This is great and there’s another area of influence that I’ve heard other traffic engineers discuss: platoon pacing. A platoon is the word that traffic engineers give to a group of cars traveling together. A platoon is most explicitly visible on a corridor with signals timed for a green wave, but occurs in many other contexts.
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.
Human drivers often race when in a platoon— not even on purpose it’s just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don’t do this. On 1 lane streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed limit.
The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it’s a real and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven’t seen research on this topic yet.