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I've realised who disruptive this will be, and have pointed it out to my wife many times. The first that comes to mind is that driverless cars can literally en
by electromagnetic 15y ago
I've realised who disruptive this will be, and have pointed it out to my wife many times.
The first that comes to mind is that driverless cars can literally end drunk driving. I've seen many bars close down due to lack of service, because no one wants to spend $40 in a night just on cabs.
I know people whose cottage is almost 12-hours away through rural roads, and go up every other weekend. It would entirely change their time if they weren't stopping in motels and getting there mid-day on a saturday. If they had a driverless vehicle, they would get there at 6 in the morning and be fully rested.
Greatly increased speed limits is what excites me the most if only because it's the next step in making our physical world that little bit smaller. When you double vehicle speeds, you're changing the world. There would be less overloading on urban centres due to the convenience of short commuting distances.
- FreeFull 15y agoOne thing though, when you increase the speed that cars go at on a road, you decrease the bandwidth of the road (due to the way halting distance increases with speed, the cars have to be further apart).
- orangecat 15y agoThroughput still increases because each car won't need to be on the road as long. And computer-controlled cars can potentially have less spacing and still be safer, because they'll have much better effective reaction times.
- Gustomaximus 15y agoThis can be offset by the reaction time of computers (assuming braking distance being equal between cars) as the gap is really for reaction time. Or driverless vehicles could take it even further where a lead car could communicate with a following vehicle so when the lead cars brakes are applied simultaneously the cars behind do also reducing the delay even further.