3 ms·

Deadly car accidents aren't the actions of "a few". Anyone can cause one through inattentive driving, tiredness, mobile phone usage, and of course simple lack o

by swombat 15y ago

Deadly car accidents aren't the actions of "a few". Anyone can cause one through inattentive driving, tiredness, mobile phone usage, and of course simple lack of experience. The other tragic thing about car accidents is that your mistakes can kill not only yourself, but also many other people. You might argue (though I'd disagree) that someone who's been driving for 10 hours straight deserves to die in an accident, but you certainly can't argue that the family of 5 that he crashed into head-on deserved it too. To suggest these countless people need to die to satisfy your need for thrills is somewhat like suggesting that vaccines are boring because they take away the excitement of not knowing which of your children will live to an adult age.

speckledjim 15y ago
The car has certainly done far far far more good than bad. That's why we put up with the downside (a few deaths a day). The issue is that there's a small minority of bad drivers who cause accidents. Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society.
- Goronmon 15y ago
  Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society. You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person. I'd put it in the same category as things like not allowing people to smoke in workplaces, public buildings, etc, or allowing people to shoot firearms in the backyards of their suburban homes. I just don't see there being a 'freedom to manually control tons of metal for the purposes of transportation' trumping the immense amount of benefits to safety, among others.
  - speckledjim 15y ago
    We have umpteen checks to ensure drivers are as safe as they can be. Deaths in the US from driving have come down from around 120 a day in 2000 to around 90 a day now. In the UK, it's about 8 deaths a day from driving. The road network is now eight times safer per mile travelled than it was in 1966. Just for comparison, around 400+ people die each day in the UK from cancer. Instead of wasting a ton of money making robotic driverless cars because it sounds good, I'd invest that money straight into cancer research.
    - Goronmon 15y ago
      Why waste a ton of money on cancer research that has a good chance of saving no lives, when you can invest money into driverless vehicles that are guaranteed to save lives?
      - speckledjim 15y ago
        Driverless vehicles won't prevent all deaths on the road. Pedestrians and cyclists account for quite a few.
        swombat 15y ago
        Pedestrians and cyclists are killed by... drivers. Ok, maybe some cyclists die of collisions with other cyclists, but I'd wager they're a tiny minority.
        darklajid 15y ago
        Riight.. And your uber-safe automatic car is able to react if I, the stupid pedestrian (or worse, because I'm faster, biker) cross a road without looking. No matter how fast you react, if you go at reasonable speeds and I'm the idiot, you're going to hit me (kill is optional). I think that's what your parent poster was trying to say (because that way it is a sensible argument). Whatever you implement in vehicle safety: If I'm able to throw myself in front of the thing in the last moment, hopefully because I'm a moron and not intentionally, then no technology on earth can avoid the accident. Unless... You want to add mandatory robot bikes and robot shoes...
        swombat 15y ago
        I'd argue that a self-driving car can take actions that a human drivers would not be capable of performing... First of all, it will have much quicker reactions - and in accidents, those extra milliseconds do save lives. Secondly, it can take calm reactions where a human would panic. For example, if a parson started stumbling around drunkenly on a highway, with human drivers zooming past at 70mph a deadly accident is guaranteed. With self-driven cars, it's not that unreasonable to assume that they will be able to spot the person some distance away and change lane to shift around him or her. It might cause a slow-down in traffic around that area, but there's a good chance the whole incident can happen without accidents.
