Police pull over self-driving Google car for doing 25mph in a 35mph zone

The thing that first comes to mind is "an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force." If my car is going 65 mph, and your car is going 90 mph, and you slightly misjudge how you're weaving through traffic, you may bump me slightly. The velocity of the air around our cars would lead to a lower pressure immediately surrounding the bodies of our cars, so that could cause us to collide slightly harder than if we were to encounter the same scenario in a vacuum, but we'd be talking fractions of a psi acting on both sides of both of our cars, so that wouldn't play a very significant role. The part of our cars that touched would begin to deform (temporarily or permanently, depending how severely they hit) and then you may slightly or significantly change my direction of travel. If you hit me such that your car and my car interfere by an inch or two, then nothing of significance would happen. If you hit me at a 45 degree angle (something that's quickly leaving the realm of a sideswipe and heading toward T-bone territory) then there would be a strong chance that you may send me spinning off into the ditch, oncoming traffic, etc. and yes, that would probably be more dangerous. Still, to make me change direction quickly, you'd have to apply a significant force, so the thing you're afraid of only happens when a significant hit occurs, regardless of the speed at which we both happen to be traveling. If you can impart enough angular momentum on my vehicle, then I will spin, that's true, but I'm describing a situation where that wouldn't happen. The scenario you describe is one where you know large forces would be the case. Why you think that a scenario described not to have high forces would be guaranteed to be worse than a scenario where large forces will happen shows me you're really not considering what I'm saying, but sticking to your original assumptions that I first set out to challenge.

Additionally, why you're so fucking sure that swearing, calling people idiots and retards is somehow helping your argument is beyond me. Still, I'd really like to hear you explain the physics. I'm sure it will be an exciting journey.

/r/nottheonion Thread Parent Link - arstechnica.co.uk