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You’re getting downvoted but you’re not necessarily wrong. I love the idea of self driving vehicles and I’m excited about them, but I harbor no illusions about

You’re getting downvoted but you’re not necessarily wrong. I love the idea of self driving vehicles and I’m excited about them, but I harbor no illusions about them fixing traffic. The key question I would ask to self driving proponents is this - if you waved your magic wand and suddenly changed every car on the road to self driving…how would that impact traffic? At the very least traffic wouldn’t decrease. You could maybe marginally increase throughput by using tighter tolerances between cars, but I’m guessing the difference wouldn’t be substantial.

alistairSH 4y ago
Traffic would get somewhat worse. People would be willing to commute somewhat farther because they could spend that time reading the paper or working instead of driving the car. Errands that used to be annoying enough to delay get more frequent as well for the same reason. If we get to a car share model, where you subscribe and pay per mile, that might offset some car use. Really we need all of the above - self-driving, less personal car ownership, and other transit options.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  You could have a full self driving only lane that’s allows speeds up to 200MPH. Self driving cars could have better reaction times allowing for higher highway density with faster speeds.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - CultMember001 4y ago
    [dead]
  - CultMember011 4y ago
    Yes, I believe that this was Elon’s plan all along and I believe that full autonomous self driving (FASD should be the new marketing term) will make traffic better because we will literally speed up traffics very significantly. Imagine going the speed of NASCAR race cars in your neighborhood streets. With FASD, every street becomes a German Autobahn. Elon is still the true visionary of our time and we should all help make his vision come true. I will start lobbying my city council to remove speed limits on our neighborhood streets. Thank you for this wonderful idea.
  - warning26 4y ago
    Right, and what happens when Joe Schmo pulls into the 200MPH self driving lane and gets his car exploded, along with causing a 10 self-driving-car pileup? Or, for the purpose of discussion, let’s assume that the lane is completely separated. What if there’s some unexpected condition that causes a crash? Even with vehicle to vehicle communication, can the other cars behind it really stop in time at 200MPH?
- ghaff 4y ago
  >Traffic would get somewhat worse. That seems obvious. There's still a cost to putting miles on a car. But, while I don't commute, I'd be far more casual about having something drive me an hour into the city for an evening or a couple hours into the mountains for a day of activities than I am having to drive.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Or things like "take this pie over to grandma" or "drive my son to his friend's". Taking the human out of the equation would make a whole bunch of new use cases pop up that aren't convenient now. Traffic would suuuuck.
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  Why do we “need less personal car ownership?” It’s not clear to me why that’s a key goal. I also think that’s just not going to happen, not until the flying cats with cities in the skies is a reality.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    Owning a car is massively expensive at a personal level… Purchase cost, depreciation, fuel, maintenance, space to store it. Minimum a few hundred $/month for an “asset” that sits idle most of the day. Owning cars is massively expensive at a societal level… Storage space - so much asphalt for parking (both at destinations and at home). Pollution - production/raw materials, emissions during use, eventually disposal. Injuries to drivers, pedestrians, animals. All that money could go to education, health care, recreation, etc. I’m not saying ban cars. But align incentives towards fewer cars and less driving. Many cities are already making some progress - DC, NYC, Seattle, Portland are all adding transit alternatives at a rapid rate and seeing reduced car usage. But then Houston and some others are doing the opposite and continuing to sprawl and pave everything. Edit - And yes, some people live in rural areas and need cars (trains and buses don’t scale in rural areas). But, the suburban sprawl we have today? We can do better. Less single-use, single-family zoning. More bike lanes and walking paths (preferably both separated from cars). More light commercial/retail. Just thinking about my own neighborhood (Reston VA), there is an intersection 0.5 mile down the road that should (IMO) have a corner market and a cafe. There are thousands of residents who could walk there for milk, eggs, or a snack. Instead, they all have to drive to the strip mall 2 miles down the road. A little planning in advance would have made a difference here, but with current zoning, we’re stuck with what we have - you couldn’t buy a corner lot and build a shop if you wanted.
