On Sunday, 5 April 2015 19:23:29 UTC+1, Nightjar wrote:
On 05/04/2015 13:29, wrote:
On Sunday, April 5, 2015 at 11:11:12 AM UTC+1, Nightjar wrote:
On 04/04/2015 21:23, wrote:
On Saturday, April 4, 2015 at 6:25:38 PM UTC+1, Nightjar wrote:
On 04/04/2015 15:53, wrote:

You are still going to face the problem they found with the concept of
small personal transport vehicles in 1967 - virtually nobody wanted to
use them. A survey found that, besides most people disliking them simply
because they were small, small vehicles were rated badly for both
comfort and safety.

Suspension & safety have come a long way since 67 of course. Computer control can be expected to much improve safety.

Large cars are still much more comfortable than small ones, even if
small cars today are probably more comfortable than many large cars of
1967.

Comfort certainly doesnt come into the decision to take public transport,

It does if you are trying to get people to use it instead of cars.

People use it en masse, despite the lesser comfort. I cant see much mileage in debating it.


I suspect that many people will be quite dubious of the safety of
fully automatic vehicles for quite a long time.

Many will. But its relatively easy to demonstrate much higher safety of computer drivers than human.

If being able to demonstrate the superiority of a system over emotional
choices, we would have an electricity supply system without wind
generators and with lots of nuclear power.

no-one has any difficulty understanding a computer driver doesnt suffer the problems of a human one.

You also have the basic
problem of people not liking them, simply because they are small.

Lots of people buy small cars, so it doesnt seem to be a big problem for most.

That rather depends upon what you class as a small car. The 1967 report
was looking at bubble car size or smaller. Today's equivalent is
probably something like the Smart car.

And why would they need to be small? Pods can be a mix of sizes.
Bear in mind that small had very different implication in 67 than today. Then it normally meant cheap, borderline and unsafe.

What has changed is that we expect more from our cars today, so while
they are much superior to the equivalent cars of 1967, they are still
cheap, poorly equipped and unsafe compared to their contemporaries.

Once again, computerised vehicles can come in all sizes and small ones can have better safety than today's human driven cars. It seems pointless to go back and forth over basic stuff.

Re the original mention of tiny karts, small size is only a downside when it meets large oncoming vehicle. This risk is removed by barriering such lanes from larger vehicles.


NT