Wednesday, April 25, 2012

[vqnlsekz] Road trip in a self driving car

A self-driving car averaging a "safer" 20 mph for 24 hours a day can cover the same distance as a human-driven one averaging 60 mph for 8 hours a day.

A self-driving car averaging 60 mph for 24 hours a day can cover 1440 miles per day -- half the country.  That is probably enough to put a significant dent into airline travel.

It's too bad rail transit hasn't been able to pull this off.  Intercity buses do better.  Problems: schedule set by someone else, too infrequent, all the stops that you don't care about, last "mile" from city terminal to final destination.  Perhaps technology can solve some of these problems.

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