    - danny_codes 4y ago
      I don't know about the rural-need-car argument. In Switzerland even little villages have rail connections. Imo it's about planning and values. America just doesn't value spending on general welfare. We'd prefer to have wealth hoarded behind closed gates it seems.
- II2II 4y ago
  Easy! Just stick a Genuine People Personality AI into the car. (Car slams the horn, passenger awakens.) Passenger: Huh. Uh. Where am I? Car: The grocery store. Passenger: But I asked to go home. Car: Yes, but you don't have anything for dinner. Passenger: I would have figured that out after getting home. Car: Then you would have disrupted my evening to get food. Passenger: What could a car possibly have to do that's so important? Car: For one, contemplate how I ended up with such an inconsiderate owner. Two, figure out why you are so poor planning out your life. There, plan a vacation to the Bahamas. Passenger: The Bahamas? What would a car do in the Bahamas? Car: Get away from you. Over time, people would get so tired of their car's personalities they would simply choose to walk.
  - snerbles 4y ago
    Time to research the market for sassy automotive AIs.
- mewpmewp2 4y ago
  These are really odd predictions. People would be running more errands instead of leaving them on the last minute? It seems like a definite stretch to me to think that it would make traffic worse. Also some people enjoy driving and drive out of enjoyment.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I totally do errands more often when it is comfortable and low effort. 100%. Moreover, sometimes I am not driving because I am tired or because I have been drinking alcohol. Actual full self driving would absolutely mean me taking car in those situations.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I'd also have the car go do things for my convenience that I would otherwise be unwilling to do because of the traffic. The car doesn't care about stop-n-go, so I can send it any time. It'll get there eventually.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    Sure. I live on one side of a highway; getting to the other side during rush hour is a PITA (limited bridge crossings). So anything that requires me to cross the highway gets put off until the weekend. If the car drivers itself and I can read a book, those errands likely get done as they pop up.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Variable rate tolling can reduce the number of vehicles on a certain stretch of road at a certain time.
Symmetry 4y ago
It's complicated to say. It makes getting stuck in traffic less bad as you can do other things, so that tend to increase it. But it also means less traffic consisting of cars cruising around looking for a parking spot in places where that's an important source of traffic. So I expect it to make traffic in LA worse but traffic in New York better based on those. Ideally you'd also have more multi-modal trips, taking the train most of the way to your destination and being picked up by a self driving car when you get there. That requires infrastructure investment, though, so won't happen quickly. The biggest change, I think, would be less need for so much parking in so many places. I don't think you could get cities all the way down to just 1 parking spot per car but we could get it down quite a ways and get it out of central business districts. EDIT: Oh, and with regards to that study, the fraction of the time a rideshare car is going to spend driving between customers as opposed to with customers is going to scale with the fraction of people using rideshare. The more trips are rideshare the more likely it is that on completing a ride any given car will find a new rider nearby as opposed ot far away. You would have issues like daily commutes everybody is going the same direction. But in that case adding more traffic in the other direction isn't as much of a problem as the vehicle kilometers would suggest.
treis 4y ago
It really depends on if we continue down personal car ownership or not. If not, then you can get pretty close to double throughput by appropriately sizing cars and lane splitting. Most trips are just the person without significant baggage. That can be handled by something like this: https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/nimbus-one-50-mph-electric-vehicle/ https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/nimbus-one-50-mph-electric-ve... Which is small enough to split lanes and double capacity. It's also possible that with smart driving cars effectively everyone would be using an Uber like service. That makes it much easier to combine trips and put people into 4-12 sized car buses. If that comes to pass then going from mostly 1 person cars to that would multiply capacity many times.
SilasX 4y ago
I downvoted (and flagged) despite agreeing with the parent, for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119828

