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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2121 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone watch the Roadster demo last night? As expected, it had some peak Elon cringe moments, but you don't have to be a great MC when you have a flying car.

Possibly the greatest product demo of all time.

Huh. I certainly didn't hear of it until now. Very cool, but I really really wish it would ever have a use though. I mean, it's gonna be both so inefficient with thrusters, and also probably illegal to actually use. Also I'm sure it'll be ridiculously expensive.

It used to be the case that, no matter how rich you were, even the super rich were stuck in traffic just like us regular shmucks ( unless they could take a helicopter, but that's often not possible). A lot of Elon's ideas seem based around getting him, personally, out of traffic (hyperloop, boring, rocket transport, and now this). I think we're heading for the day soon, when most of us will be stuck in a traffic jam, and we'll all look up to see a billionaire flying over us in this.

Isn’t the general consensus that once self driving cars are finally ubiquitous they can just ban humans driving and connect every sdc in a network that will dynamically redirect traffic, adjust speeds and change lights and crossing times to basically eliminate traffic?

Either that or sell fast lane subscriptions and everyone else is still in traffic.

That is almost certainly what would happen, based on how other tech has gone.

Being able to improve efficiency doesn't mean you eliminate traffic, you will very likely induce demand and you're right back at having traffic again.

This is of course still a really good thing, more people will be able to go where they want to going using their preferred method of travel.

I thought traffic models were actually pretty clear that if you could control the speed and, if necessary, the route, of every vehicle in an environment, traffic could be pretty easily eliminated. An accident or closure? Vehicles miles away are quietly redirected to the point a bottleneck never becomes over-congested; since everyone’s route / destination is known those going to different places can be relocated as clusters to avoid slowdowns driven by merging / demerging / excessive lane changes. If vehicles on the road get to a volume where traffic is more likely, you can very slightly lower the speed of cars further from the traffic. And, if everyone’s in self driving cars you can probably also increase speeds significantly, especially on roads with no pedestrians / cyclists like highways.

You can eliminate delays are current levels of traffic with current infrastructure.

People are willing to spend a roughly constant amount of time driving to things. If you're willing to drive 30 minutes to a fancy restaurant for a night out in a congested (10 km/hr) city, you can choose from the nearest 10 places, and the averages say it'll be about 7 km away. If you're making the same decision in a fast (50 km/hr) city, you can choose from the nearest 250 places, and the averages say it'll be about 35 km away.

The second city draws five times as much traffic from you going to dinner, and the trip durations are identical. The improved traffic flow shows up in your restaurant choice instead of the time you spend driving.

(There's probably a limit to this somewhere, but we haven't seen it much).

No matter how you do it, each road has a maximum capacity. An orchestrated fleet of autonomous vehicles can load a network of roads to a volume that is several times higher than what the network supports right now - but that still means the entire system can go over capacity during rush hour, and then vehicles pile up before bottlenecks.

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