Comment by dionidium
3 years ago
> 1.3 million deaths worldwide, annually (94% cause by human error)
You don't need full autonomy to mostly fix this, but the fixes are politically untenable (currently). The cars should be speed-governed, they should be speed-limit aware -- the car should routinely be overriding the desire of the driver. No, you can't go into the bike lane to get around traffic. No, you can't make the split-second decision to swerve around a car braking in front of you. No, you can't operate the vehicle at 100 mph in a residential zone. No, you can't go that fast right now; it's raining way too hard, doofus. No, you can't operate your vehicle onto a scheduled parade route.
You don't need full autonomy to create cars that prevent a significant percentage of driver -- to put it charitably -- errors. These are fairly straightforward problems. The opposition is political.
In the real world political tenability matters a lot, so I don’t really think ”fixes” that ignore it are very interesting to discuss. But if we’re already assuming politics doesn’t matter there’s a much more effective solution: ban cars entirely.
I'm not so hopeless as this. Seatbelts, speed limits, and drunk driving laws were similarly unpopular. That opposition was overcome primarily, I think, because it's so stupid, in the end, and the argument for those things is so compelling that it can't be ignored forever.
We will find ourselves in the same position with speed regulators, etc. Once some country does it, the reduction in lives lost will be impossible to ignore.