Originally Posted by
cooker
Having self driving vehicles deliver food out on "the trail" and pick you up if you run into trouble, may be a way of not bothering people, but it's going to be awfully expensive.
Why? What do you think the per-mile cost would be for a car that gets 30mpg? Wouldn't it charge less for rural miles driven at 50mph without stops?
Why not work with what's already available? Plan your hikes to pass by existing resources like towns, resorts and truckstops (where they're accessible by foot),
Hiking trails usually cross roads several miles from stores, and some of the stores they pass don't have great options.
and to cross bus and rail lines
How would that help?
If you're too far off road a self driving vehicle won't be able to get to you anyway, so follow established trails where other hikers or cyclists can stop and help you and you can reciprocate as needed.
When I go hiking, I usually don't run into more than a couple people, so if I carried extra food to give them, they might have done the same and then we'd all be carrying too much food/weight. Plus, it's hard to carry fresh bread, vegetables, and fruit for more than a couple days without spoilage, so it would be great to have, say, a small electrically-powered drone to bring a few pounds of groceries via the shoulder/bike-lane of a rural road.