Comment by yyyk
1 day ago
The big AV transit efficiency gains* can only happen when nearly all human drivers are removed from the road. Alas, that's at least 20 years ahead of now**, or more (e.g. if tech stalls for some reason, though I consider it unlikely). Otherwise they'd be limited by having to account for human drivers and that limits speed and throughput enough so other solutions are a must.
* Think having much higher speed limits (as far as humans are concerned, nonexistent), or mass coordinating movement over the entire traffic.
** We can reasonably estimate the minimum without bothering to ask how fast the tech will improve: Even if the tech were available now, think about fleet replacement costs which no one group would be too eager to pay. Best case, it's the typical 'make a concentrated pressure group lose for societal benefit' and we know how that politics goes. It will happen, but slowly.
*** Another thing to account for is that there's no good reason to design an AV car like a normal car, and there'll be some iteration time over that too.
Higher speeds increases noise and stopping distance, even for autonomous vehicles.
True, but this can be compensated for. Current vehicle design is based on human-operated gas vehicles - so it better be aerodynamic (to save gas), and a human needs to be in the front (to see) with only a glass to separate, and it needs a particular stopping action (again a consequence of carrying humans without enough separation). This has unfortunate implications for noise and stopping distance. Electric-powered AV can have creative designs to enable much quicker (yet safe) stopping action, an action which AV would also make rarer.
Autonomous vehicles can have faster reaction time, but once they hit the brakes, stopping distance will still increase with speed because it's limited by the friction between tires and pavement. Unless you put parachutes or rockets on these vehicles, or thrust spikes into the pavement...
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