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> Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine… you’re left with

by MBCook 3y ago

> Having a 100% automated driving system will fix traffic. How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine… you’re left with the same number of cars. Just as much traffic. Still need all the roads. And parking lots unless the cars drive more to avoid parking. Better for the environment? I don’t see it. Every car taken off the road (including EVs!) is less polluting. Less fuel. Less maintenance. Less pavement needed. Less particle emissions from wearing down tires. Moving people to walking, bikes, busses, subways, whatever is better than individual cars. More time in your day because you’re not driving during your commute? What if we set things up so you don’t have to commute so far? Or at all. Either one would be better even with automation driving for you. Between the pandemic’s changes in traffic patterns and seeing other cities around the world change I’ve come to the realization we could have so much more than what we have today but with robots driving for us. We can ask for more. We can change more than one thing at once. And what we do doesn’t have to be decided by a tech company just doing something. That may not be the best policy. It may be a waste of money. It may be a real part of the solution! We can want more. Instead robotaxis are clogging streets and blocking ambulances and we’re celebrating “progress”.

mr_toad 3y ago
> How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine If all vehicles - not just cars - were driven by machines and connected to a network then there are many optimisations that they could be doing. For example you could get rid of traffic lights, yielding rules, even lanes. Cars could travel much faster if they didn’t have to worry about reaction times. For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane.
- jprete 3y ago
  Those are the kinds of optimizations that work very well in theory and are an absolute nightmare in practice. You're talking about a system where one kid running into the road could cause a chain collision of dozens of cars that were counting on rushing the intersection at high speed. Or, alternatively, could end up with the kid getting hit at 45 miles an hour, with extremely fatal and destructive results.
  - mortureb 3y ago
    You can say the same thing about high speed trains now. The difference is, a well set up automated system is probably the best odds a kid is going to get at survival because if all the cars are networked they will know ahead of time there is someone rapidly braking ahead of them.
    - Bluestrike2 3y ago
      The kid doesn't give a damn if the cars behind the car that's about to hit them are braking. All that matters is whether that first car is able to brake fast enough to avoid hitting them, or if not, whether the car has slowed sufficiently to maybe not kill them. If networked autonomous cars are moving faster, the kid is much less likely to survive. Period. Maybe the car detects the kid earlier. But that's not guaranteed; if the kid runs out from between two parked cars, for example, there may not be sufficient time at higher speeds for the car to stop.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        This is a huge problem with human drivers today. Get rid of on street parking then you won’t have kids just popping out of nowhere! It holds for pedestrians just trying to cross the street, no need to have a hypothetical kid chasing a ball, it’s already a problem.
        Bluestrike2 3y ago
        Absolutely, but networked autonomous vehicles moving faster so as to increase traffic flow like the parent mentioned would only make the problem worse. People behave unpredictably. Hell, even when they behave predictably and cross at the crosswalk when they’re supposed to, they can still get hit by cars. That said, on-street parking does have the benefit of placing a multi-ton shield between traffic and pedestrians and cyclists. Slower speeds and better street design can at least lessen the likelihood of fatal accidents when people pop out between parked cars.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Realistically, I don’t see how anyone could EVER pass a law saying humans can’t drive where other cars can. Americans (I’m one!) seem far too independently minded, in the sense of wanting to be in control themselves. Even if you could get 90% on board, the other 10% will fight to the death over it. Which means the benefits of a 100% automated system (which I disagree with BTW), can’t be reached except possibly after a VERY long time when enough anti-robos have changed their minds/died out.
  - mortureb 3y ago
