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barnold
Dec 16, 2011


what do u do when yuo're born to play fps? guess there's nothing left to do but play fps. boom headshot
Update: extremely happy with the Rexing V1. Definitely get the GPS dongle if you make the plunge.

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Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?
https://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2017/05/the-intelligent-intersection-could-banish-traffic-lights-for-ever/


Ars posted:

For now, Clemson researcher Ali Reza Fayazi has provided a tantalizing glimpse at that future, a proof-of-concept study showing that a fully autonomous four-way traffic intersection is a hundred times more efficient at letting traffic flow than the intersections you and I currently navigate. Because cars don't sit idling at the lights, Fayazi calculated it would also deliver a 19 percent fuel saving.


Ars posted:

Over the course of an hour, the intelligent intersection only required 11 vehicles to come to a complete halt. By contrast, when the simulation was run with a traffic light instead, more than 1,100 vehicles had to stop at the junction over the course of an hour.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer
Glimpse is the key word there.

You don't get the run an intersection like that until every vehicle on the road is autonomous which is a bit unrealistic.

Every future I've seen described almost always includes a subset of drivers who own their cars and drive it without autonomous functionality. There's no way to incorporate this future into an intersection like this.

I could maybe see it in cities that restrict vehicle traffic to autonomous cars in their downtown areas but that'd be a very limited deployment.

Chemmy
Feb 4, 2001

There are still people who drive cars from the 70s on the road and not only do we not force them to get newer cars we actively help them out by exempting them from taxes, emissions testing and inspections.

The fully autonomous future vision will never happen if that's any indication of how we treat legacy vehicles on the road.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Chemmy posted:

There are still people who drive cars from the 70s on the road and not only do we not force them to get newer cars we actively help them out by exempting them from taxes, emissions testing and inspections.

The fully autonomous future vision will never happen if that's any indication of how we treat legacy vehicles on the road.

Uh, exemption from taxes, what? What sort of jurisdiction has taxes you only pay if a car isn't too old?

Chemmy
Feb 4, 2001

fishmech posted:

Uh, exemption from taxes, what? What sort of jurisdiction has taxes you only pay if a car isn't too old?

In a lot of places those classic or historic plates come with a greatly reduced registration fee.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine when those plates are on legitimate classics, but they're also on shitboxes. My beef isn't with that program, it's just to say it seems extremely far fetched that someday soon the government is going to say "that's it, every car has to be fully autonomous".

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?
I think the closest we're going to get to the "fully autonomous future" ideas any time soon without some huge change to automotive culture are express lanes being converted to autonomous-only lanes.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer
The express/HOV lanes being converted to autonomous-only is pretty likely. As is insurance companies charging a fuckload more to drivers using non-autonomous vehicles.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Chemmy posted:

In a lot of places those classic or historic plates come with a greatly reduced registration fee.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine when those plates are on legitimate classics, but they're also on shitboxes. My beef isn't with that program, it's just to say it seems extremely far fetched that someday soon the government is going to say "that's it, every car has to be fully autonomous".

Aren't those usually also restricted in usage when they come with reduced yearly registration fees? Like you can only drive the car X miles a year or something like that. I know there's a few states where it's outright illegal to drive an antique-plate vehicle on a daily basis.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Thwomp posted:

Glimpse is the key word there.

You don't get the run an intersection like that until every vehicle on the road is autonomous

Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious...

Anyway, they did it with seat belts. Considering that fully-autonomous cars have a much greater life-saving potential (it could bring road deaths to near-zero), it doesn't seem very far-fetched to me. I'm assuming that the tech will be expensive at first, but grow prevalent over time. At some point (say, when 70%-80% are autonomous), some state will draw the line and forbid manual driving, and the rest of the world will follow.

The point of the article was to point out that traffic safety and travel comfort are not the only upsides to a fully autonomous vehicle fleet. It will also eliminate congestion.
My own conclusion is that it seems increasingly ridiculous to invest billions in car infrastructure at this point. What seems a 50-year investment in highways today is likely to turn out to be useless after only 20, when even rush hour won't see congestion.

Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 20:14 on May 11, 2017

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Yeah, thanks, Captain Obvious...

Anyway, they did it with seat belts.

They did what with seat belts? You can still drive a car without seat belts all you want in any state, providing you have a car that never had seat belts in. It's been 50 years since the last US market cars were sold without seat belts, but you still have those cars on the road, as well as a smattering of later cars imported from other countries where seat belts became mandatory equipment later. It's also straight up legal to drive without a seat belt even in cars with the belts in, in New Hampshire (because they're dumb).

