Marietta Tar Heel wrote:
Fat hurts wrote:
I think braking distance is mostly irrelevant. But if you think it is important then it is incumbent on you to calculate it and then tell me why it matters. It's not my job to make your argument for you if you are unable to do it yourself.
You are right that regulatory issues are far more difficult than the engineering problems. But there is huge demand for high speed, inexpensive transportation. So I do think it will happen.
So you take 1.7 million passengers from planes to cars. Families and friends will carpool and strangers might carpool a bit too because it will be cheaper.
115 million cars hit the road every day in this country. So even if you add an extra million cars on the road per day that's no big deal because you are adding less than 1%. And they will all take less time per trip. So even with moving air travelers to the road you will probably have less traffic than you do today.
Again, again, again, ...again. One of your smallest problems.
Back of a napkin on a flat, dry road, 0 reaction time, friction coefficient of .07, it takes about 8/10ths of a mile to go from 300 to 0. Wet road ~ 3+ miles. Reduce speed by 200mph, it's still 1/3rd of a mile and 1.25 miles. Hate to be in the sh!tter when ole Hoke slams on the brakes to miss that deer too.
Do you not see the issue with being able to avoid the unpredictable movement of a deer at the speeds that need to be attained for your scenario on our current road system?
As for AVs decreasing the amount of vehicles on the road? C'mon man.
You're telling me that you are making something cheaper, more accessible, and more convenient and people are going to do it less? I'll refer to my original question to you. What are you smoking?
Now I don't need to carpool. I don't have to take mass transportation. I don't have to worry as much about the cost of travel. Why would I do it less frequently?
You really have to think this out before you throw out these wild scenarios.
If you are going to make calculations, you need to show your work. Stopping time depends on the car. EV's have engine braking in addition to the friction brakes. I'm just betting that your calculations didn't take that into account. And if you really need more stopping power you can do things like add an emergency spoiler. It's just really hard to predict the stopping characteristics of a car that hasn't been designed yet.
You act like people are going to be hitting deer all day long. The system doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a lot safer than a human driver.
High speed robotaxis would obviously reduce cars on the highway. If your trip time is reduced by 75% then that's 75% less time on the highway per car. So traffic gets a lot lighter.