[kafquaesque]

If a person uses a device while using autopilot, (which seems highly likely—not sure in thi instance) wouldn’t it be advisable to have the alerts come to them directly on whichever device they are using? The alert breaks them out of whatever task they are focusing on. If the alert is coming from the car I can see how a lot of us could ignore it.

[ehnto]

What a world. Where we can't even take enough responsibility to be present enough to hear the "You are about to die" bell chime.

Imagine the possible breaking components in that chain too. Bluetooth can fail, satellite can fail, cell can fail, WiFi can fail, a USB cable can fail, there isn't a single piece of connectivity technology that would make me confident enough to delegate alerts to another device.

There is also an inherent failure of alarms in general in that even very loud ones can be ignored if they give false positives even once or twice. There is a body of study trying to address it. Some of the most fatal industrial accidents occured because alarms were either ignored or even fully switched off. We aren't good with alarms.

I think the meat of it though is that unless Auto-pilot works perfectly then you can't leave it alone. And if you can't leave it alone then what's the point?

The sell for autonomous cars isn't that people are just so darn tired of turning the steering wheel that they would really rather not. It's that we could potentially be more productive if we could shift our full attention to work/study/relaxation while commuting.

[kafquaesque]

It seems like we are in an “in-between” state where we are using humans to assuage the fears of people that aren’t sure if neural networks can drive better than humans. The goal is to eventually focus on something else. If it’s just about making driving safer I would think it’s more of an incremental innovation step versus the breakthrough concept of being able to do something else while being commuted completely by a neural-network driven vehicle. The bridge to get to this breakthrough hopefully isn’t hacked apart by naysayers. Every death should be met with empathy and a desire to strengthen this bridge and quicken the speed of crossing it.