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Both emergency situations exist & also cars aren't that infallible, so there would need to be a way to override such a system or disable it. Otherwise imagine t

Both emergency situations exist & also cars aren't that infallible, so there would need to be a way to override such a system or disable it. Otherwise imagine the chaos of a track day or autocross when someone's car suddenly thinks they are on the road next to the track and slams on the brakes...

matsemann 5y ago
For every suggestion to curb the car problems of society, there will always be someone bringing up edge cases to defend status quo. How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making. And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets. If anything, getting rid of traffic means that it's now easier for them to get to where they are going. Same for disabled people. It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules. It is why humans are simultaneously great and terrible at driving. One slightly bad driver can be accounted for by several slightly better drivers navigating around the bad one's behavior. This smooth "self-correction" on the roadway leads to lots of rule breaking but also probably saves a lot of time/lives by allowing individual humans to navigate a situation (especially since lots of people forget the exact rules of the road...ex. do you yield in a turning situation or not, what exceptions would you not yield?) However, I really do like your last point, the easiest way to solve is just remove the cars from as much of the equation and introduce transit that follows rules (trains, busses -higher compliance with road rules perhaps) and let humans navigate the last meter themselves
  - dionidium 5y ago
    > I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules. This makes more sense as an objection in a vacuum than it does in the reality where the alternative is that speeding is a big problem within cities. We don't have to solve every edge case. We just need the edge cases to be less of an issue than speeding already is. And that's a much easier bar. Asking, "what if we do this?" is fine, but one should also always consider, "what if we don't?"
    - darkwizard42 5y ago
      But that is the point... if we don't do something here, humans can continue to take their own actions to resolve the situation (speed up with traffic or move to the right or choose an alternate route). That level of flexibility allows for each person to make the choice they want and feel comfortable with (as opposed to the car making a decision for you)
      - dionidium 5y ago
        Let's be clear here that "letting the car make the decision for you" in context means "you can't go as fast as you want in an urban area because the car will prevent it." As in, you can't drive many multiples of the speed limit in urbanized areas packed with buildings and pedestrians and other cars. The car should prevent that in practically all cases. The car does know that that's a good idea in practically every conceivable case. A human driver who thinks they should drive many multiples of the speed limit in an urban area is wrong. It's so manifestly wrong that it shouldn't even be technically possible. There's no good reason to manufacture a car that responds so stupidly to such a dangerous and irresponsible input. And when the day finally comes that the conditions are just right so that a driver dies attempting to flee an avalanche because this tech prevented them from escaping at speed, we will put a lone checkmark in the "lives lost to this technology" column that's adjacent to a "lives saved" file 10 miles long. If I could be permitted just a little bit of levity: https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en
  - 5y ago
- yupper32 5y ago
  More often is people trying to implement solutions without thinking the problem through to the end. Like trying to ban the sale of combustion engines without having a robust charging infrastructure. Or making parking in a downtown area a nightmare without improving the public transit infrastructure. Or in this case, trying to implement maximum speeds in cars when the technology (GPS? Accurate speed limit maps? Extra sensors on cars and roads?) isn't good enough or isn't there.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  > How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making. It absolutely should have a bearing as you are essentially arguing that those cases you should be illegal & banned. You can't ban something and then argue that "well, not many people were doing it anyway, so we can ignore it even though we're banning it." Your policy impacts it, therefore your policy must account for it. Even if that account is to decide that the impact is justified, you are making significant changes to things outside of your stated & claimed goal. > And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets. I did no such thing? All I said is there needs to be an 'off' switch, just like there is for traction control in the majority of vehicles today. The overwhelming majority of people leave it enabled (as that's the default), and the world is better. Rules don't need to be black & white to have broad societal improvements. > It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier. Except you were arguing that cars should be banned for uses outside of being on the road as part of normal traffic. As in, your "rule" wasn't improving your hypothetical excuse situation here. It was instead making it the only legal usage of a vehicle, to compete with mass transit.
dionidium 5y ago
If you gathered up every single one of these edge cases and multiplied them by 10 you wouldn't get anywhere near the actually-existing, non-hypothetical, measurable problem of speeding. So, sure, we should talk about edge cases and people who implement this technology should work on them, but even if they didn't, the tech would still be a good idea given fairly pedestrian calculations of the relevant tradeoffs. And even if we accept your premise that the edge cases are a big deal, the solution presents itself quite readily: let there be an override with serious consequences for frivolously engaging it. Simple.

