That's an ungenerous reading of the comment. They would agree that falling asleep at the wheel is unsafe.

We've designed a system, however, that is set up such that it's bound to happen sometimes. Not everyone can call in to work and tell their boss "sorry, I slept badly last night, I'm not coming in" or order a $60 Uber to get somewhere on a whim. Moralizing at people is just virtue signaling.

In one paragraph you've conveyed my point better than I could across multiple comments. This is the heart of what I was getting at.

This, and the fact that the HN demographic, mostly being techies, seem to be a bit disconnected from what real life looks like to 80%+ of the population of the world. A few instances per year of not coming in to work due to poor sleep or having to order Uber wouldn't just inconvenicence them - it would completely destroy their lives along with their children/families. People are doing what they need to do to survive and look after their loved ones.

In an earlier life, I worked in the trucking industry. If you refused to drive anytime you were fatigued, you would not be successful in the industry (one reason I am very glad to not be doing that anymore; it's also one of the most dangerous occupations out there, partly for that reason). I think that lots of the people here have never worked a non-privileged job in their lives.

I've seen the results of this first-hand when a big rig about 10 car lengths ahead of me on I-5 abruptly began moving from the right lane through the center median and into the lanes of oncoming traffic.

He slammed into a pickup truck and killed that truck's occupant.

I had to be called in as a witness of the incident by the victim and trucking company's attorneys.

I think there's a strong difference between (rightfully so) blaming the companies that force this environment and the people who are just trying to make a living safely.

That's quite a reach and a bad take.

I've only been in the full-time tech industry for about 3.5 years.

Before then I was working hourly jobs to make ends meet, including working half time or more while studying full-time in college, working during high school, etc. This so I could pay rent and tuition with minimal, if any, aid.

I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating from university.

I was walking or taking public transportation everywhere prior to finally getting a car.

I won't disagree that people in SV can be snobby but let's not jump to conclusions here.

I think this discussion is becoming rather pointless for the overall discourse about this singular topic, so I'll just leave with this.

>Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent position in the tech industry, my mind is constantly blown by the fact that the average techie thinks their life is anything like what the vast majority of this planet are dealing with.

I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, here? You say that I, and other like-minded people, are just "average techies" despite literally just explaining that some of us too had our own challenges.

I think it's okay to admit that nearly everybody has had their share of challenging backgrounds. Some people's privileges are the other's disadvantages and so on. That much is obvious.

But aside from that. Backgrounds aside.

Driving when you know you have a constant issue of falling asleep, getting drowsy, all of the above is unsafe. Even if you have priorities that you place above your own health/well-being, the problem with having those issues and still choosing to drive is that you are now deciding how others will be affected by your decision.

The moment you begin endangering other people's lives is the same moment that backgrounds, poorly-disadvantaged or not, become meaningless.

Because I highly doubt some victim's family is going to be impressed that you or someone else knowingly chose to drive repeatedly while acknowledging they would not be fully aware of what they were doing just because of working conditions.

> all of the above is unsafe

Humanity has a pretty substantial record of doing "unsafe" for the betterment of themselves, mankind, or just for giggles. The risks are well-known to themselves, who are you to suggest that they cannot manage those risks?

Some people manage it their entire lives, while others do not. However, I'd trust someone driving who is well aware of their boundaries over someone who is not aware, any day.

My wife fell asleep at the wheel once, I just reached over and kept the wheel straight while trying to wake her up. I hope cars can do that in the future, for those times that I'm not there. And for the record, she's one of those that has never fallen asleep before or gotten drowsy at the wheel.

> Having climbed from societal rock-bottom to a decent position in the tech industry

I've done this as well. I've gone to war, I've seen things you likely can't imagine without a bunch of CGI and special effects. Most of the tech world has no idea what "rock bottom" even means except through the view of Hollywood, and even that doesn't look all that bad from that angle.

> The moment you begin endangering other people's lives is the same moment that backgrounds, poorly-disadvantaged or not, become meaningless.

Spoken life someone who never had to decide between rolling the 0.000001% chance dice on driving to work tired, and their kids going hungry or potentially getting taken away if they lose their job. People do what they need to do to survive and take care of their loved ones. People will absolutely risk their lives and those of others in order to protect their kids at all cost, even when facing much worse odds. That's a constant in life. No amount of moral posturing will change that. I'm not saying their actions are 'right', just saying they're an inevitable outcome of the society we have built.

Efficiently demonstrating my point - some people on HN live in a bubble of privilege and have no idea what real life is like for the vast majority of the population.

I'm just curious, with all the moral posturing - realistically, what would you suggest that people do when after a long shift at a blue collar job they realize they might be too tired to safely drive home. Do they sleep at their workplace? How does that transition into them needing to be back at work, showered, dressed, etc. by 9am the next morning? What are the actual logistics of this concept here?

And how do you reconcile all this moral posturing and the impact of banning drivers who experience this (up to 50% of the entire population of developed nations by some polling) vs. the fact that we now have a pretty cheap car technology that turns that 0.000001% dice roll into a 1e-20 one.

What if the person you kill is also a human being with a family and problems? Should they get a say in what you think is an acceptable risk?

Or should we just treat everybody we don't know as obviously spoiled people who live in a bubble of privilege, have nothing to lose, have never missed a meal, love no one and have no one who depends on them, and only have an opinion on what you do in order to feel superior to you and to humiliate you?

It's not quite a direct comparison, but in law there is a 'heat of passion' defence which affords leniency for crimes committed when e.g. a parent walks in on their child being harmed and murders the assailant.

The reason this defence (and a line of other similar) exist is because as society we have accepted the fact that people will act in self interest, self protection, and above all protection of their children. No amount of education or indoctrination overrides that. (Fun fact, in some countries, escaping from jail is not illegal/punishable - assuming you don't commit other crimes in the act. Because, once again, we as society recognise that it's human nature to seek freedom and it cannot be overriden, therefore punishing it achieves nothing.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if you think a parent driving to work tired is acceptable or not, because we already know that they absolutely will. The only question is how do you mitigate the damage of driving to work tired, and whether your mitigation strategy is a net benefit or net loss to society.

'Make it compulsory for cars to detect sleeping/unconscious/seizing/microsleeping driver and pull over' is an infinitely better strategy in every regard imaginable compared to 'ban up to 50% of the population from driving'. And note that only one of those 4 situations would be avoidable with a ban, the other 3 can strike at any time with no warning or history.

If you can't drive safely; you can't drive. There is no middle ground. You may think it's fine to take a risk for yourself based on your costs/benefits, but it's definitely not fine to take a risk for others.

I'd point out that many things are not binary.

I agree that moralizing doesn't help, and that we should fully take into account "realities". But that also means you can't just assume autopilot will help you - it could very well be that having autopilot will end up making people to fall asleep at the wheel more often, and therefore increase the chance of accidents or severity of the accidents. We know for a fact that it does involve some trade off (see those people misusing autopilot and getting into accidents), and we simply don't know autopilot provides better safety overall.

There has been enough indirect evidence to suggest advanced driver assist without a significant driver monitoring is dangerous (Google's report of their employees doing other things, the fatal accident of Uber's self-driving vehicle, various fatal and non-fatal accidents of Tesla autopilot due to misuse), but there's been no systematic study and we don't have enough public data to suggest it's one way or another.

Nobody said it was safe. They merely pointed out that some people have to choose between safety and feeding their families.