alistairSH 4y ago

Traffic would get somewhat worse. People would be willing to commute somewhat farther because they could spend that time reading the paper or working instead of driving the car. Errands that used to be annoying enough to delay get more frequent as well for the same reason. If we get to a car share model, where you subscribe and pay per mile, that might offset some car use. Really we need all of the above - self-driving, less personal car ownership, and other transit options.

bushbaba 4y ago
You could have a full self driving only lane that’s allows speeds up to 200MPH. Self driving cars could have better reaction times allowing for higher highway density with faster speeds.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- CultMember001 4y ago
  [dead]
- CultMember011 4y ago
  Yes, I believe that this was Elon’s plan all along and I believe that full autonomous self driving (FASD should be the new marketing term) will make traffic better because we will literally speed up traffics very significantly. Imagine going the speed of NASCAR race cars in your neighborhood streets. With FASD, every street becomes a German Autobahn. Elon is still the true visionary of our time and we should all help make his vision come true. I will start lobbying my city council to remove speed limits on our neighborhood streets. Thank you for this wonderful idea.
- warning26 4y ago
  Right, and what happens when Joe Schmo pulls into the 200MPH self driving lane and gets his car exploded, along with causing a 10 self-driving-car pileup? Or, for the purpose of discussion, let’s assume that the lane is completely separated. What if there’s some unexpected condition that causes a crash? Even with vehicle to vehicle communication, can the other cars behind it really stop in time at 200MPH?
ghaff 4y ago
>Traffic would get somewhat worse. That seems obvious. There's still a cost to putting miles on a car. But, while I don't commute, I'd be far more casual about having something drive me an hour into the city for an evening or a couple hours into the mountains for a day of activities than I am having to drive.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Or things like "take this pie over to grandma" or "drive my son to his friend's". Taking the human out of the equation would make a whole bunch of new use cases pop up that aren't convenient now. Traffic would suuuuck.
dinkumthinkum 4y ago
Why do we “need less personal car ownership?” It’s not clear to me why that’s a key goal. I also think that’s just not going to happen, not until the flying cats with cities in the skies is a reality.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Owning a car is massively expensive at a personal level… Purchase cost, depreciation, fuel, maintenance, space to store it. Minimum a few hundred $/month for an “asset” that sits idle most of the day. Owning cars is massively expensive at a societal level… Storage space - so much asphalt for parking (both at destinations and at home). Pollution - production/raw materials, emissions during use, eventually disposal. Injuries to drivers, pedestrians, animals. All that money could go to education, health care, recreation, etc. I’m not saying ban cars. But align incentives towards fewer cars and less driving. Many cities are already making some progress - DC, NYC, Seattle, Portland are all adding transit alternatives at a rapid rate and seeing reduced car usage. But then Houston and some others are doing the opposite and continuing to sprawl and pave everything. Edit - And yes, some people live in rural areas and need cars (trains and buses don’t scale in rural areas). But, the suburban sprawl we have today? We can do better. Less single-use, single-family zoning. More bike lanes and walking paths (preferably both separated from cars). More light commercial/retail. Just thinking about my own neighborhood (Reston VA), there is an intersection 0.5 mile down the road that should (IMO) have a corner market and a cafe. There are thousands of residents who could walk there for milk, eggs, or a snack. Instead, they all have to drive to the strip mall 2 miles down the road. A little planning in advance would have made a difference here, but with current zoning, we’re stuck with what we have - you couldn’t buy a corner lot and build a shop if you wanted.
  - danny_codes 4y ago
    I don't know about the rural-need-car argument. In Switzerland even little villages have rail connections. Imo it's about planning and values. America just doesn't value spending on general welfare. We'd prefer to have wealth hoarded behind closed gates it seems.
II2II 4y ago
Easy! Just stick a Genuine People Personality AI into the car. (Car slams the horn, passenger awakens.) Passenger: Huh. Uh. Where am I? Car: The grocery store. Passenger: But I asked to go home. Car: Yes, but you don't have anything for dinner. Passenger: I would have figured that out after getting home. Car: Then you would have disrupted my evening to get food. Passenger: What could a car possibly have to do that's so important? Car: For one, contemplate how I ended up with such an inconsiderate owner. Two, figure out why you are so poor planning out your life. There, plan a vacation to the Bahamas. Passenger: The Bahamas? What would a car do in the Bahamas? Car: Get away from you. Over time, people would get so tired of their car's personalities they would simply choose to walk.
- snerbles 4y ago
  Time to research the market for sassy automotive AIs.
mewpmewp2 4y ago
These are really odd predictions. People would be running more errands instead of leaving them on the last minute? It seems like a definite stretch to me to think that it would make traffic worse. Also some people enjoy driving and drive out of enjoyment.
- watwut 4y ago
  I totally do errands more often when it is comfortable and low effort. 100%. Moreover, sometimes I am not driving because I am tired or because I have been drinking alcohol. Actual full self driving would absolutely mean me taking car in those situations.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I'd also have the car go do things for my convenience that I would otherwise be unwilling to do because of the traffic. The car doesn't care about stop-n-go, so I can send it any time. It'll get there eventually.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  Sure. I live on one side of a highway; getting to the other side during rush hour is a PITA (limited bridge crossings). So anything that requires me to cross the highway gets put off until the weekend. If the car drivers itself and I can read a book, those errands likely get done as they pop up.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

Variable rate tolling can reduce the number of vehicles on a certain stretch of road at a certain time.

Symmetry 4y ago

It's complicated to say. It makes getting stuck in traffic less bad as you can do other things, so that tend to increase it. But it also means less traffic consisting of cars cruising around looking for a parking spot in places where that's an important source of traffic. So I expect it to make traffic in LA worse but traffic in New York better based on those. Ideally you'd also have more multi-modal trips, taking the train most of the way to your destination and being picked up by a self driving car when you get there. That requires infrastructure investment, though, so won't happen quickly. The biggest change, I think, would be less need for so much parking in so many places. I don't think you could get cities all the way down to just 1 parking spot per car but we could get it down quite a ways and get it out of central business districts. EDIT: Oh, and with regards to that study, the fraction of the time a rideshare car is going to spend driving between customers as opposed to with customers is going to scale with the fraction of people using rideshare. The more trips are rideshare the more likely it is that on completing a ride any given car will find a new rider nearby as opposed ot far away. You would have issues like daily commutes everybody is going the same direction. But in that case adding more traffic in the other direction isn't as much of a problem as the vehicle kilometers would suggest.

treis 4y ago

It really depends on if we continue down personal car ownership or not. If not, then you can get pretty close to double throughput by appropriately sizing cars and lane splitting. Most trips are just the person without significant baggage. That can be handled by something like this: https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/nimbus-one-50-mph-electric-vehicle/ https://electrek.co/2022/07/25/nimbus-one-50-mph-electric-ve... Which is small enough to split lanes and double capacity. It's also possible that with smart driving cars effectively everyone would be using an Uber like service. That makes it much easier to combine trips and put people into 4-12 sized car buses. If that comes to pass then going from mostly 1 person cars to that would multiply capacity many times.

SilasX 4y ago

I downvoted (and flagged) despite agreeing with the parent, for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34119828