Supposedly, a Tesla drives 7 million miles before experiencing a crash in autopilot.
I assume these numbers are fudged a bit if autopilot disengages before a crash, but let's take its word for it.
If we assume there are 10 vehicles, each traveling an average of 10 miles per hour (slow sections cancel out fast sections) for 14 hours per day, that's roughly a half million miles per year. This is likely a conservative estimate, but that means with current technology, there would be a crash every 14 years.
In theory, that's not even that bad, especially if you believe a crash every 7 million miles is too frequent, you also realize the integration hell with an automated system like this.
If TBA goes down all the time (very likely for tripped log sensors), could you imagine how often a ride like this would go down?
This wouldn't be like a trackless ride either. Trackless rides are on a flat plane and move at very modest speeds. Rise uniquely has fall risks associated with the second story, but barriers ensure its safety.
Now imagine, an autonomous vehicle going 50 mph off road. If there's a failure, what do you do? If it's another vehicle you just continue your path and slow down to your designated spot. But if the vehicle going 50 mph has a failure, what do you do? If there's a failure its likely because it's somewhere it's not supposed to be, so you can't just continue the path and slowly stop.
Say a tire blows randomly (as is possible, even with proper maintenance) while the car is going 50 mph, causing the car to catch and blow off course, how does the ride vehicle respond?
An autonomous off-road system like this turns a relatively minor ride-system failure into a possibly life-threatening situation.
Genuinely one of the worst ideas I've ever heard and I'm embarrassed for Dynamic Attractions to suggest it as viable, let alone if Disney would adopt it.
