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Originally Posted by Evenstar
But there are lanes on highways, and the trees don’t move out onto the highway. Here’s an analogy:
Picture a huge open parking lot, were there’s nothing but acres of pavement. Then add a couple hundred cars and tell the drivers that they can drive just as fast as they want - as long as they stay 150 feet from the edge of the parking lot and from the other vehicles - at those times they must slow down to 6 mph. Oh, yeah – none of the cars have regular brakes (only their parking brake works). Now add 30 or 40 bicyclists – who are given the same rules. How long do you think it will be before the first collision occurs?
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You'll need to make a few changes to make the analogy work more like the real world: The human powered vehicles cannot exceed 7 MPH, The vehicle brakes improve with the square of the speed above 20 MPH, only the most expensive 5% of motorized vehicles can exceed 70 MPH, the parking lot is 72 square miles, and the parking lot will have to become bumpier with more traffic or wind.
Oh wait, that experiment has already taken place over the last 100+ years. Turns out that it works fine. High speeds collisions are quite rare. You are much more likely to be in a car collision on the way to the lake.