If your grand plan for autonomous cars requires "doing it like seat belts" than we're still going to have a significant amount of non-autonomous cars in the late 2080s.


Hippie Hedgehog posted:

It will also eliminate congestion.
That's impossible. It doesn't matter how self-driving a car is, or even if all of them are, there is an absolute maximum amount of vehicles that can be shoved into any given stretch of road, and in most congested areas today, it's going to fill right up to that.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

fishmech posted:


That's impossible. It doesn't matter how self-driving a car is, or even if all of them are, there is an absolute maximum amount of vehicles that can be shoved into any given stretch of road, and in most congested areas today, it's going to fill right up to that.

Did you read the article? It says right there they got 100x better throughput. If that result holds, can you imagine the amount of cars it would take to fill up the current infrastructure to the point of congestion?

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Did you read the article? It says right there they got 100x better throughput. If that result holds, can you imagine the amount of cars it would take to fill up the current infrastructure to the point of congestion?

It can say that all they want, that's a hopelessly idealized case. You're not getting that applied to the real world road grid in cities, even in decades and decades when the vast majority of manually driven cars have been filtered out.

You're not jamming 100x the cars down a 1 lane per direction city street in an hour no matter what technology you use, you simply can't speed up the cars enough in a safe way.


Like a hypothetical really well run single lane of a roadway might be expected to carry 1900 vehicles per hour right now in really perfect conditions just at the brink of being too congested to maintain speed with a safe following distance - roughly one car passing a given point on that lane every 2 seconds. How can autonomous cars actually bring that up to 190,000 vehicles per lane per hour?

A lane jammed so much you have bumper-to-bumper traffic crawling at 2 mph will still be moving ~600 vehicles per hour per lane. How are you going to even get to 100x that - 60,000 vehicles per hour per lane?

fishmech fucked around with this message at 21:47 on May 11, 2017

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
the 100x claim is for a 4 way intersection, not a stretch of highway, peeps. And realistically the only way we could get autonomous vehicles is either restrict autonomous mode to restricted access roadways or greatly develop the AI enough to allow for Logan-style trucking that still runs you off the road

Peanut President
Nov 5, 2008



When are pedestrians supposed to cross?

barnold
Dec 16, 2011


what do u do when yuo're born to play fps? guess there's nothing left to do but play fps. boom headshot

fishmech posted:

It's also straight up legal to drive without a seat belt even in cars with the belts in, in New Hampshire (because they're dumb).

For posture, New Hampshire also allows motorcycle riders to ride without a helmet.

Live free or die savagely in a horrible accident, I guess.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Peanut President posted:

When are pedestrians supposed to cross?

When they use their jet packs

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Peanut President posted:

When are pedestrians supposed to cross?

Self driving car technocrats generally assume everyone will have a personal self driving car drop them off at the self driving loading zone of the corporate arcology they are visiting. Walking to get from place to place is just something people too poor to afford a car or living in a city that doesn't have enough highway tunnels do. Being a pedestrian will have to be 100x more regulated and segregated than even in the worst freeway based american city to make self driving cars live up to their wild capacity claims.

Varance
Oct 28, 2004

Ladies, hide your footwear!
Nap Ghost
My main problem with AV is that people are never going to maintain vehicles to the standard that keeps AVs operational. How many people drive around with check engine lights, again? On top of that, there is a MASSIVE shortage of mechanics right now, and making cars even more complex will exacerbate this problem. The economics on AV maintenance only work right now because A) manual cars can usually drive just fine with a check engine light on and B) AV is an optional luxury or something that will be run on the fleet level (next gen car rental services and transit agencies), which allows for efficient allocation of resources currently available.

It's the same problem that TNCs face right now: they are screwed in the long run because rideshare is heavily subsidized to keep drivers/riders in those seats and does not scale well and AV is still too far out of their reach to deploy on a large scale. Eventually the tech will be permanently staffed/AV fleet and primarily subsidized at the civil level once things fall apart, just like rail, and bus, and...

It's already happening. Uber and Lyft are cozying up to transit agencies worldwide before their VC tech bubble revenue streams dry up.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Varance posted:

My main problem with AV is that people are never going to maintain vehicles to the standard that keeps AVs operational. How many people drive around with check engine lights, again?

