3 ms·

Whenever I see the four legged dog robot, I wonder how far we are from the chevaline in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

• shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's easy to forget sometimes, in the era of cars, how much we gave up when most people in industrialized society stopped riding horses. It's pretty hard to get a horse to careen off a cliff or straight into a tree. The largest risk for riding a horse drunk is that it'll inadvertently scrape you off on a low-hanging branch.
  • inglor_cz 5y ago
    Well, Scottish king Alexander III. died in 1286 when his horse fell off a cliff with him, but that was after sunset, and this kind of death was weird enough that we still remember it. The # of important people who died in a car after a driver error is much higher.
  • jozvolskyef 5y ago
    Horses are easy to startle and they will crash into a tree at 35mph just to get you off their back when startled. They also don't like people standing or walking behind their backs; being kicked by a horse is a common injury, sometimes fatal. > Ten army corps were observed over 20 years, giving a total of 200 observations of one corps for a one year period. The period or module of observation is thus one year. The total deaths from horse kicks were 122, and the average number of deaths per year per corps was thus 122/200 = 0.61.[1] [1]: https://www.mathsnetalevel.com/2406 https://www.mathsnetalevel.com/2406