On the one hand I can't disagree with you on the safety front, our species is
singularly bad at accurately judging risk, look at all the people afraid to fly
but willing to drive for instance.
On the other hand I like driving and some joy would be lost should I not be
able to. Also how is a self-driving car going to deal with my cabin 3/4 mile
from the road?
As for heavy traffic, our poorly designed cities and lack of public transport
are largely to blame. When I go to LA I end up driving from LAX to Burbank
which takes too long in the best of times. I'd love to be able to take the
train but its so terribly inconvenient its actually easier to drive. Someday
when the rail extension to the airport is done it might be feasible, I look at
it each time I'm there and it seems like progress is being made but only when
measured against the fact that I've been making this trip for a decade, the
month to month progress seems to be essentially zero...
-Curt
On Friday, June 1, 2018, 1:42:04 AM EDT, Karl Wittnebel via Mercedes
<mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote:
The bar is set fairly low in terms of human controlled car accident rates
and humans coping with unexpected failures.
There seems to be a greater willingness to accept human errors than machine
errors. Not sure this is entirely rational.
Humans are really bad drivers. If a machine can do it reliably better then
bring it on. When I am old, I dont think I will be saying I wish I spent
more time driving. The best car is the one you never have to drive, so you
can spend your limited time on earth doing more interesting stuff.
Think of all the consciousness wasted by people sitting in stop and go
traffic, concentrating on the bumper ahead. And the negative effects on
stress and mood. What a drain on humanity.
Why is a human running a red light and t boning me so much better than a
machine doing it? Or a machine wrecking my car instead of me somehow worse?
What matters is the overall performance across the population vs current
technology.
Ultimately the costs and benefits of these things will speak for
themselves. I'm pretty sure the machines are already better. Waymo has
driven millions of miles on public roads now. Fiat just sold them another
20k minivans to use as driverless taxis. You dont buy 20,000 minivans
unless you are pretty sure about what you are going to do with them.
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