4 ms·

But isn’t that what people said of the National Highway System? That it wasn’t feasible? And yet here we are almost half a century later...

• ashtonkem 7y ago
  I doubt it. Sure, I’m sure there were complaints about the costs, but the value of a massive road network has been known for millennia. Spending a trillion ripping up a perfectly good road network in order to try out a new technology that’ll generate profits for a small number of companies is an insane plan, and genuinely might not work.
  • colejohnson66 7y ago
    We don’t necessarily need to rip up the existing roads. We could just put some radio based markers on the road. Then when they do construction, they could be easily moved, too.
    • ashtonkem 7y ago
      It’s true that markers on the pavement are cheaper to implement than markers in the pavement, I agree. I’m also not convinced it solves anything. In the scenario above the problem wasn’t the fact that the lines weren’t visible, the problem was other cars. This is particularly problematic when many of those other cars are human beings who will never have access to modified road information. In this scenario a smart car that knows where the lane should be is still forced to dynamically negotiate for space with other vehicles, sans communication protocols. That is a very hard problem, one I do not believe is currently solved.
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    That's being needlessly negative. None of those superlatives are helpful.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]