3 ms·

I assume we're talking about city driving. I'm not sure about the USA, but being in Europe, the average speed my car says I go is 28.5 km/h. Do you think we cou

I assume we're talking about city driving. I'm not sure about the USA, but being in Europe, the average speed my car says I go is 28.5 km/h. Do you think we could not solve traffic for 10 years if we slowed cars down to 30 km/h? With assumption being that a city-wide driverless system would easily 'swim' through the city without encountering red lights or slowdowns due to unpredictiveness of other drivers. We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much.

bryanlarsen 8y ago
I'm a big fan of Sweden's Project Zero, one leg of which is setting and enforcing a speed limit of 30 km/h on any road or street without fully separated pedestrian & cycle infrastructure. I don't know if self-driving will help accomplish this everywhere, but I'd be ecstatic if it did. > We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much. instead of "harmful too much" you can simply use "fatal". 30km/h is a pretty magic value: below that speed pedestrian collisions are very rarely fatal. Serious perhaps, but not fatal. Above that speed they are often fatal.
- njarboe 8y ago
  About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.
  - Judgmentality 8y ago
    The average human cannot sprint that fast. I'd peg the average person sprinting closer to half that (obviously there's a lot of variance, but I think only the top 1% of athletes could run 30 kph even for 5 seconds). For a frame of reference, try to run at the top speed of a treadmill (most max out at 15 mph, and most people can't go that fast - at least not at the gym).
    - lolc 8y ago
      You're both right because 30 km/h = 18,6 mph
    - mr_toad 8y ago
      The fastest athletes can max out at nearly 45 kph when given a running start. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed But I’m not sure that the average human could even run 100m these days.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      Average human (not a child or pregnant) before cities (ie., when human morphology evolved)? Quite likely I would guess.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

I'm a big fan of Sweden's Project Zero, one leg of which is setting and enforcing a speed limit of 30 km/h on any road or street without fully separated pedestrian & cycle infrastructure. I don't know if self-driving will help accomplish this everywhere, but I'd be ecstatic if it did. > We could even tolerate a little bit more errors because accidents would not be harmful too much. instead of "harmful too much" you can simply use "fatal". 30km/h is a pretty magic value: below that speed pedestrian collisions are very rarely fatal. Serious perhaps, but not fatal. Above that speed they are often fatal.

njarboe 8y ago
About the speed of a sprinting human, unsurprisingly.
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  The average human cannot sprint that fast. I'd peg the average person sprinting closer to half that (obviously there's a lot of variance, but I think only the top 1% of athletes could run 30 kph even for 5 seconds). For a frame of reference, try to run at the top speed of a treadmill (most max out at 15 mph, and most people can't go that fast - at least not at the gym).
  - lolc 8y ago
    You're both right because 30 km/h = 18,6 mph
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    The fastest athletes can max out at nearly 45 kph when given a running start. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed But I’m not sure that the average human could even run 100m these days.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    Average human (not a child or pregnant) before cities (ie., when human morphology evolved)? Quite likely I would guess.