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Remove the human element and that all goes away.
The trouble is that human element includes cyclists and pedestrians. We'll probably see another push for jaywalking laws at some point and cyclists having to use cycle lanes, wear sensors or some other stupid thing.
aggi-
Yeah, in order for autonomous vehicles to work, further restrictions on pedestrians movements will have to be imposed. Otherwise people will just figure out that in order to cross the street they just need to step into the road and traffic will come to a halt (having being programmed to drive at appropriate speed and to stop for peds).
The vehicular companies will lobby officials to make it mandatory to only cross and controlled points. -
Yeh I think the sensors on pedestrians and cyclists is being lobbied for but who knows what happens when some yoof on a escooter or kid on bike without a sensor gets hit, guess they just get blamed for being non-compliant
Mickie_Cricket
greentricky
That very much depends on what we thing of as a taxi. Right now, they're all the same size - enough for 6 people and some luggage.
Most people are one / maybe two trying to get to a meeting or back home from a night out.
Truly autonomous vehicles could be any size / shape and the majority could be much smaller pods which would reduce congestion and would also be easier to store (park) when not called. Algorithms to reduce the number needed based on demand should also help.
Also, I would imagine a large portion of congestion in large cities is user errors - not moving off quickly from lights, accordion effect of braking in traffic, morons stopping in the wrong place, illegal u-turns etc etc etc. Remove the human element and that all goes away.
This is all best case scenario but removing humans from the mix almost always makes things better.