This certainly would not solve traffic congestion issues. Other modes of traffic address traffic much better than more cars/same number of cars does. If a car can't make it across town in an hour at rush time, then "everywhere cars an go" isn't that much of a selling point since cars can't really go that far then in a good amount of time.
Once everything is self-driving, they can coordinate much better than humans and fill roads to their capacity (as well as routing intelligently since we'll be able to have completely accurate traffic predictions, although that demands a level of widespread coordination that won't necessarily come at the same time as 100% self-driving vehicles). You can also throw vans/busses into the mix if the roads still can't keep up, or automated carpooling services.
100% self-driving vehicles will be able to fill roads to capacity for 2 reasons:
1. It's all automated, so most of the common causes for traffic jams simply won't happen (most traffic jams happen spontaneously once the road reaches a high percentage of capacity, rather than for any concrete reason that demands a jam, and self-driving cars will be able to avoid the turbulence that causes the jams).
2. Because it's automated, cars can also drive faster while remaining safe, and drive closer together as well. By the time we're at 100% self-driving cars the driving software will be pretty well-tested, so the only significant risk* will be a mechanical failure in the car, and even if that happens, because everything's automated the surrounding cars will be able to adapt much better.
*I'm talking here about accidental risk. Any kind of intentional issues (hacking the car, throwing heavy stuff at the car from another vehicle, etc) are not particularly relevant here.
I guess you (and danmaz74) have a point here. In both my supposition and yours, we are assuming computers are smart enough to coordinate the vehicles well, only for cars, the infrastructure already exists. I guess my only reply here is that, yes, there is the cost of the infrastructure itself; however, let's say that this PRT thing takes off, the fact that their infrastructure is physically separate from the road, it would initially alleviate traffic issues much more than self-driving cars would. Having to deal with irrational, nondeterministic human drivers would probably make traffic alleviation not as apparent at first compared to a completely parallel infrastructure.
Still, this does ignore adoption rates. In a more real world, I think you'd argue that adoption of self-driving cars would be quicker and easier than adoption of PRT, that might hamper my model. So, perhaps the conclusion of the article is right after all.
What is the capacity of a road with 100% self-driving cars, and how does that compare to the capacity we are utilizing today? And how could traffic jams not happen? What happens when you exceed the capacity of a road? If you just wait in your autocar to get on the road, that seems similar to a traffic jam.
Traffic jams spontaneously occur before roads reach theoretical capacity. You should look up information yourself on that if you're curious (because offhand I'm not sure what to search for).
Right, so 40 years later we have 100% autonomous cars and use the entire road capacity of 20% more than we currently use. Also more people are driving so we are back where we started with traffic jams or waiting in line to get on the road.
Why are more people driving? Unless you just mean because of population growth, but we've always needed to build new infrastructure to handle that, and the next 40 years won't be any different.
If anything, self-driving cars will reduce the (relative) number of cars on the road. Several reasons:
1. Since they will probably finish their journey faster than a human driver, they won't be on the road for as long.
2. Once we hit critical mass of self-driving cars, we can get rid of taxis (and Uber and all that), in favor of calling a self-driving car to come pick you up. These cars won't need to be out on the road trolling for passengers.
3. By the time we have 100% self-driving cars I guarantee you there will be multiple companies that are in the business of automatically arranging carpooling, which will mean more people per car (and therefore fewer cars).
4. We'll still have the option to use busses, or mass transit, like we do today. Self-driving cars might even make those options more appealing; take mass transit to the nearest stop, have a self-driving car take you the rest of the way (as opposed to driving the whole distance yourself).
Also, once we reach critical mass of self-driving cars, we can start exploring other infrastructure options for moving self-driving vehicles around besides surface roads. Remember crazy-looking highways for self-driving cars in I, Robot? I don't think we'll end up with something that looks like that, but that's the general idea.
In the long (very long) run it could solve this problem too - if all cars were fully automated and very safe, they could travel much faster even inside cities, thus augmenting the bandwidth of roads.
I'd argue that they can't go too much faster in cities. For starters, people live in cities and tend to walk or bike places. On a city street with no people walking around, sure, cars could go faster and be safe.
But in a city with people, cars will need to go slower and stop for people (or some combination). Even with instantaneous reaction, a car can only stop so fast.
