That is in my opinion the way to go with this, to either adapt the infrastructure to make it work or to at least separate the self driving traffic and the 'normal' traffic so the two won't interfere.
I think this is actually more of a fix for the problems with self driving cars, specifically: other traffic.
By creating a new category of infrastructure the selfdriving parts can be far more reliable and simple.
I'm for a middle-of-the-road way of doing things at first: make some highway lanes for autonomous cars only. Separate those lane physically. Remove the speed limit there to encourage people to get cars which can use those lanes.
Implement a way for the highway operator to affect the cars on it: make way for emergency vehicles, adapt to infos the operator can aggregate and transmit, change the speed of cars to the slowest one around etc.
Once the majority of people have self driven cars and those have been proven in this controled environment you can think about allowing them on open roads. Or not. Or adapt those open roads to what self driven cars need.
I've always thought we should just start with a dedicated lane on the highway for self driving vehicles, raise the speed limit on it, and let the vehicles communicate with each other.
Many years ago, I dreamed of huge roadways with wi-fi embedded in the road. Cars would broadcast their destination and the network would adjust the speed of all cars to facilitate a smooth entry to the freeway and subsequent navigation.
Self-driving cars are really cool. However, if every car is trying to optimize for itself then traffic will still be an issue.
I think the trick is not to mix autonomous and non-autonomous. Cities delegate autonomous only zones where no non-autonomous cars can go; this creates a transportation circulatory system and safe experimental zone which can expand - which can include just making the area of city only for autonomous cars larger or gradual commingling with non-autonomous cars. Or again partial autonomy of cars on highways / more predictable driving scenarios, like we are already seeing.
This could work incredibly well especially in urban areas. At least here in Europe, more and more cities are experimenting with traffic limitations in the inner city core, but this also has big drawbacks. Coupled with a cheap self-driving electric cars service, on the other hand...
Or at least have the self driving cars driving only along specific routes well marked, well maintained autonomous driving routes similar to light rail/bus lanes so pedestrians know to be extra careful.
And for long haul trucking applications, freeway lanes at specific times of late night/early morning could be dedicated for autonomous driving.
Don't worry too much about it - unless you ban all existing cars, we're stuck with the mixed traffic for the foreseeable future. Once you're 100% robotic, you could just use smaller cars to get more effective lanes instead of increasing speeds.
Not that you could increase speeds safely - SDCs still need to brake in time, and they're bound by the same laws of physics, and there are still blind corners in the future.
We may actually discover it’s cheaper or smarter to limit the scope of what self driving cars have to do by limiting their infrastructure. If cities become more pedestrian (cyclist, public transport) centric then some of the issues disappear. It would be a hell of a lot easier if you eliminate the complexities of navigating city traffic if most of it is gone or car traffic is completely separated from the rest. Either via a reduced number of tunnels, suspended roadway, or simply by reducing the number of places where cars and pedestrians cross paths.
Between vastly reducing car traffic and separating it from pedestrians the problem of fully self driving is greatly simplified (probably not eliminated).
I feel that this one is a rather realistic solution. It uses existing technology (cars), existing infrastructure (streets) and existing data infrastructure (cloud providers) to solve a massive problem. The "only" thing that's missing is the self driving part (the only being in very large quotes of course).
This means its much less of a stretch to get this scenario working than proposals like Hyperloop, Flying Taxis or other things that require a lot more innovation and infrastructure work before they become feasable.
i think we agree. the city does not make any sense for self driving cars right now. But they will inevitably interact well before full integration due to popularity increasing outside of the cities. status quo will adapt a bit im sure, but throughput will probably be artificially lowered by pedestrian abuse until people start getting tickets.. which will probably happen
> Self-driving cars in a line could detect and link up with each other, sharing sensor data on obstacles up ahead. In the end, this has the potential to safely reduce the gaps between cars at higher speeds and thus actually increase throughput, since the congestion issues with human drivers reacting separately would not apply.
Isn't this already true to a certain extent with map software? It automatically directs you to the fastest route—congestion relief is, in a way, built-in to open infrastructure.
It seems to be the topology of the highway system would have a much larger impact on congestion than the drivers themselves. Among other things, it's going to be a long time (hopefully never. IMHO) before human drivers are off the road.
Autonomous vehicles could coordinate to allow manuevering. I mean, if there is enough space, surely you can keep cars at whatever separation, but in heavy traffic the most efficient would be leaving a lane on the right or left exclusive for emergency (or maybe coordinating vehicles for clearance).
Nothing of what I said indicates dedicated infrastructure. In fact, I don't think that would work (as you say why not
I'm thinking more like expanding priority bus-lanes (if you have visited regions outside the US these are common) and ensuring there are markers that are abundantly clear for everyone and more usable for self-driving vehicles.
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