3 ms·

dont forget saving an annual ~30k lives domestically (if everyone stopped driving themselves)

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
As soon as one person dies in an accident that might be caused by a software error, the lawyers are going to be all over the case quicker than you can say "Astronomical compensation claim." It's bad enough now with ambulance chasers, but when the "guilty" party is a corporation worth billions, it's going to get a whole lot worse. Personally I'd love self driving cars - tomorrow, if not sooner. Most driving is boring and pointless and I'm totally happy to let a competent machine do it. But politically too many people have been conditioned to see driving as an expression of personal freedom, and the whole industry is politically vulnerable in a way that the smartphones and the Internet never were. Generally there's a whole extra layer of legal, political, social, and psychological confusion around any kind of computing that doesn't live in a box with a screen, but starts being present in and manipulating physical reality. Cars are just the start, and I think they'll turn out to be one of the more straightforward problems.
- undersuit 10y ago
  >too many people have been conditioned to see driving as an expression of personal freedom Conditioned by some of the very same companies that are going to take away the expression, but the citizens will blame the government for this "restriction of freedom," while those same companies keep making profit regardless.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Conditioned by some of the very same companies that are going to take away the expression Those companies have been very good at various reshapings of public demand when it served their interests, I'd be very surprised if, when it suits them for automated cars to be the next thing, they aren't just as good as when they made minivans and then SUVs must-haves through marketing (when the real motivation for each was to exploit regulatory exceptions.)

As soon as one person dies in an accident that might be caused by a software error, the lawyers are going to be all over the case quicker than you can say "Astronomical compensation claim." It's bad enough now with ambulance chasers, but when the "guilty" party is a corporation worth billions, it's going to get a whole lot worse. Personally I'd love self driving cars - tomorrow, if not sooner. Most driving is boring and pointless and I'm totally happy to let a competent machine do it. But politically too many people have been conditioned to see driving as an expression of personal freedom, and the whole industry is politically vulnerable in a way that the smartphones and the Internet never were. Generally there's a whole extra layer of legal, political, social, and psychological confusion around any kind of computing that doesn't live in a box with a screen, but starts being present in and manipulating physical reality. Cars are just the start, and I think they'll turn out to be one of the more straightforward problems.

undersuit 10y ago
>too many people have been conditioned to see driving as an expression of personal freedom Conditioned by some of the very same companies that are going to take away the expression, but the citizens will blame the government for this "restriction of freedom," while those same companies keep making profit regardless.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Conditioned by some of the very same companies that are going to take away the expression Those companies have been very good at various reshapings of public demand when it served their interests, I'd be very surprised if, when it suits them for automated cars to be the next thing, they aren't just as good as when they made minivans and then SUVs must-haves through marketing (when the real motivation for each was to exploit regulatory exceptions.)