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There's a fantastic amount of value in cities and urban areas. Self-driving cars can work as a massive network to reduce or eliminate congestion and give people

There's a fantastic amount of value in cities and urban areas. Self-driving cars can work as a massive network to reduce or eliminate congestion and give people back hundreds of millions of hours spent stuck in traffic. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/us/traffic-commute-gridlock-transportation-study-trnd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/us/traffic-commute-gridlo... They can also, if Level 5 becomes a thing, reduce traffic collisions. And if they all end up electric, through route optimization they can significantly reduce energy consumption requirements for vehicle usage.

bobthepanda 7y ago
How would they "reduce or eliminate congestion"? Congestion is inherently caused by too many people trying to go to or through the same place at the same time. That's not possible without reducing the amount of people trying to travel during a given time period in a given place.
- mattlutze 7y ago
  There's lots of reasons for congestion existing. https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/ https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/ Given the same number of cars on the road, a self-driving fleet would eliminate many mechanical failures and many human failures, and be able to adapt to sub-optimal infrastructure at a network-wide level. Infrastructure would also be easier or more efficient to improve, because you'd have removed much of the human variability that makes identifying choke points difficult.
- gedy 7y ago
  Freeways can handle much more traffic, but people get jumpy beyond a certain density and cause traffic jams "for no reason"
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    The problem is that in many cases, many people want to get off at the same freeway exits, and the local network doesn't have the road capacity to match. AI doesn't really have the power to change that, and might actually be worse depending on how it reacts to pedestrians and cyclists.
- brians 7y ago
  By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. Take a two lane highway where traffic moves at 100 kph. It contracts to one lane at 100kph. Humans will pull up close, stall in one lane, do a flaky and awful zipper merge. Latency will be higher than necessary and throughout lower. Self driving cars can plan the whole exchange, negotiate (or be directed by an intersection controller) to decelerate, align, merge, and maintain high throughout at low latency. ATC does this for planes already; we have the coordination technology. It’s just about getting drivers to listen to precise instructions without deviation. For everywhere I know of, that’s going to take automation. Reading up on standing waves taught me a lot; you might like adding that wrinkle to your model.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. That's only going to work on roads that are AI-only.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      There are already cities where buying a car is difficult and/or expensive because of traffic concerns. Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, ... I don’t see an AI requirement to be a huge hurdle for those cities.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        There are other actors on the road, namely pedestrians and cyclists. Unless we're going to remove the right of citizens to the street at all, they will be present and will need to be accommodated for.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Computers can or will deal with the other actors as well as humans do now, which is quite a low bar anyways.
        7y ago
- coolspot 7y ago
  When roads belong exclusively to self-driving cars, they can increase speed, reduce gaps between cars and eliminate traffic wave effect. Imagine highway where everyone drives 80mph with 5ft of distance between cars. No one suddenly changes lanes, no one suddenly slows down for no reason. Here is illustration from Waymo testing facility: https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU
  - jimktrains2 7y ago
    Even if there is no reaction time, 5' of space at 50mph is silly. You still need room to maneuver if whatever caused the vehicle ahead to throw on its breaks comes back or halts the vehicle ahead faster than your breaks can stop you.
    - URSpider94 7y ago
