🚀 go-pugleaf

On 8 Dec 1998 02:48:26 GMT, Rahul Dhesi <c.c.eiftj@22.usenet.us.com> wrote:
>In <366C8427.3520265C@hp.com> Tedd McHenry <tedd_mchenry@hp.com> writes:
>
>[ I will isolate the crux of Tedd's argument in the quotes below ]
>
>>Your assertion about a correlation treats all
>>lane changes as the same.  But they are not, as I have alluded to
>>above.  The sort of lane changes we often see on the highway today,
>>necessitated by circumstance and poor lane discipline, are very
>>different from the sort of lane changes we would see if proper lane
>>discipline were observed....
>
>I agree that there are two types of lane changes:
>
>E. Lane changes made by slower vehicles so they may stay to the right.
>
>F. Lane changes made by faster vehicles so they may get ahead of slower
>vehicles.
>
>The place where I disagree with you is that you believe that type E lane
>changes are safer than type F lane changes.  I have no reason to believe
>this is so.
>
>My perspective is that decreasing the total number of lane changes, no
>matter of what type, will decrease accident rate.  On the ideal highway,
>vehicles will enter the highway and move into some lane that is going at
>a speed preferred by the driver.  Then the vehicle will stay in that
>lane until it is ready to leave the highway.  The only exception would
>be in the case of lane changes made to move around an unexpected hazard,
>such as an accident or debris on the highway.

This would be good for cars under some sort of fail-safe computer control,
but the ideal highway is variant enough from the real world that your 
perspective becomes less than ideal.  Under real world conditions, one
must take into account a wide variance in control parameters, much more
so than with trains (mechanical limitations) or even planes (where procedures 
are developed to homogenize the control variables).  In other words, 
people drive stupid.

>-- 
>Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@spams.r.us.com>
>a2i communications, a quality ISP
>    "Any idiot can avoid automobile accidents that are his own fault.  It
>     takes skill to avoid accidents that are the *other* person's fault."

jg
-- 
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