Today I am doing lots of driving. Despite leaving very early this morning in an effort to avoid the rush-hour traffic for my 9am meeting I got snarled on the M1, M40, M25 and M4. Although I never actually stopped, If I can get out and walk quicker I consider that stationary.
Anyway my mind wandered back to this week’s Top Gear. I know little about cars but as the show is mostly about fooling around, automotive knowledge is not a hurdle to enjoying it. James May talked about applying the Bernouilli Principle to motorway maintenance, and I found this very interesting. For those wondering what the Bernoulli Effect is, you are unlikely to gain startling scientific revelations here - go and google it, but from the depths of my residual A-level knowledge, it’s about how pressure is a constant in a system, and when a fluid passed through a smaller area, the speed has to increase to maintain the constant. May then suggested that rather than slowing everyone down when there is a lane or two out on a motorway, that the speed should be increased in line with Bernouilli’s theory (which seems on first glance to make sense in relation to the flow of vehicles or other materials when considered from a macro perspective). This would mean than if one lane is out we need to travel at 140mph, rising to 210mph if there are two lanes out as is often the case in the evenings, or during rush hour on the M1. This of course presupposes that we all drive Bugatti Veyrons, but this aside I think that he has a good point.
This lead me to think about what motorway driving might look like in the future. Once autopilot is a reality (can’t be far away), cars could travel at much higher speeds and with less space in between, increasing the safe density of traffic. However to work effectively I guess the traffic in any area would need to develop a “hive mind” perhaps all connected wirelessly to a flow control processor for each traffic area. Cool! Imagine hurtling at 200mph around a city, without being in control of the car? It would be like taking Alton Tower’s Nemesis to work every day…:)
