Comment by mitthrowaway2
21 hours ago
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...
There's no reason a car should have only 4 wheels, we can even have special wheels deployed only when the breaks are hit at high speed. The AI will be disciplined enough to always use them when necessary (or maybe use an automatic system based on speed alone?).
Or you can have a different wheel count and arrangement normally, as the AI can be trained for this. We don't have to standardize AV cars as much as we have to standardize cars for humans.
Stopping distance is actually unaffected by the number of wheels a vehicle has.
Isn't friction a function of surface area? You can increase surface area that way, and the extra wheels can be made to have more friction than usual if the design is such they are not used normally.