Here’s what I want to know about self-driving cars:
Will they ever be so safe that they’re allowed to drive faster than regular cars?
I don’t mean that they’ll drive at 100 MPH instead of 65 MPH. I mean whether they’ll be able to ignore red lights, drive 65 MPH down a 40 MPH road, maintain 65 MPH at levels of congestion that force human drivers to drop to 15 MPH.
Think about it: The reason humans have to slow down to 15 MPH in traffic is because we don’t have the reaction time to break when our cars have to be packed so closely together, and it also takes a certain distance to break. But breaking distances drop very quickly as speed drops; the extreme slowdowns come when humans have to respond to people merging, cars ahead of them breaking without warning, etc. If one car knew to break the instant the car in front of it began to break, and how fast it was breaking, it could travel just a few feet behind its bumper. Even if it took 50 feet to stop, it could travel just 20 feet behind the car in front of it, as long as the car in front of it didn’t stop in LESS than 30 feet.
THAT sort of technology doesn’t require simply sensing the affects of what the car ahead is doing. It would require instantaneous, two-way communication between cars.
But the effects of traffic would be reduced far more than the mere reduction in stopping distance; cars react to traffic by SLOWING down, which means fewer cars are going past a certain point in a unit of time. Only because breaking distance decreases exponentially can you EVER slow down enough to allow more traffic past a point in a given timeframe by slowing down. Reducing stopping distance would make slowing down much more effective, so you’d need to slow down much less.
I try to avoid big city metro areas during rush hour, but get stuck in it every once in a while. I came to the conclusion most of the backups are at major interchanges. People find themselves in the wrong lane to exit and stop traffic to get in the exit lane. I've even seen a few jerks go from the far left lane to exit. Another problem is the side streets can't handle the off ramp traffic flow during rush hour and traffic backups on to the expressway. Personally I think it only a few people that screw it up for the rest of us. There is not much you can do about construction or accidents.
That question is waaaay too deep for me.