Quote:
Originally Posted by logan5
Why would autonomous cars run further apart? Computers react/calculate far faster than humans. They will most certainly run closer together. When there is 100% autonomous vehicles on the road, or close to it, there will be a capacity gain of 6 to 8 times what we have now. That would be enough to replace all transit, including Skytrain.
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This is detached from safety, engineering and regulatory reality and you bring up the perfect example of why in your post. Skytrain. A completely autonomous vehicle system, operating in a segregated environment under complete control of one operator. It's as safe as can be. Yet the vehicles still run with enough stopping distance to come to a complete halt if the vehicle in front of them comes to an immediate halt.
Driverless cars will be operating in a much less safe environment, there will be a diverse mix of different vehicles on the roads, human drivers, pedestrians, potholes, debris, inconsistent/poor road design, inconsistent/poor rules. And still they will be subject to even stricter requirements than human drivers. Where human drivers commonly drive far too close together, a computer will keep a larger stopping distance, it could be 4 seconds instead of the half a second or so we see people follow at.
Keeping better following distance won't necessarily reduce capacity - it might make it a little better as the traffic will flow more smoothly and reduce rolling traffic jams. But it won't be like Minority Report with cars bumper to bumper at 100km/h.
Luckily these unrealistic visions have mostly gone silent and the pushers are a bit more humble and realistic now.