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person. Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway?
    - Goronmon 15y ago
      Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway? This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm. That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.
      - scythe 15y ago
        >This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm. >That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so. Hyperbole? Driving is dangerous, on that we are agreed, but the activity in your example is far, far, far more dangerous. There is obviously some standard of danger at which we no longer ban people from doing things: you aren't allowed to shoot at people, but you are allowed to carry a gun in the first place, and even regardless of your own intention this admits the possibility that someone insane might steal your gun and shoot innocent people. So I don't think that valuing the freedom to control your own vehicle can be immediately dismissed as absurd. The apparent danger of driving is exaggerated by the astounding safety of modern life: at no point before 1900 did any human enjoy anything remotely approaching a modern standard of safety. In industrialized countries, the vehicle fatality rate is commensurate with or below the suicide rate. The number of people who enjoy the freedom of driving is massive, essentially the entire adult population of those countries, and so this common experience perhaps should not be ignored. Some of -- but not all of -- the value in freedom is reflected in the potential for damage in non-freedom. If some external agent controls the mobility of the population, the potential for abuse is massive.
artmageddon 15y ago
>is somewhat like suggesting that vaccines are boring because they take away the excitement of not knowing which of your children will live to an adult age. I realize you use the word "somewhat", but I still stand by sipior. Autos are, for many, a necessary mode of transportation that have the unfortunate potential to be abused or misused. Knives can be used to prepare food or kill/maim others, as well. I hope no one thinks we should build robots to do all of our cooking for us on the chance we might slice a finger.
- swombat 15y ago
  Slicing a finger and losing an entire family in a horrible car crash are hardly comparable. Your comparison is absurd. If 80 people died every day (source: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx ) in the US from chopping up their vegetables, sometimes entire families slaughtered by a wayward broccoli stem, building robots to do our vegetable-chopping for us should definitely be a high priority. Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two.
  - scythe 15y ago
    >Your comparison is absurd. A strange complaint, coming from someone who not twenty minutes ago compared mandatory automated cars to vaccination, the former being a significant infringement on freedom for an undetermined safety gain and the latter being the most successful medical program in the history of humanity. >Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two. Okay, and that's fair, but this thread started with someone saying automated cars should be mandatory, so surely you'll understand if we choose to argue against that point? I support computers being used to improve highway safety. I am not yet ready to conclude that the best way to go about this is to mandate self-driving cars for everyone, no exceptions.
    - trobertson 15y ago
      Perhaps the mandate should be for those found guilty of reckless driving, aggressive driving, DUIs, vehicular homicide, etc. You get the privilege of driving until you are seen unfit to drive.

