Lets say that there are professional drivers licensed to do road trains. Special vehicle. All other cars can come and go as they please. You are traveling within say 10 feet of each other at 75 mph.
It’s and interesting idea, but as soon as a car has a blowout, or some idiot tries to leave and then change his mind, all hell is going to break loose.
And then there are those that think cruise control equals safe driving. Imagine, if you will, those that pass at .001 mph over your speed. And relate that to a road train and how that would clog up highways and the ability to enter or exit.
Interesting idea. But I really doubt it will work with out dedicated lanes for road trains.
And even then. Only along deserted high-speed highways.
I think this is just a lazy, inferior stepping stone to the ultimate goal of having self-driving, drive-by-wire cars. There’s a lot of issues with this concept and it doesn’t seem very progressive since it’s such a small step in the final goal.
Actually, it’s not. A ‘car train’ made up of small economical cars would be substantially more energy efficient than a passenger train. In fact, a single Toyota Prius is already more energy efficient, even carrying one person. Any medium or small sized car moves people more efficiently than do trains.
A ‘car train’ made up of Prius-like vehicles, especially if they could be shackled together so they could share motors and batteries, would be amazingly energy efficient.
The other advantage of the ‘car train’ concept is that people can then size their batteries for commuting. Today, the big limit on an electric-only car is that people demand a range of at least a couple of hundred miles, but 80% of driving is done within 20-30 miles of home. If we could size the batteries for 20-30 mile trips, and allow people to platoon together in car trains for longer distances, we could keep batteries smaller and lighter, and electric cars cheaper.
I wasn’t really talking about efficiency of cars versus conventional passenger trains. I was saying this concept has a bunch of problems. There’s the problem of so-called “professional drivers” (and their availability and their routes) and how easy it is to enter and exit these trains at will. I think they also pose a problem for every other driver on the road depending on the length of these trains. It’s already a pain to navigate around big rigs. Can you imagine navigating around long chains of vehicles? But say there’s a limit, then how many professional drivers are going to be needed?
Ultimately the goal should be self-driving, independently operated vehicles. This concept is but a small step in that direction, that’s still full of issues. It’s an interesting concept, but one that I don’t foresee taking off.
I find the idea absurd. Anything that reduces the burden on a driver is simply going to make that drivers mind wander. The average person getting in behind a road train is going to tuck in, flip the switch, pay attention for a few minutes, then start getting bored. Then really bored. And after a few minutes of this, it will come to pass that they are feeling so bored, and it won’t really hurt if I read this paper, not if i hold it right up here where i can still convince myself I’m paying attention, and oh, I need to call grandma up and tell her where to meet us for lunch, where is that address book at? Maybe its in the back seat, I’ll just turn around real quick and find it, the lead car has control, so its no big deal. Then You get more and more complacent with the system, and its 6am on your way to work, but its a 40 minute drive. I’ve tailgated a train for months now and theres never been an issue, I’ll just lay my head back for a few z’s.
BAM
People get bored really damned easy. Maintaining seemingly pointless vigilance is very hard to do. Any step towards automation thats not just a safety feature that will alert you to mistakes you are about to make will just make people take their minds off the road even more. Fully automated or nothing, imo. This halfassed attempt at half automation is just begging for some severe crashes at transition points where people have stopped paying attention altogether.