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Once cars self-drive, most commuters' cars can be a quarter the size they are now. When traffic lights, stop signs, lanes, and such are gone, and cars instead t
by kps 14y ago
Once cars self-drive, most commuters' cars can be a quarter the size they are now. When traffic lights, stop signs, lanes, and such are gone, and cars instead talk to each other to make efficient use of the available space, one-person microcars will have an advantage, and the current disadvantage of being flattened by a soccer mom's Canyonero will be absent.
- jowiar 14y agoMore importantly, we won't actually need to park the cars. Private ownership of vehicles will plummet as a perfect taxi system emerges.
- jacques_chester 14y agoIt ameliorates, but does not solve, these problems. Many people will still want their own car for comfort and status. Most people will still travel to and from work during the traditional rush hours.
- run4yourlives 14y agoYes because nobody buys a car as an extension of their personality at all...
- saosebastiao 14y agoThis is imaginative but flawed technophilia at best. People with grand visionary ideas always seem to get two things wrong: 1) They underestimate problems with their ideas, and then brush them off with solutions which, when summed together, make the visionary idea much less palatable. For example, the idea that we can abandon traffic lights and stop signs is complicated by the fact that not everybody can, will, or even should use a car to get around. But in the world without traffic lights and stop signs, pedestrians and cyclists are trapped by fear. Sure, they might technically be able to walk out into traffic and the wondercars will stop for them, but in reality, nobody will do that, because the cost of being wrong is death. In every conversation I have had with these technophiles, the solution always ends up being some massively costly network of pedestrian bridges at every intersection of the city. Yeah, not so palatable anymore. 2) They fail to understand that, like evolution, intermediate states have to be viable improvements on their own merits. Wheeled animals do not exist, not because wheeled animals wouldn't have superior mobility, but because no possible intermediate evolutionary state has incremental benefit over the previous legged state. How do you transition a 2 lane road into three lanes when only 50% of the cars are self-driving? What about when 99.9% are self-driving? There are thousands of imaginary future states that do not have credible intermediate states, and will likely never see the future state as a result.
- yakiv 14y agoSmall comment: I dunno about wheeled animals having mobility superior to that of legged animals. How much naturally-occurring flat terrain is out there? How well can wheels drive over rough terrain?
- mike_esspe 14y agoRegarding the first point - have you seen crossing the traffic in Saigon? They mostly don't have traffic lights, but pedestrians nevertheless cross the streets. With computer in charge it will be even more safer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CU1PR4d1wM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CU1PR4d1wM
- quanticle 14y agoReally? Your shining example for crossing traffic is third world traffic? I'm sorry, I fail to see how that's safe at all. And even if it were theoretically safe (it isn't by the way), I fail to see how that maw of scooters, motorcycles and cars would inspire confidence in any pedestrian that they could cross the street and emerge on the other side with their limbs intact.
- megablast 14y agoIt is safe, but because they have different rules. Vehicles must give way at all times, so they will drive around you. And drivers are aware of what is going on, because they have to be. I think driving in Vietnam is much safer than the US.
- Tichy 14y agoI think it is "safe" only in the sense that people are more expendable in third world countries. Probably poor people who don't have cars and have to cross streets on foot are even more expendable.
- dalke 14y agoBetter examples are Woonerf or Drachten, Holland and Bohmte, Germany. These are first world cities where traffic signs were removed and streets designed along the shared space philosophy. The now dated analysis (I don't know of recent numbers) says that they are safer now than before this change. There are a few reasons for why it can work. One is the idea that drivers on a well delimited road become complacent. If it's a road designed for cars, then drivers go faster, believe they have priority, and pay less attention to non-drivers. You can't just get rid of signs and expect things to work, because signs are the only signifier. For example, the curb is a physical indicator of the boundary between the place for cars and the place for non-cars. Also, if there are more non-drivers often near the streets (cyclists, walkers, people sitting at a cafe table) then drivers will be more attuned to events which are currently rather low. It also depends on a relatively slow speed. That video for Saigon shows that the traffic is about that of a jog. At that speed, it's easy for drivers to slow down, and easily within the normal reaction time for humans. If you go this route then you can't have broad, open, clear avenues since that encourages drivers to go a lot faster, which makes things more dangerous.