by swombat 15y ago

speckledjim 15y ago

The car has certainly done far far far more good than bad. That's why we put up with the downside (a few deaths a day). The issue is that there's a small minority of bad drivers who cause accidents. Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society.

Goronmon 15y ago
Removing everyones freedom to drive because of those few isn't very fair, and would result in a boring 'locked down' society. You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person. I'd put it in the same category as things like not allowing people to smoke in workplaces, public buildings, etc, or allowing people to shoot firearms in the backyards of their suburban homes. I just don't see there being a 'freedom to manually control tons of metal for the purposes of transportation' trumping the immense amount of benefits to safety, among others.
- speckledjim 15y ago
  We have umpteen checks to ensure drivers are as safe as they can be. Deaths in the US from driving have come down from around 120 a day in 2000 to around 90 a day now. In the UK, it's about 8 deaths a day from driving. The road network is now eight times safer per mile travelled than it was in 1966. Just for comparison, around 400+ people die each day in the UK from cancer. Instead of wasting a ton of money making robotic driverless cars because it sounds good, I'd invest that money straight into cancer research.
  - Goronmon 15y ago
    Why waste a ton of money on cancer research that has a good chance of saving no lives, when you can invest money into driverless vehicles that are guaranteed to save lives?
    - speckledjim 15y ago
      Driverless vehicles won't prevent all deaths on the road. Pedestrians and cyclists account for quite a few.
      - swombat 15y ago
        Pedestrians and cyclists are killed by... drivers. Ok, maybe some cyclists die of collisions with other cyclists, but I'd wager they're a tiny minority.
        darklajid 15y ago
        Riight.. And your uber-safe automatic car is able to react if I, the stupid pedestrian (or worse, because I'm faster, biker) cross a road without looking. No matter how fast you react, if you go at reasonable speeds and I'm the idiot, you're going to hit me (kill is optional). I think that's what your parent poster was trying to say (because that way it is a sensible argument). Whatever you implement in vehicle safety: If I'm able to throw myself in front of the thing in the last moment, hopefully because I'm a moron and not intentionally, then no technology on earth can avoid the accident. Unless... You want to add mandatory robot bikes and robot shoes...
        swombat 15y ago
        I'd argue that a self-driving car can take actions that a human drivers would not be capable of performing... First of all, it will have much quicker reactions - and in accidents, those extra milliseconds do save lives. Secondly, it can take calm reactions where a human would panic. For example, if a parson started stumbling around drunkenly on a highway, with human drivers zooming past at 70mph a deadly accident is guaranteed. With self-driven cars, it's not that unreasonable to assume that they will be able to spot the person some distance away and change lane to shift around him or her. It might cause a slow-down in traffic around that area, but there's a good chance the whole incident can happen without accidents.
- mindcrime 15y ago
  You can't expect a 'freedom' to exist in perpetuity for something that can easily result in the deaths of others by the actions of one person. Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway?
  - Goronmon 15y ago
    Sure you can, and many of us do. Freedom trumps damn-near everything as far as I'm concerned. And how many of us are planning on living forever anyway? This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm. That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so.
    - scythe 15y ago
      >This can't be true. I mean, sure, you could take a rifle downtown, place a target on a brick wall and start honing your shooting skills across a busy road. You might even have every intention of avoiding causing other people any harm. >That doesn't mean I think you should have the freedom to do so. Hyperbole? Driving is dangerous, on that we are agreed, but the activity in your example is far, far, far more dangerous. There is obviously some standard of danger at which we no longer ban people from doing things: you aren't allowed to shoot at people, but you are allowed to carry a gun in the first place, and even regardless of your own intention this admits the possibility that someone insane might steal your gun and shoot innocent people. So I don't think that valuing the freedom to control your own vehicle can be immediately dismissed as absurd. The apparent danger of driving is exaggerated by the astounding safety of modern life: at no point before 1900 did any human enjoy anything remotely approaching a modern standard of safety. In industrialized countries, the vehicle fatality rate is commensurate with or below the suicide rate. The number of people who enjoy the freedom of driving is massive, essentially the entire adult population of those countries, and so this common experience perhaps should not be ignored. Some of -- but not all of -- the value in freedom is reflected in the potential for damage in non-freedom. If some external agent controls the mobility of the population, the potential for abuse is massive.

artmageddon 15y ago

>is somewhat like suggesting that vaccines are boring because they take away the excitement of not knowing which of your children will live to an adult age. I realize you use the word "somewhat", but I still stand by sipior. Autos are, for many, a necessary mode of transportation that have the unfortunate potential to be abused or misused. Knives can be used to prepare food or kill/maim others, as well. I hope no one thinks we should build robots to do all of our cooking for us on the chance we might slice a finger.

swombat 15y ago
Slicing a finger and losing an entire family in a horrible car crash are hardly comparable. Your comparison is absurd. If 80 people died every day (source: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx ) in the US from chopping up their vegetables, sometimes entire families slaughtered by a wayward broccoli stem, building robots to do our vegetable-chopping for us should definitely be a high priority. Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two.
- scythe 15y ago
  >Your comparison is absurd. A strange complaint, coming from someone who not twenty minutes ago compared mandatory automated cars to vaccination, the former being a significant infringement on freedom for an undetermined safety gain and the latter being the most successful medical program in the history of humanity. >Bear in mind I'm not advocating the removal of cars - merely that great efforts should be made to introduce self-driving cars over the next generation or two. Okay, and that's fair, but this thread started with someone saying automated cars should be mandatory, so surely you'll understand if we choose to argue against that point? I support computers being used to improve highway safety. I am not yet ready to conclude that the best way to go about this is to mandate self-driving cars for everyone, no exceptions.
  - trobertson 15y ago
    Perhaps the mandate should be for those found guilty of reckless driving, aggressive driving, DUIs, vehicular homicide, etc. You get the privilege of driving until you are seen unfit to drive.