    We said you can’t have horse drawn buggies on highways, I don’t see why you couldn’t have a similar rule for automated vehicles 50 years from now.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Highways didn’t exist when cars became common. They came because of cars. We never took them away from horse riders. We gave car drivers a new option. This would be taking something away from drivers. And that’s what people hate. Look at the responses to congestion taxes or toll roads. Or even traffic jams! People behave as if they have a right to use any (seemingly) public road just because they have a car. Even private toll roads. It’s not feasible.
      - mortureb 3y ago
        You can make two lanes of freeways automated only where the speed limit is 200 mph
- Bluestrike2 3y ago
  > For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane. That kind of system precludes the presence of pedestrians and cyclists. You'll still need crosswalks to allow pedestrians to cross the street. Beyond that, the mere possibility of a kid running into the street means that your theoretical maximum speed is basically the same as it is now, simply due to physics: even if cars can instantly detect a person trying to cross the road, you still need time to brake and come to a stop. That doesn't change whether it's a computer driving the car or a human. Speeding up autonomous traffic basically undermines the biggest advantage--360 degree awareness and faster-than-human reaction times--AVs should offer. As for intersections where cars zip through the gaps between cars with minimal spacing, that's a pipe dream simply because you're cutting safety margins to nearly zero. Signals drop out and computer processes crash. Car sensors will pick up false positives. Car brakes and tires wear down over time, which will cause the car's performance to deviate from what everyone's models will expect. Bald tires? Winter tires in summer? Summer tires in winter? Maybe your car tries to take into account tire wear, but what happens if they're out of balance or alignment and the tread wears unevenly? What about the autonomous SUV that's loaded nearly at its maximum load thanks to the home improvement supplies the person bought at Home Depot? The sort of carefully choreographed ballet you're envisioning[0] falls apart in catastrophic fashion the moment a single car comes along that doesn't behave as expected. If one car slams on the brakes to avoid a kid, a ball bouncing into traffic, a barrel that fell over, or any of the million other examples of things that happen in a complex environment, you get a massive multi-car collision, and because we're now moving faster than would have been possible before, you're going to get casualties. So you need to slow traffic flow and increase the distance between cars to create a larger safety margin. That cuts down on the expected advantages, and you wind up much closer to existing traffic flows than the imagined ballet. And even if we choose to ignore the possibility of failure, at the end of the day, roads are a finite surface. There's still a physical limit to the number that can physically fit on a given stretch of road. AVs could, theoretically, push that number higher by removing some of the factors that decrease capacity, but there's still a limit. They can't solve the problem of congestion. There's also the human element. Even if you "know" the cars are communicating with one another and you'll safely shoot through the intersection, those pesky human brains--you know, the ones that evolved to notice predators on the edge of a person's field of vision before those predators managed to rush up and eat you---are going to positively lose their shit the second they see a car speeding towards them on what appears to be a collision course at 50 miles an hour. That kind of intersection is pretty much perfect for triggering those fight-or-flight stress responses, and they'll make the stress of even the worst of LA traffic look positively pleasant by comparison. Can AVs do a lot to improve traffic? Sure, assuming they don't increase the number of vehicles on the road--which is unlikely, to say the least. Anyhow, even the less-capable levels of automation could decrease things like phantom traffic jams. But we'll never see the kind of traffic ballets you're talking about save, perhaps, things like highway on-ramps. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzkv5beS4uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzkv5beS4uk
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
True actual driving aspect can be optimized if all cars were self driving (traffic lights could be handled via negotiation between each car at an intersection, traffic on ring roads could get into a more train-like arrangements, etc…). It’s unlikely to happen in the states anytime soon, but it is something that could happen in cities with really messed up traffic but lots of money; eg some Chinese cities, where normal cars have little care about ambulances already.

