The driverless road ahead

Post by mertd » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 10:04 PM UTC

mibbitier wrote: post #75

mertd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll buy one. I hate wasting time driving.

I'll bite. How in the world do you consider driving to be wasted time? Don't you think while you're driving? Don't you work through problems in your mind? Don't you rest, listen to music/radio? Don't you have interesting discussions with fellow passengers?

Here is my reasoning. You can do the activities you mentioned in places that are a lot more comfortable (sofa), more social (cafe) or more beneficial (gym) than the driver's seat.

More importantly, I don't trust my brain's thread scheduler to drive with full attention and think about something else productively simultaneously. How many of us can say that they have never been in a dangerous scenario because they were lost in thought while driving?

Post by rsheridan6 » Mon, Oct 29, 2012, 1:32 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #43

rsheridan6 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that most people need their cars at the same time - rush hour.

1. Optimized traffic flow that driverless gives you would be able to pack more vehicles on the road. 2. If we are treating all cars are like a fleet of autonomous taxis, it doesn't seem really crazy that you could also optimize carpooling where the car picks up other passengers to optimize the trip with respect to where you and they are going.

Yes, you could probably share cars to a greater extent than we do today, but not nearly enough to get the ~20x reduction in the number of cars on the road that the parent suggested.

If you have optimized traffic, you could live further out and the commute wouldn't take any longer, so that could lead to more sprawl. You also would be able to do something while commuting besides watch the road, making the commute more tolerable, which could lead to even more sprawl.

Re: The driverless road ahead

Re: The driverless road ahead