Your Self-Driving Car Will Be Programmed to Kill You—Deal With It

Not a surprise, but most people haven't thought about it.

Your Self-Driving Car Will Be Programmed to Kill You—Deal With It

Same old ethics conundrum with a new type of trolley.
And the legal questions are also interesting, or at least problematic.
When you're in an accident, can you be held liable?
If the car is going too fast, can you get a ticket?
etc.

Fucking self-driving cars is possibly the worst application ever for computers.

As Uber rolls out self-driving cars, its human drivers are worried

As are some of the rest of us.

Not only the displaced drivers should be worried. So should all other drivers and pedestrians. And anyone whose home or business is close to the street.

You're paranoid.

Self-driving cars have killed, what, one person? In how many millions of miles? And that person was an idiot?

Do you want to ride in a car that is controlled by the decisions made by the producers of the sensors and software that control the car? Do you want to depend on the hardware in that self-driving car being in perfect condition and the software not having a single bug?

Can you not think of a scenario in which a self-driving car may encounter a situation which it is not able to manage properly, but which a human could respond correctly? Remember, every decision for the self-driving car has already been made; the computer in the car simply implements those decisions.

Self-driving cars will be practical - and safe - when the roadways they traverse have been designed specifically for them. As long as these robotic transit machines have to share roads designed for and shared with human drivers, they - and the rest of us - will not be safe.

And just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after me.

..."it'll come sooner than people think."

2020 perhaps.

The concept of self-driving cars is fine. The manner in which they are being rolled out is abysmal.

People aren't an endangered species.

NoCoPilot wrote:

People aren't an endangered species.

Individually, they are.

We need to cull the herd.

Just out of curiosity: Have you ever looked up the word cynical in the dictionary?
Perhaps I should have asked you about misanthropic

Uber puts more driverless cars on the road

Quote :

Uber has launched a trial of its self-driving cars in San Francisco, following on from its debut of the pilot scheme in Pittsburgh in September.

Another solution looking for a problem.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. etc.

I hope they keep the Uber cars - and all other self-driving cars - off the road. Fucking idiotic, dangerous, needless idea.

A friend told me this morning that he was in a fender bender a couple of weeks ago. He was driving in a parking lot and another car just backed out into him. No one was injured, and it only cost around $5,000 to fix his car.

The other driver got out of his car and apologized, He said that he just hadn't looked. He was driving a rental car which didn't have the warning device his car had on it. He had gotten used to his own car warning him if there was anything behind him when he put the car in reverse. The rental didn't have that feature, and he had gotten out of the habit of checking.

No, it wasn't the car's fault, but it is illustrative of one of the problems that can be created with dependence on so-called smart cars.

Not the automobile's fault.

_Howard wrote:

No, it wasn't the car's fault,...

I guess you missed this bit.

Problems such as this one are the result of bad engineering. The characteristics of human drivers must be taken into account when making changes to the mechanical aspects of the cars. In this case, the idea that a warning beep is a sufficient replacement for looking in the mirror is incorrect.

For an example: our daughter's car has a rear view mirror which contains a display of the rear-facing camera in half of the mirror when the car is in reverse. The camera can pick up low lying objects that are not visible in the mirror or by looking out the back window. This provides the same feature as the warning beep without the driver getting out of the habit of looking in the mirror when backing up. Much better engineering.

Simply saying, "Not the automobile's fault" is very similar to the arguments of the NRA, and equally specious.

Why limit self-driving to the car you're in? Lexus April Fools joke:

That's great. I wonder how many people will ask for that option on their Lexi. (Lexi is the plural of Lexus, isn't it?)
The sad part is that a lot of people will think that's a good idea.