Comments
This certainly would not solve traffic congestion issues. Other modes of traffic address traffic much better than more cars/same number of cars does. If a car can't make it across town in an hour at rush time, then "everywhere cars an go" isn't that much of a selling point since cars can't really go that far then in a good amount of time.
This is why I said
Once everything is self-driving, they can coordinate much better than humans and fill roads to their capacity (as well as routing intelligently since we'll be able to have completely accurate traffic predictions, although that demands a level of widespread coordination that won't necessarily come at the same time as 100% self-driving vehicles). You can also throw vans/busses into the mix if the roads still can't keep up, or automated carpooling services.
100% self-driving vehicles will be able to fill roads to capacity for 2 reasons:
1. It's all automated, so most of the common causes for traffic jams simply won't happen (most traffic jams happen spontaneously once the road reaches a high percentage of capacity, rather than for any concrete reason that demands a jam, and self-driving cars will be able to avoid the turbulence that causes the jams). 2. Because it's automated, cars can also drive faster while remaining safe, and drive closer together as well. By the time we're at 100% self-driving cars the driving software will be pretty well-tested, so the only significant risk* will be a mechanical failure in the car, and even if that happens, because everything's automated the surrounding cars will be able to adapt much better.
*I'm talking here about accidental risk. Any kind of intentional issues (hacking the car, throwing heavy stuff at the car from another vehicle, etc) are not particularly relevant here.
I guess you (and danmaz74) have a point here. In both my supposition and yours, we are assuming computers are smart enough to coordinate the vehicles well, only for cars, the infrastructure already exists. I guess my only reply here is that, yes, there is the cost of the infrastructure itself; however, let's say that this PRT thing takes off, the fact that their infrastructure is physically separate from the road, it would initially alleviate traffic issues much more than self-driving cars would. Having to deal with irrational, nondeterministic human drivers would probably make traffic alleviation not as apparent at first compared to a completely parallel infrastructure.
Still, this does ignore adoption rates. In a more real world, I think you'd argue that adoption of self-driving cars would be quicker and easier than adoption of PRT, that might hamper my model. So, perhaps the conclusion of the article is right after all.
What is the capacity of a road with 100% self-driving cars, and how does that compare to the capacity we are utilizing today? And how could traffic jams not happen? What happens when you exceed the capacity of a road? If you just wait in your autocar to get on the road, that seems similar to a traffic jam.
Traffic jams spontaneously occur before roads reach theoretical capacity. You should look up information yourself on that if you're curious (because offhand I'm not sure what to search for).
Right, so 40 years later we have 100% autonomous cars and use the entire road capacity of 20% more than we currently use. Also more people are driving so we are back where we started with traffic jams or waiting in line to get on the road.
Why are more people driving? Unless you just mean because of population growth, but we've always needed to build new infrastructure to handle that, and the next 40 years won't be any different.
If anything, self-driving cars will reduce the (relative) number of cars on the road. Several reasons:
1. Since they will probably finish their journey faster than a human driver, they won't be on the road for as long.
2. Once we hit critical mass of self-driving cars, we can get rid of taxis (and Uber and all that), in favor of calling a self-driving car to come pick you up. These cars won't need to be out on the road trolling for passengers.
3. By the time we have 100% self-driving cars I guarantee you there will be multiple companies that are in the business of automatically arranging carpooling, which will mean more people per car (and therefore fewer cars).
4. We'll still have the option to use busses, or mass transit, like we do today. Self-driving cars might even make those options more appealing; take mass transit to the nearest stop, have a self-driving car take you the rest of the way (as opposed to driving the whole distance yourself).
Also, once we reach critical mass of self-driving cars, we can start exploring other infrastructure options for moving self-driving vehicles around besides surface roads. Remember crazy-looking highways for self-driving cars in I, Robot? I don't think we'll end up with something that looks like that, but that's the general idea.
In the long (very long) run it could solve this problem too - if all cars were fully automated and very safe, they could travel much faster even inside cities, thus augmenting the bandwidth of roads.
I'd argue that they can't go too much faster in cities. For starters, people live in cities and tend to walk or bike places. On a city street with no people walking around, sure, cars could go faster and be safe.
But in a city with people, cars will need to go slower and stop for people (or some combination). Even with instantaneous reaction, a car can only stop so fast.