DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS
On 10/10/2017 4:42 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:44:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:
If everybody just locked into a convoy, that annoyance would go away.
Way back in college daze, I took a traffic engineering class in which
me ran computah simulations of various traffic patterns. The
tailgaters convoy, where everyone drives very close together and at
the same speed works great as long as nobody enters or leaves the
convoy. When that happens, one part of the convoy will need to speed
up or slow down to accommodate the addition or reduction in length.
The reaction time of each driver or vehicle is different resulting
spacing variations. Eventually, the convoy starts to look and act
like an accordion. I've confirmed this behavior when talking to
friends who regularly attend mobile home and camper trailer rallys.
That sounds like a problem that a good physics and software team could
solve in a day.
Please note that it is quite likely that driverless vehicle will be
programmed to rigorously follow traffic laws which are designed to be
more stringent than practical. For example, speed limits are often 10
mph below what would be considered safe, on the assumption that
everyone drives a few mph faster than the speed limit. The problem is
that if everyone actually followed the speed limit, traffic flow would
come to a halt.
???
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- Frank Krygowski
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