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Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software? Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've seen ple

Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software? Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've seen plenty of ruts from trucks in asphalt roads). Technology like this is an opportunity to actually improve the wear patterns.

freeflight 9y ago
Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about the wear patterns of public highways? Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it. Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve. Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street, to reduce wear?
- allannienhuis 9y ago
  You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles. But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may not be true). Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any way. I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.
deleted 9y ago
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freeflight 9y ago

Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about the wear patterns of public highways? Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it. Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve. Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street, to reduce wear?

allannienhuis 9y ago
You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles. But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may not be true). Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any way. I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.

deleted 9y ago

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