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This article has an unfortunate tendency to an excessively credulous echoing of beneficial attributes of a proposed new vehicle operating regime. The attributes enumerated are speculation, and lack any meaningful critical study.
The phenomenon of vehicles traveling at highway speeds in closely spaced groups under human control has already been studied in connection with “surging”. It results in extremely unsafe operation with routine near disasters, and multiple car collisions at highway speeds. The collision hazard under human control is only partly because the vehicles are spaced near to the operator’s reaction time and any adverse operating condition, solar glare, dust, weather, etc, can eliminate the reaction time margin. Other human factors include operator distraction and fatigue. Non-human factors include highway road surface hazards, mechanical failures, and mechanically inconsistent operation associated with multiple brake applications at highway speed. The mechanical problems included brake fade, a reduction of braking effect as brake component temperature rises, single wheel brake effect reduction causing “pulling” and an inconsistent suspension component reaction resulting in body roll and inconsistent steering reaction by the vehicle provoking a delayed operator correction resulting in “swerving”.
Of the known hazards only the individual operator reaction time is addressed by smart highway proposals. The present initiatives anticipate that consistent vehicle spacing will require cooperative communications between vehicles. The initiatives expect that the required equipment can not be retrofitted and that closer vehicle spacing would require >95% fleet adoption and because of the long life of commercial vehicles will be much more than a decade after mandatory inclusion. Proposals for the initiative have not included electronic security safeguards sufficient to prevent being exploited to facilitate unlawful behavior or to cause mass casualties.
The proposed smart highway initiative has eschewed longstanding vendor neutral performance and interoperability requirements to pursue a more rapid roll-out by adopting a patented single vendor system that all vehicle producers would be required to license or purchase. The tendency for supervisory activity to support and defend an initiative to become entangled with vendor interests contrary to the public interest is well understood and particularly acute for single source procurements. The outside financial impact of the choice of vendors exerts irresistible pressures on the system for oversight both directly and indirectly through political funding.
The inclusion or “rolling-in” of as many constituencies as possible by incorporating improbable results for important causes is de-rigeur. In the case of smart highway, the promise is for lower fuel consumption and faster route travel time on already congested highways without costly infrastructure upgrades by taking advantage of electric steering and braking systems already appearing in high end vehicles] as part of lane-keeping and parking features. The rapid expansion of the federal government’s employment in the D.C. area in the 21st century caused an endless cycle of bumper-to-bumper traffic, highway construction, and lengthening commutes that was not readily alleviated by intensive and extraordinarily rapid highway construction. The experience was almost unique, most of the nation experienced declining commute times as total employment gradually declined and very few new highway miles went into service nationwide. The DOT may eventually prove to have been forward-looking but their immediate stimulus for the effort was certainly local. PolychromePlatypus 15:06, 19 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by PolychromePlatypus (talk • contribs)
It is written entirely in extreme conditional case, without reference to actual studies made on the issue. Retrofit vs. new vs. special certification just doesn't matter here. Pete Mack (talk) 06:38, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
