regenerative braking vs hard braking events for insurance companies

[AZ Desert Driver]

You don't even have to sit in the pod, there is room to stand, you can take a bike on it. So acceleration will be slow enough to not knock you over / prevent loose objects from bouncing around. Notice all the luggage just sitting lose on the floor of the pod with no one holding it, not in any sort of rack.

Hyperloop is likely a different story, the pods that go into near vacuum tunnels will see higher speeds and will likely have front facing seats only.

Yeaa, I saw the luggage and standing passengers, along with the sideways bench. Made me think of a slow speed airport shuttle, NOT something that will accelerate to 125 mph and decelerate and make a Ohare run in 12 minutes. Figured there must be a different pod for the high speed run - and the displayed pod was for getting into the loop launching environment.
At least - can some one explain how you can be standing and accelerating. I don't do much public transportation and cant imagine.

 

[dhanson865]

Yeaa, I saw the luggage and standing passengers, along with the sideways bench. Made me think of a slow speed airport shuttle, NOT something that will accelerate to 125 mph and decelerate and make a Ohare run in 12 minutes. Figured there must be a different pod for the high speed run - and the displayed pod was for getting into the loop launching environment.
At least - can some one explain how you can be standing and accelerating. I don't do much public transportation and cant imagine.

No, no need for different cars. The one you saw will do the high speeds.

People do it all the time on european trains that go that fast or faster. To add to the fun some of their seats face backwards so you don't even have back support when sitting facing that way. Some stand, some sit, no big deal.

paper on this topic: Passenger Stability Within Moving Railway Vehicles: Limits on Maximum Longitudinal Acceleration

Using that data we can calculate how many seconds it will take to achieve 125 mph max speed and how far you will travel before you get to that speed (double these results to include non-emergency braking)

• forward- or backward-facing seats (max comfortable acceleration: 2.45 m/s2

23 seconds, 644 meters

• side-facing seats (max comfortable acceleration: 1.4 m/s2

40 seconds, 1120 meters

• Standing (max comfortable acceleration: 1 m/s2 ):

56 seconds, 1568 meters

and that study is based on the jerk of starting being annoying not a smooth acceleration. The boring company pods should accelerate more smoothly and still be no problem if they do it faster.

Example maximum accelerations for railway vehicles in Great Britain (in m/s2)

• Class 390 Pendolino (intercity EMU) 0.37
• Class 156 Super Sprinter (regional DMU) 0.75
• Class 323 (suburban EMU) 0.99
• London Underground 1992 tube stock 1.3
• Tyne and Wear Metrocar 1.0
• Manchester tram (Ansaldo T-68) 1.3
• Sheffield Supertram (Siemens-Düwag) 1.3
• Croydon tram (Bombardier FLEXITY) 1.2
• Nottingham tram (Bombardier) 1.2

So long as the acceleration curve ramps upwards smoothly I'd expect people wouldn't mind accelerations well approaching .5 g lateral (something round 4 m/s2).

as another comparison point Tesla Roadster Electric 248bhp - [2009] 0-100 mph time - 13.5 seconds

I could totally see the pod full of people doing 0-125 in 20-30 seconds without being uncomfortable.

 

[RLC1069]

I've had State Farm Drive Safe & Save for a little over a year now and I am about to get a 2015 Tesla Model S P85DL. I've argued with them about the discount I've gotten for having a score of 95 consistently by literally driving not more than 5 over the speed limit (due to 7 mph over triggers a ding) and accelerating very easily as well as corning lightly and braking easy. Still have been dinged many times for what seems to be very easy driving and consistently irritate other drivers by adhering to the speed limit for the most part. More than a few times are in my own driveway or parking lots when either pulling out of a spot or around my drive. I've even found out a certain street that I drive on daily has a posted speed limit of 40 mph, yet I consistently get dinged for speeding stating its a 30 mph area, which is incorrect. I attempted to advise them on correcting it, yet it still has not been now 10 mo later. When asking State Farm about what % of a discount I am getting they literally cannot tell me. The agents do not know any aspect of how it works or numbers. My app shows an amount that never seems to match with the company and even the underwriters don't seem to know yet they have commercials on TV stating "with drive safe and save you can save up to 30% off of your premiums". The most I have been told I am getting is 19% and yet I have kept over a 92 score consistently with it mostly being around 95%. When I get the Tesla I feel the regenerative braking is going to automatically consistently ding the braking events and asked them about it, they had no answer. It is very annoying. I agree the program has changed my driving habits for the good but it's a chore on a daily basis to keep the score up and at times it seems like it causes more issues than being safer by causing you to somewhat drive unsafe to save the score. I think they should do like Progressive and do an initial trial of maybe 6 mo then remove it and apply the discount you earned, not continually monitor for the rest of your life and remove the pleasure of actually driving.