Given how many people treat speed limits as suggestions, at best, having your vehicle obey the limit would turn some people off of them.
If self-driving cars got to the point where they were significantly safer than human drivers (a big if), I could see the creation of dedicated self-driving lanes with higher speed limits.
The biggest problem with automation is, it can’t deal with things that aren’t expected or detected.
The current roadscape is too chaotic to be able to code in all the edge cases, as well as deal with the sensor issues.
I think the only way self driving vehicles will be able to operate (until the roadscape changes/evolves) is to have dedicated roads(probably toll roads initially), where only compatible vehicles will be allowed to utilize, and only when in autonomous mode.
There the environment can be controlled much tighter, and we can get through teething problems with the inter vehicle/roadscape communications.
These roads will expand as society adopts them, and there will be fewer manually driven roads.
Eventually all cars can communicate with all others, as well as a centralized road traffic controller. And almost all roads will be autonomous required.
Then the car crash scene in irobot can happen.
I don’t think the people who want to speed are the kind of people I want driving anyway.
Admitting you want to bypass the rules should be a red flag and imo warrant an immediate cancellation of your permit. You’re driving a thousand kilos of metal at bone shattering speeds, if you can’t be trusted to be responsible, don’t drive. (And it’s a general you, not you OP)
If there was 100% adoption of self-driving vehicles with a inter-vehicle communication network, there is no reason why the left lane couldn’t go 100+ mph. There still would be lower speeds outside of the highway, but they could be substantially higher than today on most major roads.
Human drivers are why speed limits exist. People follow too close, people are impatient, people are aggressive, people are risky, people don’t know what the vehicles in front of them are going to do, people don’t use turn signals, people hit the brakes and cut across multiple lanes of traffic because they weren’t paying attention or missed their exit, etc.
Networked autonomous cars can communicate and collaborate, allowing for faster and safer travel. The left lane could have no speed limit because every car using it, leaving it, or entering it are all in agreement on what needs to be done and what to do and when to do it. Cars on major roads would slow down so another car can turn without causing the cars behind it to stop. Oncoming cars could slow to allow for an opening that a turning car can use instead of waiting for an opening in irregular traffic, or taking a risky turn that causes an accident.
Getting to that system will require laws against manual driving and mandating that all new vehicles have full autonomous driving. I hope I am dead before that happens because that future sounds awful to me.
The major roads are already nigh impossible to walk across. Finding a way to raise the speed just makes it harder to be a pedestrian in yet more places.
I, too, love the idea of networked autonomous swarm agents behaving in an even more efficient setup. The problem is that if the only focus is on moving cars faster at the cost of people’s comfort, access, energy, and walkable anything we lose out on reasons to ever be outside of the car at all.
More cars and faster cars in our cities makes the city worse, even if they’re self driving.
Does it bother you if the driver is driving slowly when you’re a passenger though? I don’t think most people will care that much if thier self driving car follows the speed limit.
I’m not one to advocate for cars of any kind, but I sure don’t care about the particular speed when I’m lost in the sauce listening to music or reading on the train
If every car was self driving, traffic wouldn’t slow down and you’d get places quicker at much safer speeds.
I love to use trains to get around. I don’t need to do the work of driving, which puts every aspect of safety, navigation, and stress on me the whole trip. On the train I can sleep, do computer work, eat in a relaxed space, or talk with my kids without having to yell in each other’s ears to be heard.
Driving is a huge energy, stress, and time sink. It’s a plague upon our society. I’d rather have a train style space, but at least a self driving car would give a few of the benefits of the train. It’s a over technical inefficient and halfway there option compared to real transit, but it’s better than making me do it all myself.
I don’t usually speed much. It barely saves much time at the cost.of safety and mental stress. I’m also often tusing trains that usually go much faster than a car anyway, and sometimes up to 200+ mph. A self driving car (or any reasonable car) can’t even begin to touch real transit.
Ride share is very popular and it offers a similar service to what most people expect from self driving cars.
I think that the majority of people want a vehicle for transportation and those who want a car for recreation are a minority.
Truly self driving cars would allow you to participate in other activities safely while the car moves you. You could read a book, play a game, apply your makeup, etc. Given that trade-off, I think most people would be willing to sacrifice the extra 2.5 minutes a trip.
2.5 minute estimate derived from the difference of travel time between half the average US daily travel of 42 miles at a speed of 60mph and the same distance traveled at 68mph.
Most people would accept the trade-off of being in the car 5 minutes longer per day if it meant they got 42 minutes of leisure instead of 37 minutes of weaving through traffic.
Also with a critical mass adoption of self-driving cars the speed limit could be increased.
Also with a critical mass adoption of self-driving cars the speed limit could be increased.
Only if the bicycle paths are separated from the road by a wall.
My city’s solution to that is just to not have bike paths and tell people to “share the road” on 45 MPH streets.
You mispelled 42 minutes of doomscrolling. ;-)
