Slashdot Mirror
Math Says You're Driving Wrong and It's Slowing Us All Down (wired.com)
A new study in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems mathematically suggests that if you and everyone else on the road kept an equal distance between the cars ahead and behind, traffic would move twice as quickly. From a report: Now sure, you're probably not going to convince everyone on the road to do that. Still, the finding could be a simple yet powerful way to optimize semi-autonomous cars long before the fully self-driving car of tomorrow arrives. Traffic is perhaps the world's most infuriating example of what's known as an emergent property. Meaning, lots of individual things forming together to create something more complex. Emergent properties are usually quite astounding. You've probably seen video of starlings forming a murmuration, a great shifting blob of thousands upon thousands of birds. Bats flying en masse out of a cave is another example, swarming sometimes by the millions through a small exit. And scientists are just beginning to understand how they do so.
Which also takes us into arguments of age and experience. The youngest drivers usually have the best reaction time but may not necessarily make the best choices prior to needing to use that reaction time. The oldest drivers have the most experience with what traffic conditions are to be like but may have very poor reaction times. The sweet-spot is kind of hard to calculate but probably biases toward a youngish driver that has figured out traffic conditions but still has fast reaction times.
When I read the article summary it sounds like they want our cars to operate like trains, which all maintain the same distance (on account of mechanical coupling) and all go the exact same speed (again, mechanical coupling). Trouble is, with cars everyone has different destinations and therefore won't maintain the same speed. Cars slow to turn-off. Cars must enter the right-of-way. Not all drivers are driving for the same reason either, some enjoy driving performance vehicles, using that quick acceleration to get up to speed whenever they can, while others drive much more gently.
The argument for us all driving an exactly particular way rings of the spherical cows in a vacuum solution to a farming problem. Isn't going to work in real-world applications.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
*Unless you are fortunate enough to live in a wealthy neighborhood and can call your state representative to keep metering off your own little local on-ramp. Why the hell do rich people get their own on-ramps anyway?
I believe this is because it routes their traffic, the type that doesn't care about others off of the same roads of the less fortunate and people that have to actually pay attention so their vehicle doesn't get totaled by the person having a conference call in their luxury SUV with 40% visibility not paying attention to the road.
Living in Las Vegas. I have noticed that the majority of the accidents around the valley are high end or fresh off the lot vehicles. While me in my old pickup truck, has never even been in an accident because I don't tailgate, I don't speed unless the freeway is almost empty. And I actually look around me when im going to move my vehicle out of its traveling lane! It's a hell of a concept.
So - fewer people on the road, which also reduces congestion. Win-win!
I ride a motorcycle - I'm going to die.
Then again, everyone else is going to die too.
"“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” - Hunter Thompson
Having experienced family being involved the 21st century version of death, rotting away, demented in a nursing home, as they extract the money from their estate, then you are released from your life of catheters and adult diapers and Airecept that coincidentally ends a little after the bank account is empty - I think I'll keep riding that bike.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I was in Bangkok a few weeks back, and it occurred to me that people riding motorcycles and scooters in that city probably get places twice as fast as cars, because at every red light, people on two-wheeled vehicles split lanes and move to the front - this appears to be perfectly legal there. Every time a light turns green, there's a flock of motorcycles and scooters at the front of the line, riding until they catch up to the next red light, where they then filter to the front again.
More time on the go, less time standing still. One hell of a recipe for getting somewhere quicker.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.