Are you assuming that self-driving cars will not be able to automatically find a workshop and drive there while the owner is at work, whenever there is a problem?

Are you also assuming that future car economics will work just like the current, where all American household will own one or two cars per family, rather than using automatic ridesharing? The only reason rideshare doesn't scale yet is because not enough people are ridesharing, and cars are not yet autonomous.

In that case, I would be willing to bet against you on both points.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

fishmech posted:

It can say that all they want, that's a hopelessly idealized case. You're not getting that applied to the real world road grid in cities, even in decades and decades when the vast majority of manually driven cars have been filtered out.

You're not jamming 100x the cars down a 1 lane per direction city street in an hour no matter what technology you use, you simply can't speed up the cars enough in a safe way.

Yeah of course you don't get 100x per lane on a freeway, but even a 10x capacity increase in intersections would surely be enough to keep traffic flowing insanely much better than with current-day stoplight technology?
Freeway mode would of course use "car train mode" where the distance is minimal between vehicles to conserve power. Whatever software coordinates the traffic would be able to optimize for throughput rather than for travel time of individual drivers. I don't think it's unreasonable to see at least double or quadruple capacity even on freeways.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Are you assuming that self-driving cars will not be able to automatically find a workshop and drive there while the owner is at work, whenever there is a problem?

Are you also assuming that future car economics will work just like the current, where all American household will own one or two cars per family, rather than using automatic ridesharing? The only reason rideshare doesn't scale yet is because not enough people are ridesharing, and cars are not yet autonomous.

In that case, I would be willing to bet against you on both points.

Car drives owner to work.
Owner finally has the money to fix car, tells it to head to a repair shop while he's busy working.
Car scans list of certified shops, ends up finding a shop on the far side of the city first instead of the one three blocks down due to shoddy search prioritization.
Car gets on highway only for the transmission to fall out because the Check Engine lite has been on for over a month before owner could finally scrape the money together to pay for maintenance.
Dead car and loose transmission on highway cause congestion at best, an accident at worst due to other autonomous vehicles not knowing how to deal with the sudden obstruction in the middle of a high-speed freeway.

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

private ownership of autonomous vehicles is dumb, full communism now

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Yeah of course you don't get 100x per lane on a freeway, but even a 10x capacity increase in intersections would surely be enough to keep traffic flowing insanely much better than with current-day stoplight technology?
Freeway mode would of course use "car train mode" where the distance is minimal between vehicles to conserve power. Whatever software coordinates the traffic would be able to optimize for throughput rather than for travel time of individual drivers. I don't think it's unreasonable to see at least double or quadruple capacity even on freeways.

The point is you're not actually going to get 100x the throughput on the road network anywhere. There is not enough capacity in the actual lanes between intersections to handle a theoretical 100x increase in cars that could go through the intersection. Even a 10x increase is highly unlikely, because again, there simply isn't room in the lanes to feed that level of increase in intersection throughput. The difference between the vehicle throughput of a thoroughly jammed but still moving lane and an optimum-flow lane is only about 3.5x - that's more or less your maximum increase in throughput that's possible.

You will still have tons of congestion in any existing city's road grid, because improvements in capacity from all automated driving system placed on the existing road geometry is probably at best going to do maybe double current throughput, which can easily be taken up by existing suppressed demand. Autonomous vehicles are thus unable to actually get rid of congestion in demand cores, though they can alleviate it on fringe areas.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

fishmech posted:

The point is you're not actually going to get 100x the throughput on the road network anywhere. There is not enough capacity in the actual lanes between intersections to handle a theoretical 100x increase in cars that could go through the intersection. Even a 10x increase is highly unlikely, because again, there simply isn't room in the lanes to feed that level of increase in intersection throughput. The difference between the vehicle throughput of a thoroughly jammed but still moving lane and an optimum-flow lane is only about 3.5x - that's more or less your maximum increase in throughput that's possible.

You will still have tons of congestion in any existing city's road grid, because improvements in capacity from all automated driving system placed on the existing road geometry is probably at best going to do maybe double current throughput, which can easily be taken up by existing suppressed demand. Autonomous vehicles are thus unable to actually get rid of congestion in demand cores, though they can alleviate it on fringe areas.

But like what if you made each car 5 stories tall and kept stable by advanced balance AI and filled the car with people vertically in order to get the increased capacity. Think outside the box.

sleepy.eyes
Sep 14, 2007

Like a pig in a chute.
Okay, another question. On the main drag near my place the speed limit is 45. It stays there for a couple miles, then it goes down to 40, and a few blocks later it goes to 45 again. There isn't a school where the dip occurred​, it's just more strip malls. Why might this be?

