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What kind of infantilized nanny-state fingerpointing scapegoat culture are we living in here? It is beyond ridiculous to say phone makers should be responsible
by dasil003 10y ago
What kind of infantilized nanny-state fingerpointing scapegoat culture are we living in here? It is beyond ridiculous to say phone makers should be responsible for fixing this problem. Not just because of the impossibility, but because of the slippery slope of impossibility for all the other things that all the hand-wringing in the world won't put under the control of major corporations' safety initiatives.
How about this: texting while driving is as dangerous as drinking and driving yes? How about giving it commensurate penalties and drivers license revocation?
- mjevans 10y agoOnly it's /not/ the same. A driver 'under the influence' can't sober up in ~5-10 seconds. A driver 'under the influence' can't /plan/ when they're going to dedicate a few seconds to interacting with a radio, or a GPS, or opening up a voice input prompt to something. What WOULD make it safer, however, is if the UI guidelines for a platform followed common sense. If they realized that OF COURSE drivers will click through some annoying popup. That it would be SAFER if they STREAMLINED interaction and gave a more astronaut glove friendly interface.
- saurik 10y agoThankfully, both of these are temporary problems: in another five years we will start transitioning large numbers of people to self-driving cars (whether privately owned or simply self-driving taxis), and this problem will go into decline.
- ars 10y agoNo we won't. There will not be in-city self driving cars for decades. There will be self driving cars on the freeway in specially marked and instrumented lanes made just for self driving trucks (cars will come later). But not in-city. Not till there is general AI.
- asdfologist 10y agoThis is one of those comments that people will dig up and mock on HN in about 5 years.
- tempestn 10y agoI except reality will fall somewhere between their two responses myself.
- Teever 10y agoOr maybe yours will be. I give it 50/50.
- ars 10y agoGoogle started in 2009, it's now 7 years later. We (they) are no closer to success than they were when they started. (The cars can only drive on pre-programmed roads with a human marking any changes such as temporary traffic lights.) What makes you think that they will succeed in 5 years if they have not solved the hard problems in the last 7? No. Self driving cars (trucks actually) will only drive on limited access roads AKA freeways. Those roads are controlled, and any changes can be easily programmed in.
- mozumder 10y agoOr we could have the phone makers fix it directly. There. Problem solved. And we didn't even need to get thousands of local government agencies involved in enforcement! We just fixed the problem at the source: the cell phone manufacturers. Would you rather fix a million separate problems - the millions of texting drivers - or one problem at the cell phone manufacturer? How much would your solution cost vs my solution? Systematic solutions that remove human judgement from the solution will always be better than any solution that's dependent on human judgement to work. The nanny state exists because people are dangerous idiots. And they need to be nannied.
- mjevans 10y agoThe correct point to remove people from the equation because they're idiots is operating the car. Fully automated driving, without human supervision being necessary.
- mozumder 10y agoOr better yet - a rail system.
- ars 10y agoYou didn't solve anything. You did the equivalent of yelling and crying and saying "you fix it". Unless you also have a suggestion of how to do it?