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Could you elaborate? Any technology can create severe downsides if not properly regulated.

by scribu 9y ago

Tiktaalik 9y ago
Autonomous cars incentivize car use, which increases traffic. The problem is that the roads are fixed and expanding them is expensive and undesirable. This entire scenario dreamed up in this article is wholly unworkable due to the physical constraints of cars and roads.
- glenra 9y ago
  >Autonomous cars incentivize car use, which increases traffic. Don't you have this backwards? Cars driven by fallible humans need lots of separation to avoid collision but cars driven by computers should get by with thinner lanes closer together and less room between cars. Cars driven by fallible humans have to stop at stoplights creating backups that restrict flow whereas cars driven by computers probably don't need to do as much of that - they can coordinate and interleave instead. Cars driven by computers don't have to circle the block looking for a nearby parking place (this factor alone accounts for a substantial fraction of peak city driving), which also means we could convert some downtown street parking into extra traffic lanes. Cars driven by computers don't create freeway traffic jams due to clumsy lane merging or due to the drivers rubbernecking at accident scenes. In short, switching from mostly human drivers to mostly autonomous drivers should substantially increase road capacity. We should be able to get at least several times as many cars - possibly 10x or more - in the same amount of road area. (Over time I'd expect road area to shrink.)
  - Tiktaalik 9y ago
    Everything you said is very possibly true, and could increase road capacity, but these improvements are marginal and dominated by the fact that autonomous cars will cause more people to drive. Simply put adding another car on the road immediately kills whatever savings may be had by reducing the space between cars and clumsy lane merging. Right now reasons people don't drive include: - Parking too expensive - No license/ability to drive - Car too expensive to purchase. Autonomous cars sharing removes all those deterrents, and so this would cause an increase in drivers and cars on the road.

Could you elaborate? Any technology can create severe downsides if not properly regulated.

by scribu 9y ago

Could you elaborate? Any technology can create severe downsides if not properly regulated.

Autonomous cars incentivize car use, which increases traffic. The problem is that the roads are fixed and expanding them is expensive and undesirable. This entire scenario dreamed up in this article is wholly unworkable due to the physical constraints of cars and roads.

glenra 9y ago
>Autonomous cars incentivize car use, which increases traffic. Don't you have this backwards? Cars driven by fallible humans need lots of separation to avoid collision but cars driven by computers should get by with thinner lanes closer together and less room between cars. Cars driven by fallible humans have to stop at stoplights creating backups that restrict flow whereas cars driven by computers probably don't need to do as much of that - they can coordinate and interleave instead. Cars driven by computers don't have to circle the block looking for a nearby parking place (this factor alone accounts for a substantial fraction of peak city driving), which also means we could convert some downtown street parking into extra traffic lanes. Cars driven by computers don't create freeway traffic jams due to clumsy lane merging or due to the drivers rubbernecking at accident scenes. In short, switching from mostly human drivers to mostly autonomous drivers should substantially increase road capacity. We should be able to get at least several times as many cars - possibly 10x or more - in the same amount of road area. (Over time I'd expect road area to shrink.)
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  Everything you said is very possibly true, and could increase road capacity, but these improvements are marginal and dominated by the fact that autonomous cars will cause more people to drive. Simply put adding another car on the road immediately kills whatever savings may be had by reducing the space between cars and clumsy lane merging. Right now reasons people don't drive include: - Parking too expensive - No license/ability to drive - Car too expensive to purchase. Autonomous cars sharing removes all those deterrents, and so this would cause an increase in drivers and cars on the road.