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Will it though? A lot of resistance to more efficient driving patterns is due to emotional reactions (or the fear of emotional reactions). The zipper/delayed me

by cosmie 9y ago

Will it though? A lot of resistance to more efficient driving patterns is due to emotional reactions (or the fear of emotional reactions). The zipper/delayed merge being the quintessential case[1][2][3]. It works better, a lot of people know it works better, and the only argument against it seem to be "it's dangerous because people are irrational assholes and road rage is a thing"[4]. Once you have self-driving cars around, it might break some of those irrational fears and habits. A self-driving car isn't going to get mad at you if you merge late, it's just going to react to your merging and be done with it. So you're no longer the asshole cutting someone off at the last second, you're just another car that's merging at the point where you have to merge. Road etiquette shifts from emotionally driven to pragmatic, since the self-driving cars around you will also be acting pragmatically. It's not going to slam on the gas and brakes to ride the person in front of them in order to be an asshole to the guy next to them trying to "unfairly get ahead", it's going to maintain a safe driving distance and accelerate and decelerate in a controlled manner to optimize for wear and tear, ride smoothness, fuel economy, and maintaining a safe distance. Self-driving cars will not only be better drivers on the whole, but also allow human drivers to break through inhibitions related to "proper road etiquette", since it's a whole lot easier to do something subjectively rude to a machine than a human. [1] http://transportation.ky.gov/zippermerge/Pages/default.aspx http://transportation.ky.gov/zippermerge/Pages/default.aspx [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/the-beauty-of-zipper-merging-or-why-you-should-drive-ruder/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/the-beauty-of-zipper-me... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/why-last-second-lane-mergers-are-good-for-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/why-last-second-lane-m... [4] http://jalopnik.com/stop-trying-to-make-the-zipper-merge-happen-1785205684 http://jalopnik.com/stop-trying-to-make-the-zipper-merge-hap...

hueving 9y ago
That's a pretty big claim with no evidence. Even if people can easily identify self-driving cars and use that to decide to merge, it may just increase their aggressive driving behavior to the point where they cut off self-driving cars at dangerous times. A cutoff that forces the self-driving car to slam on the brakes will propagate backwards and cause more of the fabled phantom traffic jams.
- cosmie 9y ago
  It's conjecture, provided as a counterpoint to the conjecture in the parent post about requiring near 100% adoption of autonomous vehicles in order to see the benefits. You're completely right that it could cause an increase in aggressive driving behavior. But it's just as possible that it'll decrease aggressive driving behavior. My conjecture's based off of three personal observations: 1) A lot of the aggressive drivers I know that have road rage-like tendencies take it as a personal affront when another driver does something like turn in front of them or using a less congested lane of traffic to get as far ahead as possible before getting over. 2) One of the most effective strategies I had available as a retail manager to diffuse a situation with an irrational/irate customer was to pass blame on to "the system/corporate policy" if they couldn't see reason. They'd still be irate, but they'd redirect their behavior towards something other than the immediate situation. The same principle applies when you go from blaming a specific driver to blaming "those damn autonomous Nissans. They always <insert some peculiar trait of Nissan's self driving implementation>". 3) Aggressive driving is hard to escalate into full-blown road rage when one participant is a computer. As you said, it'll react to the situation by potentially braking aggressively, but it won't then try to tailgate the individual and escalate the situation. It'll back off appropriately and assure that it's not put into that position again and be done with it. Aggressive drivers will get bored with antagonizing autonomous cars when they get used to them and to the fact that you can't get a rise out of them. As well, autonomous cars can likely get better at identifying indicators/patterns of an aggressive driver and account for that.
- boznz 9y ago
  At least there will be lots of factual and camera evidence from the self driving car computer to make a case against the arseholes who do this.
deleted 9y ago
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by cosmie 9y ago

hueving 9y ago

That's a pretty big claim with no evidence. Even if people can easily identify self-driving cars and use that to decide to merge, it may just increase their aggressive driving behavior to the point where they cut off self-driving cars at dangerous times. A cutoff that forces the self-driving car to slam on the brakes will propagate backwards and cause more of the fabled phantom traffic jams.

cosmie 9y ago
It's conjecture, provided as a counterpoint to the conjecture in the parent post about requiring near 100% adoption of autonomous vehicles in order to see the benefits. You're completely right that it could cause an increase in aggressive driving behavior. But it's just as possible that it'll decrease aggressive driving behavior. My conjecture's based off of three personal observations: 1) A lot of the aggressive drivers I know that have road rage-like tendencies take it as a personal affront when another driver does something like turn in front of them or using a less congested lane of traffic to get as far ahead as possible before getting over. 2) One of the most effective strategies I had available as a retail manager to diffuse a situation with an irrational/irate customer was to pass blame on to "the system/corporate policy" if they couldn't see reason. They'd still be irate, but they'd redirect their behavior towards something other than the immediate situation. The same principle applies when you go from blaming a specific driver to blaming "those damn autonomous Nissans. They always <insert some peculiar trait of Nissan's self driving implementation>". 3) Aggressive driving is hard to escalate into full-blown road rage when one participant is a computer. As you said, it'll react to the situation by potentially braking aggressively, but it won't then try to tailgate the individual and escalate the situation. It'll back off appropriately and assure that it's not put into that position again and be done with it. Aggressive drivers will get bored with antagonizing autonomous cars when they get used to them and to the fact that you can't get a rise out of them. As well, autonomous cars can likely get better at identifying indicators/patterns of an aggressive driver and account for that.
boznz 9y ago
At least there will be lots of factual and camera evidence from the self driving car computer to make a case against the arseholes who do this.

deleted 9y ago

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