      It’s basically a virtual tandem semi. The presumption is that you are delegating command and control to the lead vehicle, and there is bidirectional communication between the lead and follow vehicles.
      - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
        Well, why don't we go a step further then and physically connect the vehicles? Maybe we can also make them longer and fit more passengers? And we could optimize the rolling friction, replace rubber on tarmac with something better like steel on steel, and use some sort of tracks to provide the sideways forces?
        ericd 7y ago
        You jest, but I'd love it if we could automatically group cars into physically connected trains for long distance travel, and have them automatically split off when they approach their destination. Maybe there's some way to do that with rails, carrying peoples' cars, but not sure if the efficiency gain is worth the increased complexity of including another set of wheels/motors/etc, and making the automated separation/joining work with all of that.
- hackbinary 7y ago
  Congestion is not just caused by reaching capacity. It is also caused by human behaviour: - selfishness eg stopping or parking in no parking zones, driving aggressively - error eg causing accidents - ignorance eg not knowing the traffic flow in an intersection, driving slowly to find your bearings. Also, if we have fewer cars, but higher utilisation of vehicles then we will require less parking.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  When I drive to work there is an empty transit lane for cars with 2+ people which seems to imply that most rush hour cars have just the driver in. If everyone is ubering in robot cars then they’ll probably share. It’s not that weird as people share public transport and choosing between $10 to get to work and $3 is a no brainer. They might even Uber to the train station then Uber from the destination train station to work. Lots of ways of cutting traffic!
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    > "they'll probably share" The people who are driving, or at least a significant portion of them, pick driving over public transport because of perceived privacy and control. I don't think uptake of shared mobility is going to be so popular where that becomes the norm.
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      Values change. No one would take a taxi where the driver is just some unlicensed taxi driver. Back in the 90's that would be consider akin to hitchhiking in danger! Now we have Uber. Also I drive because it's faster, and because once you go from A->B getting to B->C is probably easier. Not for privacy. Most people just need to get to work or school or their kids to school for the bulk of their car use. Kids to school might work by sharing with other parents you know.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        Cars are different than a lot of goods though, because in and of themselves they are a wealth signal (at least in the US). Most Americans don't really need an SUV or a pickup; a minivan or a sedan are more practical. Yet most Americans are buying them, because it makes them feel better about what they're driving and they want to show off. You may only take your car to the grocery store, but if you meet Becky from PTA in the parking lot and she has a really nice car that she owns, that's still a big deal. Unless the ownership cost of a car were to spike significantly, this part of American culture seems hard to change, particularly when automakers spend lots of money making sure that Americans see premium gas-guzzlers as status symbols.
- vl 7y ago
  Self-driving cars will of course increase congestion because it will be possible just to chill out and do something else while car is driving itself. In Silicon Valley normal story will be “I worked in the car for 3 hours while commuting to the office”.
  - mattlutze 7y ago
    Work also needs to be decoupled from inner city offices (so you don't have to go into the city/office/etc) and local and regional legislation needs to be enacted in concert to lower overall personally operated vehicle density.
baybal2 7y ago
This is where the Chinese companies are digging. Instead of a self-driving car, they are trying to make a car driven by an external server. Half of the work on "self"-driving is actually traffic dispatch.
Tiktaalik 7y ago
If self driving cars make driving in any way more attractive than now, they'll increase demand which will increase congestion.