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

sleepy.eyes posted:

Okay, another question. On the main drag near my place the speed limit is 45. It stays there for a couple miles, then it goes down to 40, and a few blocks later it goes to 45 again. There isn't a school where the dip occurred​, it's just more strip malls. Why might this be?

Any curves or anything? A higher density of driveways? Would probably need to see a map of the area to really tell you. Or it could just be good old politics.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer

sleepy.eyes posted:

Okay, another question. On the main drag near my place the speed limit is 45. It stays there for a couple miles, then it goes down to 40, and a few blocks later it goes to 45 again. There isn't a school where the dip occurred​, it's just more strip malls. Why might this be?

It's called a speed trap.

sleepy.eyes
Sep 14, 2007

Like a pig in a chute.

Thwomp posted:

It's called a speed trap.

I know what a speed trap is, and if this is one we have the laziest cops in the world. People do 50+ constantly and I have never seen anyone get pulled over.

Baronjutter posted:

Any curves or anything? A higher density of driveways? Would probably need to see a map of the area to really tell you. Or it could just be good old politics.

No curves, no change in driveways. The Google Earth imagery is pretty awful, so I'll look again to see if there is anything I've missed.

Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


sleepy.eyes posted:

Okay, another question. On the main drag near my place the speed limit is 45. It stays there for a couple miles, then it goes down to 40, and a few blocks later it goes to 45 again. There isn't a school where the dip occurred​, it's just more strip malls. Why might this be?

This sounds like a classic small town speed trap.

Basically, they camp the gently caress out of that slower middle section hoping to nail people who don't slow down for it.

EDIT: It could be an older speed trap that they don't bother to enforce anymore, I guess?

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
Even if the net efficiency increase for adopting self-driving cars is zero, it'll still be better because people don't have to actually pay attention to the traffic they're stuck in. It sucks a lot less if you don't have to watch the car in front of you for your cue to inch forward.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

sleepy.eyes posted:

I know what a speed trap is, and if this is one we have the laziest cops in the world. People do 50+ constantly and I have never seen anyone get pulled over.


No curves, no change in driveways. The Google Earth imagery is pretty awful, so I'll look again to see if there is anything I've missed.

That probably just means some random person along the road complained that the cars were too fast, so the local authorities agreed to make the speed limit slightly lower. That sort of poo poo happens all the time. It could also be that there used to be some sort of obstacle on or near the road that justified a slightly slower speed limit in the past, has since been removed, but they never bothered to change the speed limit up.

Really, the best way to know would be to contact whoever's in charge of the road in question, and see if they know what's up. Could easily be something so old nobody remembers though.

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?

Javid posted:

Even if the net efficiency increase for adopting self-driving cars is zero, it'll still be better because people don't have to actually pay attention to the traffic they're stuck in. It sucks a lot less if you don't have to watch the car in front of you for your cue to inch forward.

As somebody who loves to drive, this is what I want the most about automation. Being able to come up to a traffic jam and just push the button then space out for a while would be so nice. It seems like the high end luxury cars and Tesla are already at this point, but that's not in my price range at this point.

"Go home car, I'm drunk" is the thing I want second most and I know that's a MUCH harder problem to solve.

Queen_Combat
Jan 15, 2011
Think of being able to sleep on the way to work. Long commutes that give me sleep time are nearly worth it.

Jonnty
Aug 2, 2007

The enemy has become a flaming star!

The more I think about this 100x capacity claim the less sense it makes. Surely the capacity of the joining roads is the bottleneck long before the junction in that case?

But now that I look at the article, they only said "100x more efficient." What does that mean? It can't be referring to this, the only solid numbers in the piece (which also happen to differ by a factor of 100) can it?

quote:

Over the course of an hour, the intelligent intersection only required 11 vehicles to come to a complete halt. By contrast, when the simulation was run with a traffic light instead, more than 1,100 vehicles had to stop at the junction over the course of an hour.

Ah.

But to be fair, the increase in junction capacity that we'll get from self driving cars will seriously help city street networks, in the same way that free-flowing junctions have eliminated congestion on the highway network.

