Perfect.
We'll just build the cars with parts that seldom fail. And we'll make them very strong, so that the only risk from hitting a deer or even a cow is a splash of gore.
That should help eliminate the need to turn. A loud horn and flashing lights will do pretty well for any errant humans that cross the path.
We can even reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels instead of rubber, and we can make the road a surface of continuous steel for durability.
We can even hitch the cars together so they can't collide with eachother and they can collectively share the propulsion load. (Maybe even with automatic micro payments, so a car with low battery can pay the others to help it along.)
What would we call this thing?
I already made this joke up-thread:
> You might even call such an arrangement a "train"
Joking aside, though, the big issue with trains is last-mile. The road network covers a lot more land than the rail network does, and can reach places that trains can't. And this seems to be inherent to the physics of it, driven (hah) by cars ability to turn where trains cannot.
Mass transit enthusiasts love to gloss over the very real convenience issues that mass transit has, saying "Well everybody should just live next to the train station." The world doesn't work like that. Hence why I think a hybrid system of dockable autonomous vehicles that can be linked up into a train in high-throughput thoroughfares gives you the best of all worlds.
> "Well everybody should just live next to the train station." The world doesn't work like that.
The world as a whole, and particularly the US, maybe not, but it does actually work in urbanized dense cities.
This joke gets made on every story about Waymo. It’s so funny.
if you can also figure out how to have the cars automatically detach and park themselves in the owners' driveway, you're on to something.