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0 pointsmattlutze6y ago0 comments

Self-driving car networks have the benefit of not being bound by the same finite capacity of a network of humans trying to manage real-world traffic.

Neither would they have to operate at artificially handicapped speeds, as no human operator would really be able to keep up regardless with the 10,000 or 100,000 cars running around.

Part of reacting and mitigating acute issues is being able to reroute traffic early enough, or slow cars down early enough, to minimize disruption (instead of a traffic slinky blocking everyone up).

There's no reason so far here that self-driving vehicles can't improve traffic and overall throughput, and it's a bold claim to declare L5 dead on arrival.

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bobthepanda6y ago

In a dense urban area, the speed limit is generally not dictated by road design but by the simple physics interaction between a person made of meat and bones, and a multi-ton metal vehicle.

Follow distances in urban areas with low speeds are already really small. I don't think AVs would make them meaningfully tighter.

> Part of reacting and mitigating acute issues is being able to reroute traffic early enough, or slow cars down early enough, to minimize disruption (instead of a traffic slinky blocking everyone up).

This was supposed to be what Waze and Google Maps were set to achieve, and they did not, but they did piss off a lot of people when cut-through drivers started jamming up their formerly quiet residential neighborhoods.

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