Re:Why humanity will come to regret inventing self-driving cars
by mullingitover on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @07:15PM
(#20035359)
This article is ridiculous.
> But what makes driving so magical is that it doesn’t require all of your brain, and the parts it doesn’t need are free to really enjoy other things. Things like conversations with whomever you’re riding with, listening to music, stories or podcasts and, perhaps most importantly, letting your mind wander into a sort of meditative state where you can really think about ideas or problems.
All of the above are distractions that increase risks to you and everyone else on the road. Over 30k people in the US alone die every year on the roads, we should be looking at this as a disaster. We should pursue self-driving technology with the fervor that we would toward winning a war that killed that number of people every year.
Re:Why humanity will come to regret inventing self-driving cars
by jjeaff on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @11:09PM
(#20036553)
Congestion will increase assuming number of cars on the road is the only factor that causes congestion.
But it isn't. If you can reduce the number of idiots that don't know how to zipper merge and reduce the number of accidents that cause slowdowns and the rubberneckers that make it worse, I can imagine traffic getting a lot better.
And that doesn't even take into account the possibility of remote communication between the cars to better avoid busy streets and coordinate movements.
Re:Why humanity will come to regret inventing self-driving cars
by Fjolsvith on Tuesday May 28, 2019 @06:20PM
(#20034994)
I personally call this "lifestyle upgrades". If I see something I can improve that will save me repeated future hassles, I will take the time and expense to change it. It's like I fight all those future battles at one time in the now.
> But what makes driving so magical is that it doesn’t require all of your brain, and the parts it doesn’t need are free to really enjoy other things. Things like conversations with whomever you’re riding with, listening to music, stories or podcasts and, perhaps most importantly, letting your mind wander into a sort of meditative state where you can really think about ideas or problems.
All of the above are distractions that increase risks to you and everyone else on the road. Over 30k people in the US alone die every year on the roads, we should be looking at this as a disaster. We should pursue self-driving technology with the fervor that we would toward winning a war that killed that number of people every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Self driving cars and or things like lift and uber externalize the personal hassle due to congestion. Reasonably then congestion will increase.
But it isn't. If you can reduce the number of idiots that don't know how to zipper merge and reduce the number of accidents that cause slowdowns and the rubberneckers that make it worse, I can imagine traffic getting a lot better.
And that doesn't even take into account the possibility of remote communication between the cars to better avoid busy streets and coordinate movements.
Wait, are they American? Most likely.
Also how do autonomous vehicles handle jaywalkers? If they reliably stop then at least some people will just cross whenever they feel like it.
Stop for the pedestrians, but also photograph them and forward the images to law enforcement for convenient automatic fines.