Tuesday, May 8, 2007

HOV math

A friend of mine who rides a motorcycle complained about the two person limit claiming single occupant motorcycles are high occupancy and should be allowed.

My counter examples:

  • Small cars, like the SMART, are not much longer. Some sports cars like the Morgan and Lotus Super 7 are also not much longer. Should they be allowed with one person?
  • Throughput is probably the real reason. The designers would have figured traffic flow based on the space needed to safely move two people. Since at 100km/h this is around 30m/s then any vehicle is going to use about 60m of roadway. Unless you're driving two bikes side by side, you are a HOV Hog.

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