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self-driving cars and lane splittingself-driving cars and lane splittingPosted Feb 24, 2013 13:09 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: self-driving cars and lane splitting by paulj Parent article: ELC: Google learns to drive
As a data-point, my great-auntie used to cycle 40 km to find food during the dutch winter famine in WWII. Was it 40 km one way or was it 40 km + 40 km? Even if later (80km/day journey) it's still pretty close to one 72 km journey per day. That's definitely not all day. Indeed, it's short enough you could go early, get some business done, and make the return journey (though, probably better to stay the night). Please read again the words you wrote (I've highlighted them). If it's "better to stay the night" then it means 72 km journey took the "whole day". If you want talk in layman terms then "whole day journey" is something which can only be done once per day. A fit, but average, man on a bicycle can do distances in a day that would kill a horse, if you tried to make it do the same. Yup - but 72km is about what you can reach in a day. You can try to push for two such journeys in the same day if you really are desperate but for that you need paved roads (which come after car because they were mostly built for cars) and way-above-average-driver. Which returns us back to "72km journey takes the whole day".
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self-driving cars and lane splitting Posted Feb 25, 2013 6:32 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
The comment in the article, and my replies, are explicitly about the time taken to travel 72 km. Again, that's well within the capability of an average, mildly fit human, who otherwise doesn't cycle particularly far otherwise.
Such people probably wouldn't feel comfortable doing the round trip, and would likely be more comfortable staying the night. Someone with a bit more experience of cycling, but still otherwise ordinary and average, could complete the round-trip within a day. I imagine that, during the cycling boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, prior to the prevalence of the car, that that would not have been an insignificant proportion of the population.
The round-trip probably not being comfortable for those not adapted to cycling in *no way* changes the fact that the original comment in the article, that just the 72 km journey alone would take all day, is not quite right. Indeed, establishing exactly how far you can go in a day without a car wasn't even the main point of my comment. Rather it was meant to be a comment on the practicality and sustainability of the car as mass personal transport in a world where we increasingly live in more densely populated urban areas. Beyond some density of ownership and use, the car ends up being *slower* than many other forms of transport.
self-driving cars and lane splitting Posted Mar 5, 2013 11:07 UTC (Tue) by emj (guest, #14307) [Link]
There might have been nit pickery, but it was an interesting discussion. In my view with paved roads biking 74km per day is easy, but 160km per day doesn't feel like something I would like to do more than once or twice a week. The problem with going longer distances in a straight line might be that the roads that are best for that kind of travel might be too car oriented.
self-driving cars and lane splitting Posted Mar 5, 2013 22:19 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
paved roads are primarily a car legacy, paved roads are worse for livestock than unpaved roads as well as being very expensive to build and maintain.
Yes the Romans built paved roads, but they built them to march their infantry along, not to help commerce.
self-driving cars and lane splitting Posted Mar 6, 2013 7:36 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Modern paved roads were lobbied for and started to be built for cyclists, before the motor-car existed (other than some very rare, prototypical mechanical carriages): http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
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