On 11/11/2017 6:49 AM, Ted Roche wrote:
On Fri, Nov 10, 2017 at 4:22 AM, Alan Bourke <[email protected]> wrote:
I doubt we'll see widespread adoption of fully autonomous road vehicles
in any of our lifetimes.
I doubt the automobile will replace the horse. People want to feel in
charge, go where they want to go, and cars are so unreliable, breaking
down all the time.
I think it did take more than a lifetime for the vehicle to replace the
horse (counting the development all required technology).
Apart from that, my view is that self-driving cars are fine if they are
still personally owned. If the "state" owns them and we have to use them
we'll be in big trouble. Injury and deaths due to self-driving accidents
will have no recourse for the injured parties. That is, the government
has the power to prevent its citizenry from suing (this is the case even
now in other areas of government responsibility).
What would eventually happen is politicians would assign themselves
priority use of vehicles and traffic lanes. Then, heck, why not refuse
to let any of the self-driving cars go to facilities that are
"questionable" to the government (aka known institutions that speak out
against the government - kind of like how Lerner and the IRS did a few
years ago).
And lets not forget those fun-loving hackers. If you think they are
headaches when trying to grab credit card info, just wait until they can
shut down whole cities.
But really, we already have "self-driving" cars: a taxi. Sure the
"self-driver" is a person instead of software, but you don't have to
manage the traffic. Maybe self-driving taxis would be cheaper. But as
others have pointed out, the same level of liability would be on the
owning company. And boy, for decades we've witnessed the stupidity of
lawyers trying to argue details of technical implementations. So I can
only imagine the court cases that may come from those accidents.
And of course, we are all disabled in one way or another. The most
dangerous thought, however, is that some of us are more disabled than
others, or that some of us are just "better" than others. That leads to
the thinking that ultimate power should be given to a few to control
masses. In that case, empirical history shows that is the recipe for
truly horrible atrocities. That may seem like a long stretch from
self-driving cars, but if the justification is that a few of us are just
better and smarter and have more "rights" to control those other
inferior folks.... I hope the correlation isn't lost.
-Charlie
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