What a load of fear mongering. Instead of having people take accountability for their actions we should require "safety features" that have a direct correlation to increased distracted driving. Maybe if somebody is killed we should make regulations around driving drunk? Oh yea pretty sure that exists. Problem is we have a bunch of steering wheel holders, hardly anybody is a driver anymore. Would lane assist and auto braking have prevented this? Possibly. But would lane assist not keep him barrel assing down the road doing up through the next intersection where somebody may decide to cross the road? This is not a fix. We have ALWAYS had the "technology" to avoid traffic deaths, problem is most people are selfish self centered pricks with but a ball of lint between their ears.
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The technology isn't great, but rather than implement it, you want us to expect humans to be great.
“Let’s invent metal boxes with wheels that follow lines on the ground automatically to get you places.”
“Oh, you mean like trains.”
“Ew, no. They’re nothing like trains, these are ‘self driving cars’. They’re fool proof!”
tesla hits someone in a dense fog because it doesn’t have lidar
Queue surprised pikachu.
Wait. Those things rely on visual sensors only?? That moronic! I mean, more so that I originally though. Please tell me that they have them, but this particular one was malfunctioning.
Edit: holy crap. How are these vehicles allowed to operate on public roads??
Musk has sai d multiple times that humans can drive with vision alone, so cars shouldn't need LIDAR.
He ignores that humans also regularly experience optical illusions that contribute to poor driving and collisions, and that LIDAR is far less susceptible to such abberations.
Very early on, Tesla used ~~lidar~~ radar in addition to optical sensors. However, they only use optical sensors today and have for a while. Like many of the poor decisions at that company, the change to optical-only was made at Musk's demand.
Edit: misremembered, it was radar not lidar as pointed out below
IIRC, they uses to have radar, not lidar.
Correct they've never used lidar. However I will say that no manufacturer has actually solved the self-driving issue yet so nobody can definitively say what is and isn't required.
LiDAR is affected greatly by dense fog btw.
There is an obvious answer here that both the author and the people in this thread are ignoring.
Driving as a transportation method is a high risk/cost high flexibility/comfort solution.
Pretty much everyone who has accepted driving as their transportation method understands that it’s not the safest way, so a lot of drivers are always willing to take a little bit more risk to save money or something like that.
A better question is, why are we so okay with accepting such high risks for transportation. The human mind is terrible at risk assessment so I think it’s just a culture thing that car accidents are a part of life.
I don't know if you've noticed, but Americans are real good at ignoring issues that don't affect them personally.
Oh I won't wreck my car, I'm a "good driver"!
I can't catch Covid because it's not real!
School shootings are just false flags the government uses to pass gun control laws!
Donald Trump only wants to remove the dangerous immigrants, not the ones I hire for my business!
We need more people part of the FuckCars, Walk, Bike, & Public Transit online cultures
Need more outreach to get things happening even more. Also my comment on this post would solve a lot of things by not having to redo outreaching to people
Even better, the equivalent irl cultures. Most cities have groups advocating for better bike and pedestrian infrastructure and better public transit.
The technologies mentioned in the article:
lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection
AI-powered traffic systems
On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors
And they missed some really low hanging, inexpensive solutions that would also work:
- roundabouts
- mass transit
- physical barriers for bike lanes
- zoning changes
Those are all old "technologies" that are proven to be effective and don't require giving car manufacturers an excuse to make cars even more expensive or retrofitting existing cars.
Only one of my cars has just one of those things (2015 Toyota Highlander and it's the blind spot monitor). That aside, all of my vehicles - cars and motorcycles - are paid off. I'm not going into debt just to have nannies yelling at me.
My vehicles are a means to an end. I would absolutely love more public transit, but there is just a single train station about 12 miles from my house, while my work is only 6 miles in the same direction. "You could bike" you might say, which is a fantastic idea. However, 90% of my commute is on a 55mph rural highway with minimal shoulders and zero bike lanes. It's literally a perfect candidate for a bus route, yet there are none, and I am not risking my life on a bicycle next to 55MPH traffic during commuting hours.
Now tell me how I'm the problem.
with every section it just became worse
All of those things are garbage and don't work, they just drive you nuts until you turn them off.
Public transportation or bust
I'm all for better safety features but perhaps an easier, cheaper, and more likely to succeed option to use is city planning/enforcement and change of current regulations. For instance, closing the loophole that lets car manufacturers ignore safety and emissions rules for "light truck" classified cars, which at this point is most of the oversized SUVs and pickups.
Alternatively having safer options for pedestrians and cyclists would help too, like having separated bike roads, and pushing highways and stroads out of residential areas and reclaiming city space for pedestrians. Public transit investment also helps reduce the number of drivers, which helps traffic and safety too.
I don't hate the idea of these extra AI tools like emergency braking being required or at least encouraged with stuff like safety ratings, but I think it's going to be very hard to get that implemented anytime soon considering you'd be fighting consumer interest(higher cost cars) and companies who don't want to have to make or license AI tools.
Edit: also the current regime in the US is more interested in de-regulating things to the point where I can get a happy meal wrapped in asbestos with a nice lead toy. So uh... Good luck
Because too many people in too many industries that would be negatively affected have too much money.
The technologies to end a lot of problems exist. We aren't using them because the oligarchs think it's better this way.
What technology?
Safety features like lane-keep assist, automatic emergency braking (AEB), and blind-spot detection...
... AI-powered traffic systems that predict and prevent accidents....
Impaired driving is also solvable. On-demand breathalyzers, smartphone saliva tests, and eye-tracking sensors... Uber is already testing real-time driver sobriety verification...
Why aren't we using it?
The article doesn't have an answer.
One of the many things I like about Subaru is that they seem to move useful features from optional to standard, once they've had a chance to prove themselves. I bought an Outback in 2016 and paid extra for the EyeSight safety system. Two years later that car was destroyed in an accident (I was T-boned and rolled over twice, without anyone being hurt). I bought another Outback to replace it, but by that time the EyeSight was a standard feature. Subaru now includes EyeSight on all their cars because it saves lives.
They had done similar things with other safety features. Four-wheel disc brakes, anti-lock braking, and all-wheel drive became standard on Sabarus relatively early.
It is also worth noting that the more intrusive EyeSight features, like lane assist, are easy to turn off. There's a button on the steering wheel for that one. Even if you turn it off, the car will still warn you if you start to cross lanes without using your turn signals, but it will not adjust for you.
Agree also a good catalyst to help solve almost all of our problems is having Revolt, & Matrix community servers setup where people can join based on their State, & also other community servers for their Country too.
With the goal of having a single spot where people get together online to get things done collectively, inform each other about all kinds of good and bad things, discuss topics, make stuff happen for better, collaborate on projects, have fun together, educate each other, & much more
I'm one of a couple hundred people working on it but need more people on board to do it.
We The People means Unity in every sense of the word in person and online to get things done together by doing. Being focused, & locked in instead of all of us doing things by ourselves
Autonomous vehicles. They don't get high, they don't get distracted, and if they're made by literally anyone except for Tesla, they have superhuman vision and not only don't have blind spots, they can also see in the dark and see through steam and fog.