People who can't keep their car at a constant speed on the highway; cruise control is the best way to do this if you don't want to keep checking your speedometer.
To elaborate: If everybody picks a slightly different speed and maintains it, any encounter between two vehicles will never last very long. There's more distance between any two vehicles, so it's safer, and large, impassable clumps of vehicles are less likely to form.
I want a global movement to make the acceleration pedal actually affect acceleration, not horsepower as it does now.
Imagine a pedal with a dead spot in the middle that represents 0 acceleration. Pushing down on the pedal increases the rate of acceleration. When you get to speed, ease back to the dead spot to maintain. Lift past the dead spot to decel.
Think of it as a hybrid cruise control. I'm convinced it would solve many traffic congestion problems associated with people not maintaining speed on, say, slight inclines.
How do you solve this problem for those of us in Colorado (or other non-flatlands) where nearly every drive involves mountains and hills. Would the idea be that in the dead zone, the car is smart enough to increase or decrease horsepower to adapt to these conditions and retain 0 acceleration or...? I think you would run into the same problem that cruise control runs into in the mountains - we don't have variable ratio transmissions, so at some point going up a hill it has to shift down a rev in order to stay the same speed. Doesn't work very well.
Yes, the whole idea is the car is smart enough to maintain a speed. You're right about having problems in the mountains. If someone doesn't want their car to downshift, they'd just slow down by lifting and returning to the zero point. I think it would be a little better than cruise control in the mountains, but not much.
I can't speak for tricky, but variable ratio transmissions do exist. They're called CVTs and while they're not super popular (there were some issues w/ them in the 80's), they're slowly being reintroduced to the market.
> large, impassable clumps of vehicles are less likely to form
I'm starting to think that there are a large number of people that feel some sense of comfort in these groups. Something that I've noticed is that a passing car will often slow up as they are passing another car so as to pace them. It drives me crazy.
To elaborate: If everybody picks a slightly different speed and maintains it, any encounter between two vehicles will never last very long. There's more distance between any two vehicles, so it's safer, and large, impassable clumps of vehicles are less likely to form.
EDIT: bad markup