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> Idealized solution: A temporary bypass zone is communicated to the self-driving cars. There’s so many great opportunities like this once the cars are self dr
by dev_dull 7y ago
> Idealized solution: A temporary bypass zone is communicated to the self-driving cars.
There’s so many great opportunities like this once the cars are self driving and connected. For example, a ten lane highway without dividers! 8v2 split depending on the time of day and traffic patterns. How many times have you been stuck in a lane with the other lanes in the other direction completely open?
- fuzz4lyfe 7y agoYou could open up lanes a quarter mile at a time even depending on traffic demands. Eg. Between exit 1 and exit 2, 8 northbound lanes are open. Between 2 and 3 we have 6 northbound lanes. It's would be pretty disconcerting to travel in your self driving car and head full speed into oncoming traffic only to shift lanes a few moments before collision though.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThey had this in Montreal back in the day (i.e. the 1960s, when the risk of a head on crash was one you just accepted by driving). There would be a bunch of lanes undivided from each other and over the lanes would be lights telling you which lanes were open for your direction of travel. Movable barriers work too but are far more expensive.
- dev_dull 7y agoSeattle has this with a physically separated highway. It’s closed in one direction and switches directions around noon. Fun to wait at the entrance with a motorcycle. As soon as it’s open you have 5 miles where it’s physically impossible for another car to merge on.
- nostrademons 7y agoAlso, drafting. With human drivers it's not feasible to have cars travel 6 inches behind each other, because human reaction time is shitty enough that everybody would crash. With computer control you could easily have cars match speeds, then slowly get closer until they latch together and form a train. This'd both dramatically increase the carrying capacity of roads (with the default 1-car-length-per-10mph-of-speed rule, 7/8 of a highway is empty space), and it would improve fuel economy by reducing cross-sectional area and wind resistance.
- sushisource 7y agoThis is still a terrible idea. What happens when the car in front of you has an axel failure? Oops, my car's instant reaction time is worth nothing because the brakes cannot physically prevent my imminent death.
- nostrademons 7y agoIt seems like this is the exact same problem that was solved (to our satisfaction, at least) by trains over a century ago. If you're riding on the light rail and the train car ahead of you has an axle failure, what happens? We don't think very much about this case, because in practice it basically never happens.
- sushisource 7y agoIt works because they're physically connected already, which would be really really difficult with cars (standardizing the connectors, etc etc). Agreeing on a standard protocol for communication is a hard enough problem to start with.
- nostrademons 7y agoNobody who's looked at the economics of self-driving cars realistically thinks private ownership is an option: if you're putting that much capital investment in a vehicle that could operate 12-16 hours/day, your amortized costs go up by a factor of 6-8 if it's only operating for 2 hours/day. If we get self-driving cars it'll be in the form of ridesharing or rental services. Agreeing on a standard protocol for both connectors and communications is a relatively easy problem if you have an industry with a dozen or so operators rather than 300 million private owners. It also solves the other major reason trains don't regularly crash, which is regular maintenance.
- thereisnospork 7y agoNonsense, if self driving is a $30k option on a camry, that makes it a 60k car to amortize. How many $60k+ BMWs sold last year?
- hanniabu 7y agoI'm sure we'll start seeing autonomous driving only lanes in a few years.
- kiliantics 7y agoYes, nothing sounds more utopian to me than a world covered in 10-lane highways...
- dev_dull 7y agoHate to break it to you but the world is already covered in 10 lane highways.