Watch a truck fall 70' off an icy freeway

Nah, it’s fine. Go slower, no sudden changes to any inputs, just like walking on ice.

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Absurd. Patently absurd. Imagine this effort and ingenuity used for sustainable transport!

I’d like to see the study that came up with that 3% figure. Maybe it was sponsored by Hoosier?

Because I was just out driving, and without at least very winter-biased all season tires, no one was going to go 50’ without crashing. I use dedicated winter tires that are 3-season tires and cost the same as my summer performance tires. There’s no financial disincentive to it, since miles are miles, and my two sets of tires last twice as many miles as one set of tires. The only difference in cost for me is the extra set of wheels so I can change them over myself on my schedule rather than wait for an appointment at the tire shop, and that investment in wheels has been amortized over 15 years and many sets of tires.

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I’d like to see how well the Tesla “autopilot” handles ice. From a distance.

Only 4 levels?

220px-High_Five

Luckily the Dallas Fort Worth area doesnt get black ice right?

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Well, tbf, a large part of the complexity of that interchange is due to the fact that it’s both a major freeway interchange, and a major mass-transit hub. Without the Green Line light-rail (and its station) and the Silver Line Busway (and its station), it would be a lot less complicated.

I know a couple of SpaceX engineers who both live in hipster-urban downtown. One commutes to Hawthorne via the Silver Line and Green Line, the other slots his Tesla into the 110-105 HOV lanes on autopilot.

Their discussions about sustainable transport are… interesting. :thinking: (Based on actual occupancy, the Tesla uses less energy per passenger mile.)

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You are of course right, I willfully ignored that to make the point that we take all these efforts for granted when servicing drivers, but event the tiniest effort aimed at pedestrians or cyclists is very often dismissed.

I’d love to see that calculation, because I have the hunch that it does not include the energy used in construction of the necessary infrastructure (sometimes called “grey energy”). Concrete is surprisingly carbon-intensive, and the road infrastructure necessary for moving the same amount of people like a commuter rail line has a much larger footprint than said commuter rail line. Furthermore, the negative externalities of driving are probably not properly accounted for as well. First in line are, of course, crashes, but note that, e.g., one of the main source for microplastics are tire wear particles.

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Well, I didn’t say that the Tesla was “envronmentally superior in every conceivable way”, just that using one took less energy per passenger mile.

(And it wasn’t my calculation, I was just relating the two engineers’ discussions.)

But for thoroughness, note also recent reports that say subway stations have terrible air quality, with genuinely unhealthy particulate levels (while the Tesla has “Biowar Defense” mode air filters :wink:).

Speaking of which, I suppose we also musn’t neglect mass transit’s contribution to population control during an Age of Pandemics. Nothing like cramming 30-40 strangers together in a close-packed, poorly ventilated vehicle to increase the transmission rate :upside_down_face:.

In this day and age, you gotta seize the moral high ground where you can find it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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