10y ago

With the exception of the loss of gas tax revenue, I think potholes become much more manageable in such a world. No lanes and cars constantly talking to each other means that potholes are simply avoided with no meaningful loss of momentum. It's also not hard to envision automated pothole filling vehicles that are constantly roaming, waiting to hear other autonomous vehicles discovering road damage, and then drop their load (colorful metaphors abound) over the hole. Maybe it's a temporary patch for humans to follow up on later, maybe it's a permanent fix. Seems like this could actually lead to the elimination of large potholes entirely. They start small, are detected and reported by autonomous vehicles, and are fixed by other autonomous vehicles running 24x7.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
microcolonel 10y ago
If inter-vehicle communication can be standardized, and human drivers aren't on the road, then what's the point of cars (self-driving or otherwise)? What you're describing is basically a rail system.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Sure, if rails were extended to every single possible destination.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ollie87 10y ago
    To quote Ali G: "What if terrorists drove a train into the White House?"
- jowiar 10y ago
  Rail is particularly effective for navigation of a linear space where large numbers of people cover arbitrary segments of the distance. On a larger scale, think Italy, Japan, or the US East Coast. On a smaller scale, think avenues in NYC. Once navigation is extended to a two-dimensional area, Rail requires serious compromises. To the extent that you are going for arbitrary point-to-point travel in two-dimensional space, whether the vehicles are traveling on rails or tarmac is irrelevant -- the problems are largely the same, and it is easier to lay tarmac.
- michaelt 10y ago
  Existing car infrastructure is much denser, and in many areas provides direct door-to-door travel. If I want to travel from Coventry to Cambridge [1] departing at noon today, it would take 1h50m by car but 2h26m by train, because the train journey follows a V shaped path through London. And that's assuming my travel was literally from train station door to train station door. If I want to travel from Warwick University's maths department to Cambridge University's maths department, the travel time by car is 1h56m while the time by public transport is 3h39m with five changes. Of course, if one was going to London the heavy traffic, poor parking and high public transit density would reduce the benefits of driving. If what you have in mind is some sort of switched rail network, built as densely as our current road network is, and with vehicle spacing as close as our road network allows, I agree that autonomous cars and that would be pretty similar. [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Coventry,+Station+Square/Cambridge,+Station+Road/ https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Coventry,+Station+Square/C... [2] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/CV4+7AL,+Coventry/Cambridge+CB3+0WA/ https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/CV4+7AL,+Coventry/Cambridg...