Jonnty fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 13, 2017

Varance
Oct 28, 2004

Ladies, hide your footwear!
Nap Ghost

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Are you assuming that self-driving cars will not be able to automatically find a workshop and drive there while the owner is at work, whenever there is a problem?

Are you also assuming that future car economics will work just like the current, where all American household will own one or two cars per family, rather than using automatic ridesharing? The only reason rideshare doesn't scale yet is because not enough people are ridesharing, and cars are not yet autonomous.

In that case, I would be willing to bet against you on both points.
I'm assuming that everyone would need the economic means to maintain AVs.

"Rental" AVs will have the same obstacles as rideshare and transit in terms of capturing choice ridership, in that cars are a status symbol in America. They'll definitely have large market share, especially among lower income and people who prefer the car-free lifestyle. The other side of that coin is that some people just won't ride in a vehicle they can't drive themselves. The automobile is the ultimate expression of American freedom, much like the horse was in the 18th century before automobiles came about. This is nothing new. There were just some people who refused to ride stagecoach, or electric trolleys before personal autos became a thing.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Queen_Combat
Jan 15, 2011
My penis is my expression of freedom.

Carbon dioxide
Oct 9, 2012

Metal Geir Skogul posted:

Think of being able to sleep on the way to work. Long commutes that give me sleep time are nearly worth it.

This is why I tried to take the train to work for a long time.

When it turned out I had to stand every day because there was never enough space in the train, and when, despite the train company's promises, nothing improved, I got a car.

NihilismNow
Aug 31, 2003

wolrah posted:

As somebody who loves to drive, this is what I want the most about automation. Being able to come up to a traffic jam and just push the button then space out for a while would be so nice. It seems like the high end luxury cars and Tesla are already at this point, but that's not in my price range at this point.


Mid range cars are at the point where they only require occaisional steering corrections in heavy traffic and that is only as a safety feature. a VW passat can pretty much drive itself on the highway up to 60 kph.

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Varance
Oct 28, 2004

Ladies, hide your footwear!
Nap Ghost
I'm going to cross-post this bit of transit lore I wrote for the Florida thread:

Problems are twofold for transit right now, for all North American transit agencies across the board. First, the economy's been good for long enough that Millennials have been able to climb up from under a rock and can afford cars now. Second, rideshares are stealing choice passengers from transit. Both mean less money coming in at the farebox. Combined, >5% ridership losses translate into millions in lost revenue. In order to remain fiscally sound, you have to start cutting back.

Rideshares have been good for transit in that it's boosting off-hour transit usage, especially at night. When people know they can get an Uber or a Lyft home from a nearby bus stop or rail station, they'll ride transit at least part of the way. Literally every transit agency is trying to figure out which minor routes can be cut and left to rideshares. In their place, new "fast travel" bus rapid transit/commuter routes are being created to move between major areas quickly, plus heavily traveled routes are getting straightened out and more frequent service in an attempt to better compete with car and rideshare travel... all while saving a buck or two in the process. Catch an Uber to a transit hub or nearby major bus route, hop on an express bus that goes across town using an expressway, catch an Uber to finish the trip if there isn't a bus route nearby. Replace bus rapid transit and commuter bus with light rail or commuter rail, if your city is progressive enough.

In Florida, every transit agency is required to do something called a Comprehensive Operational Analysis (COA) every 10 years to refresh their system, then create a Transit Development Plan (TPD) to propose further changes over the next 10 years as a sort of wish list of future projects. The TDP is then updated each year, given a refresh after 5 years to add/remove stuff based on current conditions, then everything thrown out and reevaluated at the 10 year mark, after the TDP has run its course. The newer TDPs are heavily adopting this rideshare-friendly mindset, especially now that they're regulated evenly at the state level in Florida.

Examples of the COA/TDP process:

Broward's COA from 2010: http://www.broward.org/BCT/Documents/COA/COAPreferredServicePlan.pdf
Orlando's COA from 2013: http://www.golynx.com/core/fileparse.php/144934/urlt/LYNX-2013-Comprehensive-Operational-Analysis-Report.pdf
Sarasota's COA from 2015: http://www.scatcoa.com/docs/Recommendations-Report.pdf
St Pete/Clearwater's COA from 2015: https://www.psta.net/media/1801/redesign-phase-1.pdf
Tampa's COA from 2017 (work in progress): http://gohart.org/Style%20Library/goHART/pdfs/board/COA%20Board%20Recommendation%205_15_17.pdf

Varance fucked around with this message at 11:43 on May 17, 2017

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