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The beauty of a fully automated and coordinated system is that vehicles would only stop at the end of a journey. Intersections would be a graceful interleaving
by blunte 9y ago
The beauty of a fully automated and coordinated system is that vehicles would only stop at the end of a journey. Intersections would be a graceful interleaving of vehicles in all directions. This would conserve a lot of energy that is currently wasted on braking and acceleration, and the passengers have less frustration of being stopped when it is their strong desire to be _going_ somewhere.
- philrw 9y agoCGP Grey did an animation of it here: https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE?t=3m46s https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE?t=3m46s
- skrause 9y agoThat video is just full of false assumptions. For example at 0:25 he attributes the delays between cars starting at traffic lights to bad reaction times of humans. No, you start with a short delay because otherwise there is no way to reestablish the safety distance to the car in front of you. Which you still want to have with automated driving because self-driving cars won't solve sudden mechanical failures.
- the8472 9y agoHow do you think that safety distance is derived?
- likeclockwork 9y agoHow would that handle pedestrians?
- blendo 9y agoAssume your personal device has a "Pedestrian" mode. When turned on, it will broadcast your position and velocity 10 times per second (a "Basic Safety Message", https://www.its.dot.gov/itspac/october2012/PDF/data_availability.pdf https://www.its.dot.gov/itspac/october2012/PDF/data_availabi...) The safety message will be detected by all nearby autonomous vehicles, giving them a chance to slow down or stop while you cross. That's the theory, anyway.
- blunte 9y agoGive pedestrians a route over or under the roads. This is done in many places throughout the world already, and it works well. But even if you allow crosswalks and stoplights, cars can use buffer space in traffic (assuming the road is not saturated) to minimize the stops/starts.
- skrause 9y ago> Give pedestrians a route over or under the roads. This is done in many places throughout the world already, and it works well. It really doesn't. Here in Germany most underpasses built in the car-friendly 60s and 70s are being abolished because pedestrians don't like them.
- derefr 9y agoMore pedestrian overpasses? Or maybe the same amount, with all the cars flowing down just a few trunk roads, because nobody is trying to “avoid traffic” by taking a side road.
- skrause 9y agoOr more importantly, cyclists. Because they already share the road with cars.
- iagooar 9y agoReplace pedestrians with self-walking autonomous robots! This way they can sync with the cars and cross the street without a single car having to stop or them getting hit.
- skrause 9y agoI know you're joking, but Wall-E has figured this out: https://i.imgur.com/cw3Ge.jpg https://i.imgur.com/cw3Ge.jpg I find it really disturbing that some people think that non-walkable cities full of speeding robot cars without any regard for pedestrians sound like a bright future.
- majewsky 9y agoGrandparent may refer to freeways etc.