4 ms·

Well, we're going to need something as the Boomers continue to age, eventually aging out of being able to drive themselves en masse but being... let's say disin

by msla 9y ago

Well, we're going to need something as the Boomers continue to age, eventually aging out of being able to drive themselves en masse but being... let's say disinclined to give up their car keys and rely on someone else to drive them around. Meeting them halfway with self-driving cars is going to save a lot of lives, compared to having octogenarians with horrible reaction times and the idea that having their own car makes them an adult filling the roads.

Analemma_ 9y ago
This is a non sequitur. There's no contradiction between "There will eventually be autonomous programs that are safer than human drivers" and "Tesla's current autonomous program is not safer than human drivers". There's no principle requiring Tesla's current program to be good enough, or even that it will ever be good enough– the future might come from someone else.
- msla 9y ago
  I never said any of that. You're responding to a post I never made.
djsumdog 9y ago
We could do what every other country does and build a really good public transport infrastructure so they can take trains and buses everywhere. That will also greatly reduce drunk driving and help people who are very poor whose lives can literally fall apart if something on their car breaks and they can't afford to fix it right away (and then can't get to work, and then lose their job -- or they fix it and forego insurance, and then get in a wreck and then own more money and legal fees). Cars should be an optional luxury, unless you intentionally chose to live in a suburban area.
- msla 9y ago
  You're ignoring the massive rural areas of the country, which are neither urban nor suburban and will never be served by a mass-transit system.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a principal way of getting to big city airports (although more expensive than a drive, AmTrak is way cheaper than using a rural airport to connect to a flight). But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's fine. But in cities, are transport is shit in the US. Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of Scottland. It could easily utilize a decent intercity rail system. The US use to have more passenger track at one time than Western Europe has today! We had rail once. It went away and we spread out, but if we rebuild it, people will start living closer to it and everyone can benefit. I think once the US hits a really hard economic collapse (not that piddly one in 2008 the banks just used to buy other banks) is the only time when US politicians will be forced to fix infrastructure (because the poor literally won't be able to go to work, and politicians really only care about the poor once they're no longer generating taxable revenue they can feed to their supporters). Once that happens you will see things change very fast, but things do have to get considerably worse before politicians invest in people.
    - msla 9y ago
      > Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a principal way of getting to big city airports This alone tells me you've never lived in a rural area in the US or relied on Amtrak. > But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's fine. It proves my point, to the extent that people who live in rural areas (by choice or not) need individual vehicles, and that given that the number of people who are too old to drive will be increasing in the medium term, we'll need something to provide people who are too old to drive with individual vehicles. > Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of Scottland. I'm sure it does. Now shift your gaze westwards, to North Dakota, Wyoming, eastern Montana, and, really, most of the rest of what used to be called the Great American Desert and is now referred to as the high plains or, more simply, flyover country. You're doing something I see software developers do for their programs: Take a hard problem, solve the easy part of it, and consider their job done because they don't/won't/flat-out refuse to see the really hard bits their "solution" leaves unsolved. It's like their vision... slides over the hard parts, their minds automatically move away, as if you were trying to make two bar magnets touch at the wrong ends.

by msla 9y ago

Analemma_ 9y ago

This is a non sequitur. There's no contradiction between "There will eventually be autonomous programs that are safer than human drivers" and "Tesla's current autonomous program is not safer than human drivers". There's no principle requiring Tesla's current program to be good enough, or even that it will ever be good enough– the future might come from someone else.

msla 9y ago
I never said any of that. You're responding to a post I never made.

djsumdog 9y ago

We could do what every other country does and build a really good public transport infrastructure so they can take trains and buses everywhere. That will also greatly reduce drunk driving and help people who are very poor whose lives can literally fall apart if something on their car breaks and they can't afford to fix it right away (and then can't get to work, and then lose their job -- or they fix it and forego insurance, and then get in a wreck and then own more money and legal fees). Cars should be an optional luxury, unless you intentionally chose to live in a suburban area.

msla 9y ago
You're ignoring the massive rural areas of the country, which are neither urban nor suburban and will never be served by a mass-transit system.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a principal way of getting to big city airports (although more expensive than a drive, AmTrak is way cheaper than using a rural airport to connect to a flight). But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's fine. But in cities, are transport is shit in the US. Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of Scottland. It could easily utilize a decent intercity rail system. The US use to have more passenger track at one time than Western Europe has today! We had rail once. It went away and we spread out, but if we rebuild it, people will start living closer to it and everyone can benefit. I think once the US hits a really hard economic collapse (not that piddly one in 2008 the banks just used to buy other banks) is the only time when US politicians will be forced to fix infrastructure (because the poor literally won't be able to go to work, and politicians really only care about the poor once they're no longer generating taxable revenue they can feed to their supporters). Once that happens you will see things change very fast, but things do have to get considerably worse before politicians invest in people.
  - msla 9y ago
    > Actually in the US, rural areas are served pretty well by AmTrak as a principal way of getting to big city airports This alone tells me you've never lived in a rural area in the US or relied on Amtrak. > But if you live in rural areas, you're choosing to require a vehicle. That's fine. It proves my point, to the extent that people who live in rural areas (by choice or not) need individual vehicles, and that given that the number of people who are too old to drive will be increasing in the medium term, we'll need something to provide people who are too old to drive with individual vehicles. > Even with rural areas, Northern Indiana has the same population density of Scottland. I'm sure it does. Now shift your gaze westwards, to North Dakota, Wyoming, eastern Montana, and, really, most of the rest of what used to be called the Great American Desert and is now referred to as the high plains or, more simply, flyover country. You're doing something I see software developers do for their programs: Take a hard problem, solve the easy part of it, and consider their job done because they don't/won't/flat-out refuse to see the really hard bits their "solution" leaves unsolved. It's like their vision... slides over the hard parts, their minds automatically move away, as if you were trying to make two bar magnets touch at the wrong ends.