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by thx11389793
2919 days ago
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If we have a hundred years to burn, how about reorganizing our cities into forms that obviate the need for cars (self-driving or not) in the first place? Anecdotally, I've heard people make the point that public transit is infeasible in the states because the population density is too low, and people are too spread out. I'm not sure that it is -- the US Census Bureau stats show the share of Americans living in urban areas growing steadily throughout the history of the country, with 80% of the population currently hailing from urban areas. We are and have been urbanizing since the birth of the country, I reckon if were smart about building infra now, we can remove the problem SDVs are trying to solve in approximately as long as it would take for them to become ubiquitous were we to take no action. |
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I think part of the problem is that self-driving vehicles is marketed as a life-saving technology, when it is the novelty and futurism people are attracted to. (It is indeed an impressive and challenging problem.) The furthest mainstream press release I can recall making the case for autonomous vehicles was Google's efforts. This makes me wonder if they had a solution in search of a problem, so they took road deaths in the U.S to sell the idea. Maybe they were chasing the next iteration of intense computing application, e.g. Deep Blue -> Watson -> self-driving cars.
The 40k+ fatalities per year is a solvable problem without autonomous vehicles: (1) promote equity in other methods of transportation, (2) enhance driver-assistance technology, (3) design roads to be built for safety rather than convenience/speed [0]
Regarding point 2 above, note that Chevrolet has "teen-driver technology" which can set a maximum speed, and provide visual and audible warnings if the (teen) driver exceeds the speed limit [1]. Presumably the vehicle has cameras to read speed limit signs. Why isn't this being applied to all drivers? It seems to be the classic case of "let's blame teens for everyone's bad driving" (juvenoia).
[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/25/speed-kills-so... [1] https://www.chevrolet.com/teen-driver-technology