3 ms·
Am not, but your point has merit, if you mean a networked system without physical rails. As a drop-in replacement - I don't see how a human vs. robot driver, on
by Piskvorrr 7y ago
Am not, but your point has merit, if you mean a networked system without physical rails. As a drop-in replacement - I don't see how a human vs. robot driver, on the same vehicle footprint, helps congestion.
- Qwertious 7y agoImagine 10 cars all in a line. Each car can only see the car in front of it, and has a delay of 3 seconds between seeing the car in front of it move and accelerating. Given these numbers, we would expect car #10 to have to wait 30 seconds or so before they start moving. As congestion is a feedback loop (lack of car movement results in other cars being unable to move), self-driving cars with a coordination mechanism and microsecond-level control would reduce the problem exponentially.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoIgnoring control issues, this assumes infinite space at destination: you are still blanketing the road with cars, just in a coordinated manner.
- derefr 7y agoThere usually is “enough” space on the road, when you account for all the unused space on the road in the opposite flow direction to rush-hour traffic. Cars just need to quickly take you to work, then slowly drive back the other way. Maybe even borrow a lane of the highway for parking, which shouldn’t worry traffic controllers given that they could send a command to all the cars to get them going again as soon as traffic is going to pick up.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoIn other words, this will generate pointless traffic - unless your system has strictly unidirectional flows at any given time, you have doubled the problem in an attempt to eliminate it (plus incidentally doubled the energy consumption, which translates to cost).