matsemann 5y ago

For every suggestion to curb the car problems of society, there will always be someone bringing up edge cases to defend status quo. How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making. And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets. If anything, getting rid of traffic means that it's now easier for them to get to where they are going. Same for disabled people. It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier.

darkwizard42 5y ago
I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules. It is why humans are simultaneously great and terrible at driving. One slightly bad driver can be accounted for by several slightly better drivers navigating around the bad one's behavior. This smooth "self-correction" on the roadway leads to lots of rule breaking but also probably saves a lot of time/lives by allowing individual humans to navigate a situation (especially since lots of people forget the exact rules of the road...ex. do you yield in a turning situation or not, what exceptions would you not yield?) However, I really do like your last point, the easiest way to solve is just remove the cars from as much of the equation and introduce transit that follows rules (trains, busses -higher compliance with road rules perhaps) and let humans navigate the last meter themselves
- dionidium 5y ago
  > I think the issue of "always bringing up edge cases" is meant to illustrate that a LOT can go wrong with some of these hard and fast rules. This makes more sense as an objection in a vacuum than it does in the reality where the alternative is that speeding is a big problem within cities. We don't have to solve every edge case. We just need the edge cases to be less of an issue than speeding already is. And that's a much easier bar. Asking, "what if we do this?" is fine, but one should also always consider, "what if we don't?"
  - darkwizard42 5y ago
    But that is the point... if we don't do something here, humans can continue to take their own actions to resolve the situation (speed up with traffic or move to the right or choose an alternate route). That level of flexibility allows for each person to make the choice they want and feel comfortable with (as opposed to the car making a decision for you)
    - dionidium 5y ago
      Let's be clear here that "letting the car make the decision for you" in context means "you can't go as fast as you want in an urban area because the car will prevent it." As in, you can't drive many multiples of the speed limit in urbanized areas packed with buildings and pedestrians and other cars. The car should prevent that in practically all cases. The car does know that that's a good idea in practically every conceivable case. A human driver who thinks they should drive many multiples of the speed limit in an urban area is wrong. It's so manifestly wrong that it shouldn't even be technically possible. There's no good reason to manufacture a car that responds so stupidly to such a dangerous and irresponsible input. And when the day finally comes that the conditions are just right so that a driver dies attempting to flee an avalanche because this tech prevented them from escaping at speed, we will put a lone checkmark in the "lives lost to this technology" column that's adjacent to a "lives saved" file 10 miles long. If I could be permitted just a little bit of levity: https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762?lang=en
- 5y ago
yupper32 5y ago
More often is people trying to implement solutions without thinking the problem through to the end. Like trying to ban the sale of combustion engines without having a robust charging infrastructure. Or making parking in a downtown area a nightmare without improving the public transit infrastructure. Or in this case, trying to implement maximum speeds in cars when the technology (GPS? Accurate speed limit maps? Extra sensors on cars and roads?) isn't good enough or isn't there.
kllrnohj 5y ago
> How many meters are done on a track each year, compared to public roads? I'd wager most people have never even set foot on a track. Cases like that should have absolutely no bearing on policy making. It absolutely should have a bearing as you are essentially arguing that those cases you should be illegal & banned. You can't ban something and then argue that "well, not many people were doing it anyway, so we can ignore it even though we're banning it." Your policy impacts it, therefore your policy must account for it. Even if that account is to decide that the impact is justified, you are making significant changes to things outside of your stated & claimed goal. > And emergency is always used as am excuse as well to not limit car use or rebuild streets. I did no such thing? All I said is there needs to be an 'off' switch, just like there is for traction control in the majority of vehicles today. The overwhelming majority of people leave it enabled (as that's the default), and the world is better. Rules don't need to be black & white to have broad societal improvements. > It's always people shouting "you can't ban cars here, think of the disabled", when the truth is that getting rid of most of the cars and building better infrastructure would make their day easier. Except you were arguing that cars should be banned for uses outside of being on the road as part of normal traffic. As in, your "rule" wasn't improving your hypothetical excuse situation here. It was instead making it the only legal usage of a vehicle, to compete with mass transit.

dionidium 5y ago

If you gathered up every single one of these edge cases and multiplied them by 10 you wouldn't get anywhere near the actually-existing, non-hypothetical, measurable problem of speeding. So, sure, we should talk about edge cases and people who implement this technology should work on them, but even if they didn't, the tech would still be a good idea given fairly pedestrian calculations of the relevant tradeoffs. And even if we accept your premise that the edge cases are a big deal, the solution presents itself quite readily: let there be an override with serious consequences for frivolously engaging it. Simple.