3 ms·

I stumbled upon this when searching for "what if all cars were self driving". I really feel that a great deal of the problems with making self driving cars more

by osrec 9y ago

I stumbled upon this when searching for "what if all cars were self driving". I really feel that a great deal of the problems with making self driving cars more prevalent are related to the human-driven cars that are on the road along side these autonomous vehicles. Having only autonomous vehicles on the roads seems to have some powerful advantages, including lighter vehicles. I would love to see a region or city go totally driverless to empirically test whether autonomous vehicles really can provide the added benefits mentioned in the article.

kps 9y ago
> including lighter vehicles Much lighter. All the people driving alone could be in cars one-quarter the size if they didn't have to worry about being crushed by Canyoneros. Aside from the cost savings, half-width cars can offer a traffic volume / speed improvement by sharing a lane. (Ultimately though lane markings can go away along with traffic lights and signs.)
- osrec 9y ago
  Yeah. I've always found it strange that to move an 80kg human from A to B, we also have to shift a couple of tonnes of metal. Seems really excessive!
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    One often ignored thing in this conversation is we often use the ability to carry more. I keep my emergency kit in the back (I'm part of a CERT team) as well as spare chargers and cables and stuff. I keep telling myself I should stock a spare change of clothes too. Obviously sometimes I drive with friends or family, load up my car with groceries, occasionally move furniture or computers. The car is a relatively reasonable standard for covering an individual's regular use cases for transportation.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      I wonder if some kind of detachable "trailers" might be the answer here. For normal driving, you'd have a single-passenger pod (with maybe enough cargo space for a bag of groceries or whatever), but you could hook on extra passenger or cargo pods as needed.
- skrause 9y ago
  Self-driving cars used to move only one or two people around will probably look a bit like the Renault Twizy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy

by osrec 9y ago

kps 9y ago

> including lighter vehicles Much lighter. All the people driving alone could be in cars one-quarter the size if they didn't have to worry about being crushed by Canyoneros. Aside from the cost savings, half-width cars can offer a traffic volume / speed improvement by sharing a lane. (Ultimately though lane markings can go away along with traffic lights and signs.)

osrec 9y ago
Yeah. I've always found it strange that to move an 80kg human from A to B, we also have to shift a couple of tonnes of metal. Seems really excessive!
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  One often ignored thing in this conversation is we often use the ability to carry more. I keep my emergency kit in the back (I'm part of a CERT team) as well as spare chargers and cables and stuff. I keep telling myself I should stock a spare change of clothes too. Obviously sometimes I drive with friends or family, load up my car with groceries, occasionally move furniture or computers. The car is a relatively reasonable standard for covering an individual's regular use cases for transportation.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    I wonder if some kind of detachable "trailers" might be the answer here. For normal driving, you'd have a single-passenger pod (with maybe enough cargo space for a bag of groceries or whatever), but you could hook on extra passenger or cargo pods as needed.
skrause 9y ago
Self-driving cars used to move only one or two people around will probably look a bit like the Renault Twizy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy