• SwingingTheLamp
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    7 months ago

    I gotta take issue with those numbers. A car moving at 130kph covers 18 meters in about half a second. According to the numbers I found online, experts estimate the perception-reaction time for braking at 1.5 seconds, which is up from the value of 0.75 seconds that they used to use. Thirteen and a half meters is an unrealistically-close following distance, even for German super-humans.

    I have not driven on the Autobahn, but the videos I can find show scenes much more consistent with a ~55 meter (1.5 seconds) gap between cars, or much-slower traffic speeds. That drops the estimated human-throughput way, way down.

    • Iceblade@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      You assume people are driving safely - in my experience, during rush-hour at 90-100kph (Stockholm) someone will file in ahead of you if you leave more than 2 car lengths of space.

      Is it safe? No.

      Is it reality? Yes.

      Furthermore, this is an estimate of a feasible max throughput that may have occurred.