by MBCook 3y ago

mr_toad 3y ago

> How? If we replace every car driven by an individual with a car driven by machine If all vehicles - not just cars - were driven by machines and connected to a network then there are many optimisations that they could be doing. For example you could get rid of traffic lights, yielding rules, even lanes. Cars could travel much faster if they didn’t have to worry about reaction times. For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane.

jprete 3y ago
Those are the kinds of optimizations that work very well in theory and are an absolute nightmare in practice. You're talking about a system where one kid running into the road could cause a chain collision of dozens of cars that were counting on rushing the intersection at high speed. Or, alternatively, could end up with the kid getting hit at 45 miles an hour, with extremely fatal and destructive results.
- mortureb 3y ago
  You can say the same thing about high speed trains now. The difference is, a well set up automated system is probably the best odds a kid is going to get at survival because if all the cars are networked they will know ahead of time there is someone rapidly braking ahead of them.
  - Bluestrike2 3y ago
    The kid doesn't give a damn if the cars behind the car that's about to hit them are braking. All that matters is whether that first car is able to brake fast enough to avoid hitting them, or if not, whether the car has slowed sufficiently to maybe not kill them. If networked autonomous cars are moving faster, the kid is much less likely to survive. Period. Maybe the car detects the kid earlier. But that's not guaranteed; if the kid runs out from between two parked cars, for example, there may not be sufficient time at higher speeds for the car to stop.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      This is a huge problem with human drivers today. Get rid of on street parking then you won’t have kids just popping out of nowhere! It holds for pedestrians just trying to cross the street, no need to have a hypothetical kid chasing a ball, it’s already a problem.
      - Bluestrike2 3y ago
        Absolutely, but networked autonomous vehicles moving faster so as to increase traffic flow like the parent mentioned would only make the problem worse. People behave unpredictably. Hell, even when they behave predictably and cross at the crosswalk when they’re supposed to, they can still get hit by cars. That said, on-street parking does have the benefit of placing a multi-ton shield between traffic and pedestrians and cyclists. Slower speeds and better street design can at least lessen the likelihood of fatal accidents when people pop out between parked cars.
MBCook 3y ago
Realistically, I don’t see how anyone could EVER pass a law saying humans can’t drive where other cars can. Americans (I’m one!) seem far too independently minded, in the sense of wanting to be in control themselves. Even if you could get 90% on board, the other 10% will fight to the death over it. Which means the benefits of a 100% automated system (which I disagree with BTW), can’t be reached except possibly after a VERY long time when enough anti-robos have changed their minds/died out.
- mortureb 3y ago
  We said you can’t have horse drawn buggies on highways, I don’t see why you couldn’t have a similar rule for automated vehicles 50 years from now.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Highways didn’t exist when cars became common. They came because of cars. We never took them away from horse riders. We gave car drivers a new option. This would be taking something away from drivers. And that’s what people hate. Look at the responses to congestion taxes or toll roads. Or even traffic jams! People behave as if they have a right to use any (seemingly) public road just because they have a car. Even private toll roads. It’s not feasible.
    - mortureb 3y ago
      You can make two lanes of freeways automated only where the speed limit is 200 mph
Bluestrike2 3y ago
> For example cars could go through intersections at full speed or close to it, timing it so they passed between each other. Cars could actually merge onto freeways and change lanes at full speed without some jerk trying to block them. You wouldn’t have slow drivers in the fast lane. That kind of system precludes the presence of pedestrians and cyclists. You'll still need crosswalks to allow pedestrians to cross the street. Beyond that, the mere possibility of a kid running into the street means that your theoretical maximum speed is basically the same as it is now, simply due to physics: even if cars can instantly detect a person trying to cross the road, you still need time to brake and come to a stop. That doesn't change whether it's a computer driving the car or a human. Speeding up autonomous traffic basically undermines the biggest advantage--360 degree awareness and faster-than-human reaction times--AVs should offer. As for intersections where cars zip through the gaps between cars with minimal spacing, that's a pipe dream simply because you're cutting safety margins to nearly zero. Signals drop out and computer processes crash. Car sensors will pick up false positives. Car brakes and tires wear down over time, which will cause the car's performance to deviate from what everyone's models will expect. Bald tires? Winter tires in summer? Summer tires in winter? Maybe your car tries to take into account tire wear, but what happens if they're out of balance or alignment and the tread wears unevenly? What about the autonomous SUV that's loaded nearly at its maximum load thanks to the home improvement supplies the person bought at Home Depot? The sort of carefully choreographed ballet you're envisioning[0] falls apart in catastrophic fashion the moment a single car comes along that doesn't behave as expected. If one car slams on the brakes to avoid a kid, a ball bouncing into traffic, a barrel that fell over, or any of the million other examples of things that happen in a complex environment, you get a massive multi-car collision, and because we're now moving faster than would have been possible before, you're going to get casualties. So you need to slow traffic flow and increase the distance between cars to create a larger safety margin. That cuts down on the expected advantages, and you wind up much closer to existing traffic flows than the imagined ballet. And even if we choose to ignore the possibility of failure, at the end of the day, roads are a finite surface. There's still a physical limit to the number that can physically fit on a given stretch of road. AVs could, theoretically, push that number higher by removing some of the factors that decrease capacity, but there's still a limit. They can't solve the problem of congestion. There's also the human element. Even if you "know" the cars are communicating with one another and you'll safely shoot through the intersection, those pesky human brains--you know, the ones that evolved to notice predators on the edge of a person's field of vision before those predators managed to rush up and eat you---are going to positively lose their shit the second they see a car speeding towards them on what appears to be a collision course at 50 miles an hour. That kind of intersection is pretty much perfect for triggering those fight-or-flight stress responses, and they'll make the stress of even the worst of LA traffic look positively pleasant by comparison. Can AVs do a lot to improve traffic? Sure, assuming they don't increase the number of vehicles on the road--which is unlikely, to say the least. Anyhow, even the less-capable levels of automation could decrease things like phantom traffic jams. But we'll never see the kind of traffic ballets you're talking about save, perhaps, things like highway on-ramps. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzkv5beS4uk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzkv5beS4uk

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

True actual driving aspect can be optimized if all cars were self driving (traffic lights could be handled via negotiation between each car at an intersection, traffic on ring roads could get into a more train-like arrangements, etc…). It’s unlikely to happen in the states anytime soon, but it is something that could happen in cities with really messed up traffic but lots of money; eg some Chinese cities, where normal cars have little care about ambulances already.