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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

The last paragraph is the most interesting one from a policy perspective.

"I have a concern about it increasing Vehicle Miles Traveled because I don’t have the capacity to handle that. We already don’t have enough capacity for the number of miles that are being driven today."

Of course, they'll increase miles traveled even if they're not allowed to drive around empty (which, of course, negates their use as taxis, etc.). Make something easier/cheaper/etc. and you get more of it. I expect this is still quite a ways off before it's a real question but it's going to be a problem for areas where infrastructure is already close to the limit.

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But there has to be a limit to demand for VMT at some point, right?

If car travel was easier and cheaper, would more people take more trips? Of course. There are obviously trips that people don't take because they're too cumbersome with current technology.

But at the very least we know 1 person cannot exceed more than 24hrs of equivalent VMT. So there's at least a hard limit there. And I doubt most people want to spend the majority of their lives in cars. So there's some natural limit on VMT that we'll approach.

I mean, think about it like this. If self driving taxis were a thing, would you be in the car 4x more than you are today? I wouldn't want to. Maybe I'd take more weekend trips to LA for fun excursions, but during the week my schedule would probably be about the same.

So the hope, I think, is that the improved efficiency of self driving cars will allow us to easily hit that ceiling with at least the current infrastructure, if not _less_. It's not hard to imagine that the current infrastructure could become at least 400% more efficiency with self driving cars. Cars that can drive bumper-to-bumper at 60+ mph, no accidents, no rubber necking, no aggressive driving, no brake checks, and no traffic waves from lane changes. Not to mention the space saved by using taxis sized for the task. Right now people drive 4 seaters for their daily, 1 person commutes. Imagine all of those people are now in 1 seaters. Maybe even self driving motorcycles!

Some limit although I could easily see it doubling especially if there's a lot of "deadheading" to reposition empty vehicles. I think about my own situation and I'd definitely go to more evening events and I'd be inclined to go further for weekend recreation if I didn't need to personally drive.

As for your other points, they mostly apply if 100% autonomous vehicles were the only thing on the road. Even if they were available today (which they're not really all that close to), it's hard to see that being a political possibility for many decades even if there were no other obstacles.

Yes, 100% will take awhile, but we're likely to see Self Driving Car Lanes first. In fact, in California, we can just replace the car pool lanes with Self Driving Car Lanes.

These would be lanes of the freeway or multi-lane roads that only self driving cars can drive in. That would allow most of the efficiency gains to apply.

Then we'll see a phasing out of bad drivers. People who get DUIs, X number of tickets, etc would be required to use a self driving car. So of the human drivers left, more will be competent.

So basically, as self driving cars add additional load on the roads, we'll be slowly giving them more and more efficiency advantages to offset that load.

I've seen estimates in industry reports estimating a 400% increase in vehicle miles per year as a result of auto-piloted vehicles. We clearly need to rethink how we inhabit this planet as this is complete insanity.

A 4x increase, but a world without speed limits, stop lights, or traffic lanes. We could support 10 times the amount of traffic in that case.

That sounds hellish for walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists, and people who enjoy quiet.

That sort of thing won't happen on regular city streets. Maybe on freeways.

It's already crap on roads in the US (the US has very few of what you'd call a "street" - "stroad" would be more accurate). Having more VMT even with current speeds makes it worse. It's shameful that EV's are being forced to be loud when urban noise pollution is already terrible.

It will still be loud as hell. Especially with rules mandating that EV's be as loud as their internal-combustion counterparts.

Sure it will. You'll be able to walk right out into traffic safely

Right. Because once you have AI the laws of physics no longer apply. The braking distance with an instantaneous reaction time at just 40mph is still about 20 feet.

All the cars around you will see you before you get anywhere near the road. As long as you approach the road to cross, perhaps as you've always done, you'll be granted access to cross with little fear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A

I agree that Vehicle Miles Traveled will likely increase, but it's important to note just when that increase will occur. I suspect that increases occurring in off-peak hours can be handled by current infrastructure.

Not sure why that would be the case if people are still working roughly the same hours but commuting longer distances and potentially sending cars off to park in less congested areas. Furthermore, for a lot of major cities, traffic is pretty bad across broad areas and for pretty good chunks of the day and night already.

Even if this is correct, an overall increase would increase road wear proportionally.

Weathering and heavy vehicles do most of the damage that is done to roads, so increasing passenger vehicle miles won't increase wear proportionally.

I guess if shipping increases that would increase road wear. But that is also an easy to justify tax.

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