bobthepanda 7y ago

How would they "reduce or eliminate congestion"? Congestion is inherently caused by too many people trying to go to or through the same place at the same time. That's not possible without reducing the amount of people trying to travel during a given time period in a given place.

mattlutze 7y ago
There's lots of reasons for congestion existing. https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/ https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/ Given the same number of cars on the road, a self-driving fleet would eliminate many mechanical failures and many human failures, and be able to adapt to sub-optimal infrastructure at a network-wide level. Infrastructure would also be easier or more efficient to improve, because you'd have removed much of the human variability that makes identifying choke points difficult.
gedy 7y ago
Freeways can handle much more traffic, but people get jumpy beyond a certain density and cause traffic jams "for no reason"
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  The problem is that in many cases, many people want to get off at the same freeway exits, and the local network doesn't have the road capacity to match. AI doesn't really have the power to change that, and might actually be worse depending on how it reacts to pedestrians and cyclists.
brians 7y ago
By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. Take a two lane highway where traffic moves at 100 kph. It contracts to one lane at 100kph. Humans will pull up close, stall in one lane, do a flaky and awful zipper merge. Latency will be higher than necessary and throughout lower. Self driving cars can plan the whole exchange, negotiate (or be directed by an intersection controller) to decelerate, align, merge, and maintain high throughout at low latency. ATC does this for planes already; we have the coordination technology. It’s just about getting drivers to listen to precise instructions without deviation. For everywhere I know of, that’s going to take automation. Reading up on standing waves taught me a lot; you might like adding that wrinkle to your model.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. That's only going to work on roads that are AI-only.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    There are already cities where buying a car is difficult and/or expensive because of traffic concerns. Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, ... I don’t see an AI requirement to be a huge hurdle for those cities.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      There are other actors on the road, namely pedestrians and cyclists. Unless we're going to remove the right of citizens to the street at all, they will be present and will need to be accommodated for.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        Computers can or will deal with the other actors as well as humans do now, which is quite a low bar anyways.
        7y ago
coolspot 7y ago
When roads belong exclusively to self-driving cars, they can increase speed, reduce gaps between cars and eliminate traffic wave effect. Imagine highway where everyone drives 80mph with 5ft of distance between cars. No one suddenly changes lanes, no one suddenly slows down for no reason. Here is illustration from Waymo testing facility: https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  Even if there is no reaction time, 5' of space at 50mph is silly. You still need room to maneuver if whatever caused the vehicle ahead to throw on its breaks comes back or halts the vehicle ahead faster than your breaks can stop you.
  - URSpider94 7y ago
    It’s basically a virtual tandem semi. The presumption is that you are delegating command and control to the lead vehicle, and there is bidirectional communication between the lead and follow vehicles.
    - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
      Well, why don't we go a step further then and physically connect the vehicles? Maybe we can also make them longer and fit more passengers? And we could optimize the rolling friction, replace rubber on tarmac with something better like steel on steel, and use some sort of tracks to provide the sideways forces?
      - ericd 7y ago
        You jest, but I'd love it if we could automatically group cars into physically connected trains for long distance travel, and have them automatically split off when they approach their destination. Maybe there's some way to do that with rails, carrying peoples' cars, but not sure if the efficiency gain is worth the increased complexity of including another set of wheels/motors/etc, and making the automated separation/joining work with all of that.
hackbinary 7y ago
Congestion is not just caused by reaching capacity. It is also caused by human behaviour: - selfishness eg stopping or parking in no parking zones, driving aggressively - error eg causing accidents - ignorance eg not knowing the traffic flow in an intersection, driving slowly to find your bearings. Also, if we have fewer cars, but higher utilisation of vehicles then we will require less parking.
quickthrower2 7y ago
When I drive to work there is an empty transit lane for cars with 2+ people which seems to imply that most rush hour cars have just the driver in. If everyone is ubering in robot cars then they’ll probably share. It’s not that weird as people share public transport and choosing between $10 to get to work and $3 is a no brainer. They might even Uber to the train station then Uber from the destination train station to work. Lots of ways of cutting traffic!
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  > "they'll probably share" The people who are driving, or at least a significant portion of them, pick driving over public transport because of perceived privacy and control. I don't think uptake of shared mobility is going to be so popular where that becomes the norm.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Values change. No one would take a taxi where the driver is just some unlicensed taxi driver. Back in the 90's that would be consider akin to hitchhiking in danger! Now we have Uber. Also I drive because it's faster, and because once you go from A->B getting to B->C is probably easier. Not for privacy. Most people just need to get to work or school or their kids to school for the bulk of their car use. Kids to school might work by sharing with other parents you know.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      Cars are different than a lot of goods though, because in and of themselves they are a wealth signal (at least in the US). Most Americans don't really need an SUV or a pickup; a minivan or a sedan are more practical. Yet most Americans are buying them, because it makes them feel better about what they're driving and they want to show off. You may only take your car to the grocery store, but if you meet Becky from PTA in the parking lot and she has a really nice car that she owns, that's still a big deal. Unless the ownership cost of a car were to spike significantly, this part of American culture seems hard to change, particularly when automakers spend lots of money making sure that Americans see premium gas-guzzlers as status symbols.
vl 7y ago
Self-driving cars will of course increase congestion because it will be possible just to chill out and do something else while car is driving itself. In Silicon Valley normal story will be “I worked in the car for 3 hours while commuting to the office”.
- mattlutze 7y ago
  Work also needs to be decoupled from inner city offices (so you don't have to go into the city/office/etc) and local and regional legislation needs to be enacted in concert to lower overall personally operated vehicle density.

baybal2 7y ago

This is where the Chinese companies are digging. Instead of a self-driving car, they are trying to make a car driven by an external server. Half of the work on "self"-driving is actually traffic dispatch.

Tiktaalik 7y ago

If self driving cars make driving in any way more attractive than now, they'll increase demand which will increase congestion.