Re:GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of s...
by bobthepanda on Thursday May 14, 2020 @06:55PM
(#23186606)
> I agree that speed and general "cars forever!" approach is not great, but there is always room for improvement ... e.g. could tech have saved that 1 person who died in Oslo? Why just stop at "the Oslo model"? Why not do that and autonomous tech? It would be worth it if it saved just a handful of lives a year.
The problem is twofold:
1. Cruise and co. may very well run out of money before they develop tech reliable enough to save people en masse. One proposal decades ago to solve the cars vs people problem was to physically grade separate them entirely, but as it turns out building multistory streets doesn't scale very well.
2. People and politicians, today, are using self driving cars as the magic bullet to avoid spending money on other solutions and changing bad habits. Why spend money on rail or buses if the second coming of Jesus for cars is around the corner? And to a degree, there is an opportunity cost to spending money on unproven X rather than proven Y.
The problem is twofold:
1. Cruise and co. may very well run out of money before they develop tech reliable enough to save people en masse. One proposal decades ago to solve the cars vs people problem was to physically grade separate them entirely, but as it turns out building multistory streets doesn't scale very well.
2. People and politicians, today, are using self driving cars as the magic bullet to avoid spending money on other solutions and changing bad habits. Why spend money on rail or buses if the second coming of Jesus for cars is around the corner? And to a degree, there is an opportunity cost to spending money on unproven X rather than proven Y.