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This made me think of something I hadn't considered before - whether we'll first see automated driving, but only when the vehicle is empty. e.g., you drive your
by prawn 5y ago
This made me think of something I hadn't considered before - whether we'll first see automated driving, but only when the vehicle is empty. e.g., you drive yourself somewhere, then the vehicle moves on to another job. If the vehicle is privately owned, it would park or drive home for your wife to use. If part of a fleet, it would just drive on to the next request.
Cars in that mode could be constrained to a less dangerous speed to limit damage in an accident. I don't want to drive to work at 20km/h, but once I'm out of the car, I don't really care how slowly it goes.
Of course, it wouldn't necessarily work to combine too broadly differing speeds on the same roads. But it would remove a bit of the "I'm not putting on my VR goggles to do work and trusting this car to drive to the office" fear.
- slavik81 5y agoA basic form of low-speed self-driving would be automated valet parking. Drop people off or pick them up at the entrance, then go park far away. If there was a common communication standard, the vehicles could also park much more tightly than is done in a normal parking lot. You don't need to keep empty space behind each car when you can coordinate the parked cars to move and clear a path. My guess is that you could park almost twice as many cars in the same space. The combination of reducing parking lot size and freeing people from walking to/from the lot would open up many interesting options for increasing density and walkability in commercial areas.
- itsoktocry 5y ago>I don't want to drive to work at 20km/h, but once I'm out of the car, I don't really care how slowly it goes. The other people on the road trying to get to work probably do.
- prawn 5y agoYes, figured that went without saying. From my comment: "Of course, it wouldn't necessarily work to combine too broadly differing speeds on the same roads."
- curryst 5y agoThere are other options. They could take surface roads instead of highways. Or they could potentially use the emergency lane if there's some kind of communication standard to let them know when to get out of the emergency lane.