[ExI] self driving cars

spike spike66 at att.net
Thu May 17 05:30:13 UTC 2012



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
...
> _______________________________________________
>
> I do mean we have plenty of applications where slower speeds will not 
> hurt us much.  Plenty of us have shorty commutes, such as my own, less 
> than ten miles...  See how light this vehicle can be?

>...Perhaps you can pay to go faster if you want to. Autonomous vehicles
should be better at getting out of the way of people that want to go
faster... there are legitimate reasons to hurry sometimes...-Kelly

_______________________________________________

Ja, but this is exactly what I am finding so frustrating Kelly.  Currently
we are being held back by the fact that small light and slow vehicles are
not safe, because they share the road with the current fast and heavies.  We
have no practical way of separating the traffic, but that puts us right back
to where we are now: even small light vehicles aren't particularly fuel
efficient.

If we can delay a real energy crisis long enough, we can deal with it.  We
can build a new sustainable energy infrastructure, redo the way we have
always thought of food production and distribution into a much more
efficient system, rethink transportation, do all the things we need to do,
and do it all in time, but we need to somehow get past certain bottlenecks.
A classic example is that nearly all ape haulers on the road today can haul
four times as many apes as they are ever called upon to haul (note how
deserted is the carpool lane most of the time) at twice the highest local
speed limit.  It doesn't need to do all that, but it really costs in weight
and fuel economy to have the capability.

If we can make it safe to drive small, light and slow vehicles, people will.
And if those cars are self-driven, the occupants scarcely care about the
wimpy acceleration, nor that human-guided cars are constantly cutting in
front.  Those two factors would make you crazy when you are behind the
wheel.  But if you are in the back seat sleeping, or getting stoned, or
playing video games, or on the toilet reading the local news on your iPad or
copulating with your sweetheart, you don't really care or even notice what
the others cars are doing.

spike





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