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> Road safety is a major, global public health crisis. More than 1.3 million people die on the world’s roads every year, according to WHO. That’s more people th
by bogwog 6y ago
> Road safety is a major, global public health crisis. More than 1.3 million people die on the world’s roads every year, according to WHO. That’s more people than die from HIV/AIDS, and is equivalent to a passenger plane’s worth of people crashing every single hour—or one death every 30 seconds.
> I’ve spent over 20 years working in crash avoidance research, in the belief that improved driving technology is the key to reducing these needless deaths.
This is a noble goal, but I find it really damn hard to ignore the possibility that this is all just another ploy by Google to steal our data and violate our privacy. Just imagine trying to push back against a technology that saves lives for something as "frivolous" as privacy.
Why does it seem like the consumer can never win? The free market is supposed to be self balancing, yet I can't remember a time where it actually felt that way in the technology sector.
- darkwizard42 6y agoI think if we want to solve large scale intersectional problems like traffic (where lots of individuals with their own goals and own variables intersect) we will need to give up SOME of our privacy in terms of where we are headed (just heading), speed, car model/make or some kind of capabilities estimate... This could result in a smarter traffic flow, road design, or in Google's case powering safer self-driving cars. I'm up for any of those outcomes and am also concerned about giving up data unnecessarily. I think the crux of the article besides hyping up self-driving simulated driver's better decision making is that roads aren't designed as safely as they could be and some minor inconvenience to the user (time, some data given up) could save lots of lives.