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As a bike/ped advocate, I believe self-driving cars will ultimately be safer than humans. Yesterday I was nearly hit crossing street twice: once by an inattenti
by markstos 7y ago
As a bike/ped advocate, I believe self-driving cars will ultimately be safer than humans. Yesterday I was nearly hit crossing street twice: once by an inattentive driver and once by an intentionally reckless speeder.
Oh the other hand, my brother has done a fair amount of truck driving and I'm aware it's a common job in the US.
Maybe now that Bloomberg has dropped out he get together with Yang and use his billions to start providing a basic income to displaced truck drivers?
- dangus 7y agoThe idea that Bloomberg and Yang share any sort of common philosophy is laughable.
- quaquaqua1 7y agoThat's awkward, why did Yang tweet and go on TV saying how awesome Bloomberg's operation was?
- fma 7y agooperation != philosophy...
- zarmin 7y agoHe works for CNN?
- fma 7y agoHe has a contract to provide political commentary. It's actually pretty good... Example for Super Tuesday commentary. These are snppets of only conversations Yang participated in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclz7S8aXoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oclz7S8aXoo
- evanlivingston 7y agoDNC propaganda efforts for unity?
- qntmfred 7y agoIs it not possible for Yang to acknowledge the scale and capability of Bloomberg's operation without it being considered an endorsement of some kind??
- dmix 7y agoThis is like when people started calling Glenn Greenwald an "alt-right supporter" because he said he admired the rise and efficacy of Brietbart's operations some time during or after the previous election (can't remember when exactly, it was after they skyrocketed from fringe site to a major news operation). Social media is turning sections of the public back a few centuries where mere a positive reference is guilt-by-association and the tribalistic off-with-the-head mentality kicks in. It's quite nasty and anti-intellectual, and the growing prevalence and toleration of it for political ends honestly scares me a bit.
- skybrian 7y agoIt seems like Yang has written something nice on Twitter about every candidate who dropped out? He seems to like people and praise doesn't cost anything. I don't know if it's mutual, though?
- three_seagrass 7y agoYep, as a biker I now intentionally try to look at the driver through the windshield to see if their eyes are down on a cell phone. They are scarily more frequent than you would think.
- chris_st 7y agoOr just to check to see if they're looking in your direction, so they're at least likely to have seen you. Amazing how often people watch a car to (say) their right, and once it clears, they go through the intersection without checking again to their left...!
- strbean 7y agoAs a driver, every once in awhile I glance at the faces of other drivers on the road. Sometimes I get the feeling that more than 50% of road-time in the US is spent looking at a phone. It's enough to make me wonder if "x% of accidents involved texting and driving" is even a convincing metric. If god damned everybody is texting and driving all the god damned time, of course lots of accidents involve texting and driving.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago> use his billions to start providing a basic income to displaced truck drivers? Are there no other viable options to "truck drivers being replaced by automation" than basic income? I've read a lot of pushback about basic income online.
- clairity 7y agoyes, UBI's first- and second-order effects are designed to corral the citizenry into more control and dependency on the elite, rather than the stated intent of providing security and freedom. besides, it's just as straightforward to offer every citizen a part-time job with the government that's worth $1000/mo and avoid most of its unintended consequences. i would have supported yang more had he not staked his whole campaign on UBI, as he'd otherwise made some sensible arguments.
- ska 7y agoI don't know the answer, but one problem is that truck driving is already often a plan "B" (or "C", or ...), in that it provided a practical home for workers displaced from other industries. Often one they didn't have to move to get. This has difficult implications if you are looking for things these folks can do instead of trucking.
- lmm 7y agoYou're talking about a demographic that is largely old, in poor health, and with few other skills. They're not going to see a huge RoI from training/education, and they're not attractive to employers. At the moment, their value proposition is that they're doing an unpleasant, unhealthy job that not many other people want to; it's hard to see how that would translate into good employment opportunities in other sectors, or even if we should want it to.
- Qworg 7y agoCommon is an understatement: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-... It is the #1 job in 29 states as of 2014.
- jedberg 7y agoThose numbers are very skewed though. Some categories have a lot more subcategories than others. Like, if you split it up into long haul, short haul, in-town, etc, truck driver would fall down the list rapidly.
- Qworg 7y agoI don't know if skewed over imprecise. There's all of the ancillary industries that support OTR trucking affected as well - that'll bring the total numbers back up.
- hnick 7y agoSometimes I wonder if inattentiveness (i.e. breadth of thought) is perhaps a fundamental attribute of generalised intelligence, and having a laser focus on the task is the wrong way to get there.
- rossjudson 7y agoI wonder what part of the driving task most requires humans? And what the required reaction times are? And if supervision is enough?